Jim Nussle

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I reserve a point of order against the gentleman's motion to recommit.

Mr. NUSSLE. I do, Mr. Speaker. I make a point of order against the motion to recommit because it is in violation of section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. A motion that would cause any increase in new budget authority will breach the allocation made under section 302(a) to the applicable committee and is not permitted under 302(f) of the act. This motion causes such an increase in new budget authority and, therefore, is not in order. I insist on my point of order.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, then, continuing to reserve the right to object, I would ask what the gentleman's changes are. Because my understanding is that the only difference is between ``forthwith'' and ``promptly.'' The first four pages are increases in spending to the level purported to be the level of the Senate, and then from page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and on and on and on and on are increases in taxes, on and on from page 4 all the way, increasing taxes, not gas taxes, but all the way to page 174 are increases in taxes. I would ask the gentleman, did he strike the tax increases from page 4 all the way to 174 in the motion to recommit?

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I will not object to the dispensing of the reading, but at this point I would like certainly to hear from the gentleman why it is that there are four pages of spending and then 170 pages of tax increases in this motion to recommit. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, my understanding is that the only difference between the motion to recommit that the gentleman just offered and we struck with a point of order and the one that he is now offering is the difference between the words ``forthwith'' and ``promptly.'' Is that the gentleman's understanding?

Mr. NUSSLE. I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, in accordance with section 411 of H. Con. Res. 95, I hereby submit for printing in the Congressional Record adjustments to the section 302(a) allocation to the House Committee on Transportation, set forth in H. Rept. 108-71, to reflect $3.777 billion in additional new budget authority for the period of fiscal years 2004 through 2008. Section 411 authorizes the chairman of the Committee on the Budget to adjust the appropriate budget aggregates and to increase the 302(a) allocation of new budget authority to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure for fiscal year 2004 and for the period of fiscal years 2004 through 2008 to the extent such excess is offsets by a reduction in mandatory outlays form the Highway Trust Fund or an increase in receipts appropriated to such fund for the applicable fiscal year caused by such legislation or any previously enacted legislation. As modified by the rule, H.R. 3550 makes additional receipts available to the Highway Trust Fund. Accordingly, I am increasing the 302(a) allocation to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure by the above amount. With the adjustment, this bill is within the level assumed in the two periods applicable to the House; fiscal year 2004 and for the total of fiscal years 2004 through 2008 as required under section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the Senate concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 95) setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2005 and including the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2006 through 2009, with the House amendment thereto, insist on the House amendment, and request a conference with the Senate thereon.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First of all, I join the gentleman when it comes to paying for things as we go. Every family, as the gentleman from California said, has to pay for things as they go. When they have a bill come in from the light company or from the gas company or from the city, from the city office, to pay for the water or the garbage collection, they have got to pay as they go. When we go to the grocery store and buy the milk and buy the bread and buy the eggs, we have got to pay as we go. Spending should be paid as we go. There is no question about that. There is bipartisan agreement, I think, for that. Spending should be paid for. It is an important concept. And the gentleman spoke about the outrages of government on the spending side. But the argument gets a little bit fuzzy when we start talking about the income side or the revenue side. The gentleman wants budget enforcement. He has got a partner over here in the Committee on the Budget chairman. I certainly want and expect that we will have budget enforcement and an opportunity for Members to vote on budget enforcement this year. In fact, we passed a bill out of the Committee on the Budget together with the budget that was for the purpose of enforcement. When we pass a spending plan, we ought to enforce it so that there are not increases in spending. Unfortunately, the Spending Control Act that the gentleman supports and that I support and that I think we have bipartisan agreement on supporting has been murkied. There has been some murkiness applied to it. Because now, all of a sudden, people want to apply the same controls on spending over on the tax cut side. And why do they want to do that? Because they do not support tax cuts, pure and simple. If one comes to the floor today and they vote for this, it basically tells all of us that they do not support reducing the tax burden on Americans. It would be one thing if for some reason the Federal Government was running out of taxes. I mean, if we came here today learning for the first time that the government was running out of money for some reason or another, that there were not taxes coming into the Federal Treasury, then I could see why people might be nervous and might say we ought to apply some kind of concern or more controls on the tax reform side of the debate. But, unfortunately, this is an arbitrary decision that comes in that sets yet again another 60-vote point of order on a Senate which already has the ability to enforce reduction in taxes with a 60- vote point of order, meaning that the way this bill or this rule would work is if they want to cut taxes in the Senate, they would have to get 60 votes to waive the rule that the gentleman is promoting today. That is exactly what they would have to do if they wanted to pass a tax cut. So, instead of one vote, what the gentleman wants is two votes. Well, what is wrong with two votes? The point of it is that why do we want to murky up the debate about controlling spending, about paying for things as we go by having yet another rule that comes in that will be gladly waived by everybody who wants to waive it, which has been cheerfully done time and time again not only in the other body but also in this body. Instead, what we should be doing is we should be controlling spending. We passed a budget last week that controls that spending side, that says we should begin to pay as we go, but, unfortunately, what this motion does is it says that somehow the government should pay for taxes. Think about that for a moment. We are coming up on April 15, a lot of people are going to be doing something very interesting about that point in time. They are going to be sending in a check to the Federal Government. And what does that do? It pays for taxes. So who pays for taxes in this country? The American people pay for taxes. How does the government pay for taxes? Seriously, think about that. How does the government pay for taxes? Does the government pay taxes? No. Each of us individually, I presume, pay taxes. I know I am going to be paying my fair share, and I am sure the gentleman from California and many other people who will come down here today will be paying for taxes. But does the government pay for taxes? No. Now, if they come here today and they say they do not like the Tax Code, again I agree with them. The Tax Code is convoluted. Many of us on our side believe we ought to throw it out and start all over with a new Tax Code. If they say they want to close loopholes, they should vote for the budget when it comes back. Because loophole closing will be part of that for corporations or for anybody who is trying to take advantage of a loophole within the Tax Code. So if they do not like the Tax Code, if they do not like loopholes that are in the Tax Code, if they want to control taxes, if they want to use taxes as a way to stimulate investment, stimulate savings, stimulate job creation in this country, then that is something that we should be doing. But to pay for taxes, there is only one group that pays for taxes, and those are taxpayers. We have an income side, and we have an expense side. The expense side we should pay as we go, but the income side, how do we pay for income as we go? It does not make any sense. So the entire debate today is not a debate about some responsible decision about paying for tax cuts. It is a direct attempt to eliminate any discussion this year of tax cuts. And if that is what they want to do, if they do not want to cut taxes on the job creators in this country, if they do not want to cut taxes on farmers, if they do not want to allow for married people who were penalized for many years to continue under a regime that allows them to finally not be penalized for their marriage, if they want to continue the tax relief that was provided to families with children, if they want to continue the tax relief to small businesses that create most of the jobs in this country, then they will come down here and say, no, no, no, they are just trying to prevent us from cutting taxes. It sounds very responsible, ``pay-as-you-go.'' But remember who pays in this country: Taxpayers pay for taxes. The government does not pay for taxes. The government does not pay taxes. One last thing that I want to say before I turn it back to my friend from California. As I was saying before, it would be one thing if the government was running out of money. If the debate today was, oh, my gosh, somehow tax cuts are irresponsible, because the government is running out of money. You allowed taxpayers to keep so much money that we are running out of money. But here are the line items, and, since we are in the House, I will include this for the record, this revenue stream from the Congressional Budget Office, so that everyone can see this. But every single year under the budget, including tax relief, the amount of money that comes out here to Washington increases. You might say to yourself, how is that possible? Do you mean to tell me if we pass tax relief, on the one hand, more money is coming in to the Federal Government? Is this done by magicians? No, this is called an American economy that is now $11 trillion and growing, and when it grows and when it surges, when jobs are created and when people are working and when taxpayers pay taxes, and that is who pays for taxes, more money comes in to the Treasury. Just listen to this: This year we estimate $1.8 trillion of taxes will be coming in to the Federal Government; next year it will be $2 trillion; then $2.2 trillion; then $2.35 trillion; then $2.475 trillion; then $2.6 trillion. That is growing by about $150 billion a year, and that is a net figure. That is including us saying, taxpayers, keep your taxes; married people, keep those taxes you were being penalized; parents with children, keep that extra money for your kids. That includes us saying to small businesses, we do not want all that extra money, we want you to keep your jobs. That includes us saying to all those people, keep your taxes in your pocket. Do not send it out here in the first place, is what we are saying. Every year more money comes in to the Federal Treasury. Not by Jim Nussle's account, not by any of us as Members, partisan or nonpartisan, but by the Congressional Budget Office. The Congressional Budget Office, which has the job of, in a nonpartisan way, looking at all of the statistics and giving us an idea of exactly how this is going to work. People will come down here and say, do not believe figures 5 years from now. Just take this year to next, a $200 billion increase in taxes coming in to the Federal Treasury, and we are assuming as part of that that we want to reduce taxes. Again, the whole point of this is, who pays for taxes? My friends on the other side come rushing down here today with a motion saying the government pays for taxes. That is wrong. There is only one entity in America that pays for taxes, and that is taxpayers. And as taxpayers, they constantly tell us, time and time again, we spend our money more wisely, you should worry about how you spend your money. Taxes are doing just fine. We are sending more money every year, as I just explained, to the Federal Government. What you need to control is spending. You ought to pay-as-you-go for spending. You ought to make sure that you are paying for that increase in spending. That is where you ought to worry about that, and you ought to control spending in order to accomplish getting back to a balanced budget, which ours does. Our budget that we passed last week, on a party line vote, unfortunately, does just that. It controls spending, it gets us back to a balanced budget, and it does it by reducing the tax burden on Americans, by a small amount, in order to allow them to keep that money and allow them to spend that money more wisely. Taxes are paid by taxpayers. Taxes are not paid by the government. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the document referred to earlier.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, could I inquire how much time is left.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friend from California, I have no other speakers; and I am prepared to close if the gentleman is.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time. There was a gentleman earlier who indicated that this may be the most important, the most important vote in a congressional career. I have to say to the gentleman, I doubt it. This is a motion to instruct conferees. The conferees were just appointed, and it is what we refer to around here as a nonbinding resolution. Okay. I think we probably have had a few other votes that are more important than a nonbinding resolution to tell conferees to do something in the other body and apply a rule to our body, but I will play along just for the sake of the debate because I think it is an important debate, even though it may not be the most important vote. Our friends on the other side have, as I said, during the budget they have learned the words of fiscal responsibility, but they have not yet learned the music. The words are real easy to say, When you are in a hole stop digging. Well, of course, when you are in a hole stop digging, but stop digging in the pockets of the American people for more of their money so that you can keep digging, which is exactly what they did. They presented a budget alternative on the floor that kept digging, and what did they do in order to stop the digging? They were digging in the pockets of the American people for more of their money called taxes. Why do they do that? Because they know who pays taxes. We do not pay taxes. The Federal Government does not pay taxes. The Congress, as a body, pays taxes individually but not the Congress, the House of Representatives or the other body. The only people in this country that pay taxes are taxpayers, and so when we apply a pay-as-you-go and increase spending, guess who pays. We go and they pay. We buy and they pay. All the time, more spending, they pay. The second thing the gentleman from other side said, well, you have got to pay your bills. We agree and we will be bringing a bill to the floor that says you should pay your bills. Now you should not have to bring a law to the floor that says pay your bills. I would agree with the gentlemen on the other side that have said we have lost that discipline and we need to get that back on the spending side. There is no question, and we will do that; and we will have a debate on spending and paying your bills, and we should have that debate. But who gets the tax bill? When a bill is presented, you pay it. Who is presented the bill for taxes? The taxpayers, that is who pays. So by saying we should have pay-as-you-go for taxes, my colleagues are basically saying we want to take more money from the American people. We have heard about children's allowances. I want my colleagues to apply this principle to their kids and actually go to them and say, guess what, Johnny, you did not know this, but you pay for your own allowance. I mean, that is not only a head scratcher for them, but if a family was faced with this, we have heard a lot about families and kitchen tables today. If a family found out that the amount of money they were bringing in was increasing, all right, every year, their income, what would they do in order to deal with the hole that they were in? They would tighten their belt, and this is exactly what we have done. They would not say, all of the sudden, let us pay for an increase in taxes by some offsetting income. That is a goofy rule. You pay for taxes as a taxpayer, not as the government. The government pays for spending. That is where the rules should apply. Let us vote down this motion to instruct.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, we buy and they pay. We buy and taxpayers pay. This is an attempt, in my view, to look for a tax increase. That is what this is about, increasing taxes. We should not allow the Senate to impose a rule on the House. Sixty votes in the Senate just makes it harder to jump through yet another hoop in the Senate, and then I suppose one 60-vote hoop is more than enough. But we should not allow the Senate to impose those rules on the House. If we are here to talk about rules of the other body, I could think of some good rules. How about a 51-vote rule for judges? We have got a lot of judges we need to appoint in this country. How about 51 votes? How about a new rule that says for voting on judges, it only takes 51 votes instead of 60? How about a rule for the other body that says all bills shall be debated for not longer than 100 hours? That would be a pretty good rule. Not for the people watching C-SPAN necessarily, who would have to sit through a 100-hour debate, but do you not think one hour per senator would be enough to debate just about any bill? You would think so. But, unfortunately, the way it works right now, it is unlimited. They could take up a bill and filibuster it for the rest of their lives, as long as they could stand on their feet. So, there are a lot of rules that I would like to impose on the other body, if we wanted to talk about imposing rules. I do not want to have the other body imposing rules on us. If we are serious about budget enforcement, we should pass a law, and that is the reason that we passed a very strong budget enforcement law on spending out of committee at the same time we passed the budget resolution. That stronger bill is a bill that will be coming to the floor after we come back from the Easter recess, the district work period. It is not just a rule that can be waived, either by the House or by the other body, but it is a rule, it is a law, that is in statute, that actually helps us control spending. If you need to stiffen someone's spine, there is nothing like a law, rather than a rule, which have been traditionally and, unfortunately, waived. It seems to me that, and parenthetically I would say to my good friend from South Carolina, we do not have a rule within the resolution with regard to spending, pay-as-you-go spending. The House did not pass a similar rule with regard to spending. But we do have a bill that we want to come to the floor after the district work period. Again, the reason is because we believe on this side that spending is the concern, that is what you pay for, and that is what we should make sure we pay for, not reducing taxes to taxpayers.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, we borrow it because we keep spending. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) said, ``What happens? It is because we keep spending. We keep spending.'' I mean, the gentleman, I know he wants to respond, so let me just get in a couple of other jabs here, too, because he made some good points. But the gentleman said that, just like a family, if they reduce their income, they got to figure out how they are going to make ends meet. I agree with the gentleman. The difference is, our income is not being reduced. Our income to the Federal Government, which comes from taxpayers who pay the taxes, and I know the gentleman knows that, but I am going to keep stressing it, they are paying more and more and more even with the tax relief that we have provided under this budget being made, as we say around here, permanent, which only means until the Senate figures out some cockamamie rule, as the gentleman from Florida said, that makes them all of a sudden snap back. They are only permanent until the Senate allows them to snap back under their rule. So that is the problem we have got. We do not want another rule to make them just more difficult to be made permanent. But, as the gentleman said, if there was less income coming in every year, the gentleman's points would be much stronger. But there is not less income. From this year to next year, first of all, $1.8 trillion. Next year, it will be $2 trillion. $200 billion more will come in next year than this year, even with the tax relief packaging made permanent. So why do we keep borrowing? Because we keep spending. That is what this is all about. There are two sides of the ledger. There is an expense side and an income side. We do not pay for the income side. There is no reason for us to pay for the income side. Because that income side comes from taxpayers. The pay-as-you-go is from them. The gentleman very eloquently said, when you are in a hole, stop digging. And my retort back to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) is, when you are in a hole, stop digging in the pockets of taxpayers. That is the point that we are trying to make. They pay the taxes. Congress does not need a rule in order to have some kind of mechanism to pay for something we do not pay for. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond. Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, let me say to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) there is not a Member on this side that is refusing to pay for the bill for the war. And if we want to roll out the record votes in not only this body but also the other body for who paid for our men and women over in the field, I will be glad to do that. Because there will be a very interesting name that is left off the list. He happens to be running for President right now. The second thing the gentleman said is that we have to pay our bills, and we agree. Who gets the bill for taxes? Taxpayers get the bill for taxes. They pay the taxes. Nobody else. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to respond. The gentleman used an excellent example about his son; and the next time he has this allowance conversation with his son, because I have a son and I have this conversation once in a while as well, I want the gentleman to tell him that he actually does not get an allowance. He actually pays for an allowance. Is that not interesting? Do we think that would go over very well? I know it would not go over very well with my 13-year-old son. He would not understand how in the world he pays for an allowance. I pay his allowance. The gentleman from Hawaii pays his son's allowance. The taxpayers pay the Federal Government's allowance, called taxes. They pay. We buy, they pay. People should not have to pay for taxes when they have already been paid for by the taxpayers, and that is the whole discussion that we are having here today. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Putnam), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the Senate concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 95) setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2005 and including the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2006 through 2009, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Culberson.) Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Iowa?

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 9 a.m. tomorrow for morning hour debate as though after May 31, 2004, thereafter to resume its session at 10 a.m.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to vacate the ordering of the yeas and nays on the motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 3917 to the end that the Chair put the question on the motion de novo.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2\1/2\ minutes. First and foremost, let me say to the gentleman who is the ranking member of the Committee on Agriculture, the choice will be the Committee on Agriculture's choice on where to find those savings, and I doubt seriously that the gentleman from Texas is going to be promoting opening up the farm bill. At least I would hope that he does not. That is not what the gentleman from Virginia, the chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, is suggesting. I would hope that the gentleman from Texas does not believe that we should open up the farm bill. There is certainly no one on this side of the aisle, or I should not say no one, but there is certainly no one who I am aware of who wants to open up the farm bill at this time. That is not where the savings would come from. So I hope the gentleman would allow his own committee to work its will and to work within that committee process. He asks us to respect the committee process on the one hand, and yet he predisposes that on the other. And I have to tell the Members I do not believe the farm bill is where we ought to be looking. Second of all, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. You cannot say on the one hand, we are going to raise taxes on the job creators, the small businesses, the farmers, the ranchers, we are going to raise taxes on those people, and accept the economic assumptions that the economy is going to continue to grow. You are saying on the one hand, we are going to kill jobs, we are going to tax small business, we are going to tax farmers; and on the other hand, do not worry about the economy, it is going to continue to grow at the same baseline amount. So you accept our numbers on the economy, which are derived, in part, from the fact that the tax cuts are working and the economy, the last 6 months at least, has had the strongest growth in 20 years. You are accepting all the good news. You are accepting all the cake. But you cannot at the same time say, oh, no, but we are going to raise taxes on those same people who are creating the jobs, who are providing all that economic development, who are helping to make sure that the economy is growing, who are spending their money, who are being productive; we are going to tax them, and we are going to accept the economic growth. You cannot have it on the one side and then take it back on the other. So you need to change your economic factors if you are going to come to the floor with a budget that you are going to at least purport. That answers the question. The very distinguished gentleman from Texas asked me a question. He said, Are our deficit numbers better or worse? The issue is, we do not know because you accept the good news of the economy that the tax cuts have given us, and yet on the other hand you take away the tax cuts. So on the one hand you say, oh, yes, our deficits are going to get smaller because the economy is going to improve, because that is the same baseline that you have; and yet on the other hand, you take away the goose that is laying the golden egg, by taxing, by digging deeper into the pockets of the very people who are creating those jobs. You cannot have it both ways. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let us just get back to this now. We were talking about the economy and, if this is doing so well, how come we are broke? All right. There are a lot of things that contribute to that. First and foremost, let me say to my friend from Arkansas, you have not heard me blame the Democrats. I blame Osama bin Laden. I blame a lot of the challenges that we had from the natural downturn in the economy. I blame the dot-com bubble bursting. I blame the corporate scandals. I blame a lot of things. You have not heard me blame the Democrats because, no, you are not in charge. I am not suggesting you are. Yes, you have stopped a few things from going through the other body. Yes, you have stopped a few things from coming through this body. But, no, I am not suggesting you are in charge. But now we are talking about a plan to move forward. You want to debate history? You can debate history. Let me show you what we are doing moving forward. As I said, the last 6 months of growth in our economy has been at the fastest pace in 20 years, the fastest pace in 20 years. So when you say, if your plan is so good, where are you going, we are going nowhere but up. In fact, the most recent data that came out today said the economy continued to grow at 4 percent. That is the first thing, the economy is growing. What have the tax cuts meant to jobs? All right, unemployment would have been higher without the tax relief package. It was at this point in time right there that we reduced taxes, and, as a result of reducing taxes, look what happened to unemployment. Unemployment went down as a result of the tax relief package from the line that it was on. In fact, we are at a lower point in unemployment than we were when Bill Clinton had his economic challenges back in 1993. We are reducing unemployment. We are getting people back to work. It is in part because of tax relief. Last, but not least, let me just mention this: 2 million more jobs would have been lost without the tax relief package. Again, looking here, without tax cuts, we were losing jobs at a record pace. 2.1 million jobs have been created as a result of these new tax relief packages that have been put into place. We are creating jobs. The economy is turning around. Quit blaming tax cuts for all the problems in the world. My goodness, that is not the case. And when you are in a hole, stop digging in the pockets of the American people for more money, more money, more money. Tax and spend, tax and spend. More spending in Washington, more wasteful Washington spending. My goodness, that is not what we need. People are telling us they spend their money better than we do here in Washington. Let us allow them to do it by keeping the money in their pockets. Let us keep creating jobs; let us keep the economic growth going strong. This is not the time to raise taxes, as the Blue Dog budget does. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), the Speaker of the House.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, first and foremost, let me say to my friend from Texas and all of the members of the caucus that I respect the fact that they put together a plan. I should have opened with that. It maybe would have helped take away some of the sting of the opposition that I have, because, as the gentleman knows, it is not easy to put together a plan. The fact that people are willing to put their plan on paper and let everybody see it and let everybody pick it apart, as I am trying to do and others will probably do to me and have been doing, I respect that. But I strongly oppose what the gentleman is offering, and I also strongly oppose some of the advertisement that the gentleman is offering. The gentleman says, you know, when you are in a hole, stop digging. He is right. When you are in a hole, you ought to stop digging. Digging to me is spending. That is what is digging our hole deeper. Unfortunately, what the Blue Dog budget does, it does not throw away the shovels. It keeps spending. It keeps growing. It keeps wasting money in Washington. The gentleman said that we would have to open up the farm bill. First and foremost, we are not going to open up the farm bill. The gentleman knows that. That is a signal to the farmers out there, I have a few in Iowa, he has a number in Texas, that maybe they ought to start worrying about that. Maybe it is a code word to let them know they ought to start calling in and worrying about the farm bill. We are not looking at the farm bill. Let me tell you what we are looking at. The Agriculture Department testified before the gentleman's committee, the Committee on Agriculture, as well as my committee, that they were proud of the fact that the error rate in food stamps has gotten down to a fabulous level of 9 percent, meaning 9 cents on the dollar, or almost one dime out of every dollar, is wasted, is abused, goes to the wrong people, is used in an underground market or used as an underground currency, as has been testified. Nine percent is wasted. All we are asking for is we are saying would you please look around your jurisdiction for some of this waste? It is unconscionable that we have people in this country that are starving, that are going hungry, that are going without food in their belly at a time when we have economic challenges; and the Agriculture Department under President Clinton, and it continues today, was wasting money. Now, guess what? Do you know why they are proud of the fact it is only 9 percent? Because the error rate is down from 18 percent. They are proud of the fact that we are only wasting now 9 cents on the dollar, instead of 18 cents on the dollar. They are proud of that. Only in Washington would you be proud of the fact that you are wasting 9 cents on the dollar. That is the only place in the world. There is not a small business in Iowa or anywhere across the country that would be proud of 9 cents of waste on every dollar that they have to deal with in their business. In fact, there is not a small businessman or -woman in this country who would not lock the door at five o'clock and spend the rest of the night, if they had to to figure out where that 9 cents went and why it was being wasted. You could just picture them locking the door and looking through every single one of their books to find that 9 cents. And yet when it is wasted in Washington, it is defended. They say, well, that is good. We are improving; isn't that nice? And what we are saying in our budget is that it is darn time to look for some of this waste in the budget, and the Blue Dog budget does not do that. The second thing, I just want to talk about tax cuts real quick. Tax cuts did not cause the deficit. There would be deficits without tax cuts. As you can see from this chart, the taxes are in this blue area right here. But what is driving the budget into deficit is an economy that has been rocked, that has been hit in its gut by a number of issues, everything from 9/11 to the dot-com bubble bursting to corporate scandal, and we have got to get that economy back on its feet. More importantly, we have to get families earning again and creating jobs, along with small businesses. It would be the wrong time, at a moment in our history when jobs are about to be created, to gut-punch them again, all those small business people, and say, yes, we need a little bit more for Washington. Before you create those jobs, we are going to fund some more of that waste out in Washington, so we need that money, and to do it and not even accomplish a balanced budget. They raise the taxes, but they do not even get to a balanced budget. The other thing that I just wanted to say, last, but not least, is on spending. I respect the conservative Democrats, the Blue Dogs. They are probably our last hope when it comes to Members on the other side who have any concern about controlling spending. But they fail to do so in their budget, and it is compounded by such a large history of growth in spending. This is not a time to increase spending. This is not a time when we need to have growth in government. This is a time to look around the garden and start pulling some weeds, the way every family does across our country, the way every small business person does across our country. They look for ways to tighten their belt. Sometimes it hurts when they tighten their belt. We are not asking for pain; we are just saying level funding. States across our country are cutting budgets. Families across the country are making ends meet with less. Only the Federal Government, for some reason, believes you can raise taxes for more spending in Washington, D.C. and call that a success story. That is why we believe the Republican budget is the way to go. It holds the line on spending; it funds our important priorities of strength, growth for the economy, and opportunity for the future. It deserves a vote. Please vote against the Blue Dog budget.