Jim Nussle

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman wishes to debate, I would be happy to yield half the time in opposition to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt).

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I only have one speaker, and that is to close.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First of all, let me say this has been a fascinating thing to listen to. Let me start by saying ``methinks thou doth protest'' just a little bit too much. It is fascinating to me that in the middle of the appropriations process, all of these very good friends of mine, who are every one from the Committee on Appropriations chairman himself to the, what are often time around here called cardinals, subcommittee Chairs, who have the job of managing these appropriation bills, seem to find the time to come to the floor for this somewhat innocuous debate today. It is kind of interesting they spent their entire afternoon on the floor concerned about this process. And I would suggest that it is not because the Committee on the Budget is where everyone is pointing the fingers. The Committee on the Budget did not cause the deficits that we are faced with here today any more than the Committee on Appropriations did, any more than the Committee on Ways and Means did, any more than the Republicans or the Democrats or the President or the Congress did. We spend so much time blaming other people and pointing fingers around here that we forget sometimes to look in the mirror as to how this all happened. And everyone is going to have their own version. I am not going to bore everyone with mine. But if they do not remember a couple of things that are important over the last few years, they are really missing the point. We created a budget in 2001, and we had a surplus on September 10 of 2001. And then we all know what happened the next day. And thank goodness we had a budget, and thank goodness we had the flexibility in the budget to go into a room and say guess what, guys, the jig is up. We had to create a new Department of Homeland Security. I was in the room when the bidding began on how much money to send to New York. Do my colleagues know what the opening bid was? I will never forget it. I will never forget the way the meeting went. It started by someone mentioning that we might have to send $6 billion up to New York. Does the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) remember that? And by the end of a half hour meeting, the number was $40 billion. We went from 6 to 40 in one half hour. Was it the right thing to do? Yes. Did the budget allow it to happen? Yes. Did the Committee on Appropriations cause it to happen? Yes. Did the American people support it? Yes. Did it add to the deficit? Yes. And thank goodness we have got the full faith and credit and the great economy that can bounce back from something like that so that we can do it. So do not come here today, please, I beg of my colleagues, and blame the Committee on Appropriations for the deficit, or as I heard a gentleman actually suggest not too long ago that maybe it was because of the Budget Committee that we had a deficit. I mean, my goodness, let us be real about this. The next thing I would like to say is that there was a gentleman who mentioned a moment ago about a perceived spending problem. Okay. If that is how he would like to refer to it as a perceived spending problem, that is fine. But would he please go home and talk to his constituents, because if they are like the constituents I represent in Iowa, there is no perception about it. They are telling me there is a spending problem in Washington that we have got to get a handle on. And, yes, Mr. Chairman, it is on the appropriations side, and 60 percent of it is also on the mandatory side. And I have said that until I am blue in the face. Unfortunately, a lot of the people who spoke have now left, and they never get the benefit of hearing me say that I do not blame the Committee on Appropriations for everything. Last but not least, let me just mention the offer that the very distinguished gentleman from Florida, who is an excellent friend of mine, and I am honored to have the opportunity to even stand next to him on the floor and debate, the gentleman from Florida does an amazing job under extremely difficult circumstances, and he is right; I only have it to do this once. I have only got to pass one budget. He has to do it 13 times. Yes, that is heavy lifting. No question about that, and I respect that. But having said that, to suggest we can come together and come to an agreement on a new process and leave out the Committee on Appropriations and to suggest this does not have at least one small part to do with how the Committee on Appropriations operates or how Committee on Appropriations' bills come to the floor, that is where we break down. It is when the Committee on Ways and Means says, You can do that, but just do not include me; or the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure says, as the gentleman said, Do for everything but what we firewall off; or the Committee on Appropriations says, Blame it on the Budget Committee, our appropriations process should not be part of this discussion. If we are going to have this discussion, we all have to have the discussion, and we have got to put all our rules on the table. We cannot say, just say separation of powers say that we have the right to do this. And let me end with that. There was a gentleman who came to the floor who said that this Committee on the Budget and the budget process was created to provide advice. No, it was not. It was created because back in the 1960s, there was absolutely no coordination during the 5 months Congress was in session. That is it. During the 5 months Congress was in session, the Committee on Appropriations and the Committee on Ways and Means, who managed revenues and appropriations, never talked to each other. And at the end of the year, maybe miraculously in a good year, there might be a surplus, but most of the time there were deficits. There was never a coordination. And so the main reason why this was established was to reconcile those two processes, and that is why we have something now called the reconciliation process. And I overheard the gentleman and he is right. When was the last time we did that? We do not do it anymore. And that is why the process is broken. Because Members have been taken out of the process. The political part of this, small ``p,'' has been taken out, and we are trusting that a process can get us to a result. And at the end of the day, I have got to tell the Members we can monkey with this process all day long until we are blue in the face. It still comes back to how I opened the debate. It is still about how we as individual Members want to operate in here. If the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) and I want to argue for the next 10 years and have differences of opinion, we will never come together. If for some miraculous reason we could sit down one day and come up with a joint list of priorities, it would work. That is what it comes down to, Members working together. The process cannot supplant that. It still has to be Members making political, small ``p,'' decisions about how to represent their districts in this Congress. So I respect everything that my friends from the Committee on Appropriations have said, but I would just remind them that ``methinks thou doth protest'' just a little bit too much. This is not about them. This is about us.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, my only purpose for asking for the time, like the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), I have no objection to this at all. It sounds not only like a good idea, but something I think we do already, but maybe not in the detail the gentleman from Illinois is looking for. What I would certainly offer to do with the gentleman is to approach CBO in a bipartisan way and see if we cannot work out some way to achieve what the gentleman is asking for, possibly even without the necessity of having an amendment to the budget to do that. But the gentleman can proceed how he would like. If the gentleman wants more detail so that we can have more information about the accuracy, I am all for that. That may be something that the gentleman from South Carolina and I can do.

Mr. NUSSLE. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield further, since it is possible this bill may not become law, if that is possible, and I have heard that, why do we not work on this anyway as a project. I think it would be important to get that information.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to change the gentleman's mind, I understand that. But we have heard a lot today about bringing everybody together. There is nothing like bringing everybody together by the need to pass a law as opposed to just passing a resolution. By doing it by resolution, the House can have a version, the other body can have a version, the President has a version. You can go through the entire year with three versions. I understand we are not going to change the gentleman's mind or probably a lot of people's minds, but what the gentleman is suggesting is by doing it this way, everyone has to come together at least once. That is the reason.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, and I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me just make a couple of comments, and then we have no other speakers, and I would be ready to yield back the balance of our time. Let me just say, first of all, the gentleman from Pennsylvania said it very well. Let me just underscore a couple of things. We have had number of votes on the floor, and I understand we may have yet another one tonight as a motion to recommit with regard to PAYGO for taxes, as it has been called here on the floor, and every time this year we rejected that, and we basically said, look, the only people who pay for taxes are taxpayers. The government does not have to pay for taxes because the government is not the one that pays taxes. It is taxpayers that pay for taxes. So we have made it very clear that tonight we want to discuss spending, mandatory spending, discretionary spending. That is the reason we apply the PAYGO provisions to mandatory spending, and it is the reason why we set discretionary caps. What the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) has done follows that exact rubric. He has a PAYGO provision, but he extends it to revenue; therefore, I would oppose that. On the discretionary side, he increases spending above the caps where we are now or above the budget resolution by $12.5 billion. In my estimation, that is unnecessary spending at this time. Certainly, as we all know, during the appropriation process many people will come to the floor and suggest that we could spend money on this or we could spend more money on that or we could increase over here or we could increase over there, but again, so many of our colleagues on both sides have talked about restraining spending. I do not believe an increase in the cap is what we need to do. So I would oppose the amendment. The discretionary cap does not need to be lifted an additional $12.5 billion, number one; and number two, we do not believe that anyone in this country pays for taxes except taxpayers. Therefore, I would oppose the amendment as a substitute. As I said to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), we have no other speakers. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of our time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time, and I am prepared to yield back.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. First of all I would say to the very distinguished minority leader that the gentleman from South Carolina is a lot of things. He is a professional. She has hit the nail on the head. I would just quarrel with one comment she made and that is that he is nonpartisan. He is a very effective partisan, I would just say. We get along very well. He does it in a spirit that may appear to be nonpartisan at times, but he is a very effective Democrat and I would never take that away from him. He is a very effective spokesman for their philosophy, for their priorities and while we sometimes disagree, it is okay that he can do it in a partisan way and not a mean way at all, or a disagreeable way. There are a couple of things I would just like to point out. First of all, the reason we came to balance in 1999 was, as the minority leader said, because we had a plan. That was a plan that was passed by this Congress, this Republican Congress. Second, she said that there were some jobs being created. Well, yes, some 1.4 million jobs since last August alone. If you want to create more of them or if you want to make sure that they get paid better salaries or if you want to make sure that they have more job security, I would just suggest to you that appropriating more money than we have in these huge increases for education, that is not going to increase their salaries. For our kids, it may help them out and that is why we are increasing education, but that does not create more jobs. It does not increase their salaries. Taxing small business like the proposal that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) brought to the floor earlier today that we had the wisdom to defeat does not create jobs. In fact, most of those people that were being taxed under his proposal were those small businesses that are creating those jobs. Last but not least, you do not create jobs by driving businesses overseas with our tax policy in this country and many of the challenges that we have with our economy continuing to drive those businesses overseas to look for opportunities as opposed to allowing them to stay here and be competitive. Reforming our trade laws and by voting to give the President the ability to go in and negotiate those agreements is something that we need to do. We do have a plan. We have a budget. It has worked in the past. You do not need a pay-as-you-go rule for taxes for the government to worry about because the people who pay taxes in this country and pay for taxes, who pay as they go with regard to taxes, are taxpayers. Every time you increase taxes, they are the ones that pay. They pay as you go. As you go for more taxes, they pay. That is what we do not need. That is why we oppose the Spratt substitute, even though I can agree with the gentlewoman that he is, by far, someone who is not only very professional, but someone I am very pleased to work with. I do it as gently as possible, but with obviously a note of partisanship that we often have to have in order to support our different sides of these issues.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, and I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) be yielded half of that time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me just take a minute to respond briefly to one of the comments from the gentleman, and we can have an honest disagreement about substitute amendments and all sorts of things on the floor today, but we do have a conference report on the budget. That conference report on the budget was passed by the House of Representatives. That conference report on the budget was deemed to be the budget for the House of Representatives. The chairman of the Committee on Appropriations is operating under that budget that was passed by the House of Representatives. We have a budget. What we are not sure we have is the other body. They have not acted. They have not even brought it to a vote. I do not know what they are doing. I can understand the gentleman's frustration. I share that frustration. We hear that a certain party may be in the majority over there, but from time to time that does not always manifest itself. But we have a budget. We will operate under that budget. It is a budget that ensures that we can strengthen our economy and keep it growing; that we can protect our country; and that we can make sure that our important priorities are funded. We have a budget. Those who continue to say we do not have a budget, it is simply not correct. The fact that the other body has not yet voted on a budget is for them to answer, not for us to answer here tonight, and be that as it may, let me just make one other point. They are not arguing over the spending levels. The arguments are over technical amendments that the other body put on to control their own process because they were having a difficult time managing it, not anything that binds the House. We are not bound by that particular challenge that the other body is wrestling with. We have a budget. It has been deemed the budget. We will operate under that budget, and so I just wanted to correct the record and remind all of us that we will continue to operate under the rules of that budget. Announcement by the Chairman Pro Tempore

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I need a refresher. I keep referring to it as the other body. What am I saying wrong? I want to know. When they do not pass the budget, I guess I have been trying to be as polite as possible.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg), even though I claimed the time in opposition.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to close, and I first want to commend the gentleman from Texas for his work, and all of the Members who have helped him and labored through so many of these provisions. They have done a good job. They have done an excellent job. I heard someone refer to it as the gold standard of budget process reform. It may very well be. It is not perfect, there is no question. There is no such thing as perfect. My job tonight is to defend the committee product, which is the underlying bill; so I gently oppose the gentleman's amendment because so many of these things look very familiar to me. I voted for a few of them earlier tonight. And I think a couple of them I might even have had an opportunity to write at an earlier time. But I gently oppose them. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, and I ask unanimous consent that half of that time be yielded to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt).

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. I say first to my friend from Illinois, great job. He and the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) have probably done something here tonight that none of the other amendments or substitutes even attempted to do, and that was to bridge the many varied ideas within our conference into one document, one amendment, one substitute. It is going to have some opposition because it is imperfect. This entire day, one could argue, was an imperfect day. Some may have a different way of putting it, but today was about controlling spending. And as far as I am concerned, any day we can debate how to control spending is a good day. At the end of this day, and we are getting close to the end of the day, it is possible nothing will pass and there will be some people, including myself as I am driving back home, wondering why did we go through this then, if, in fact, absolutely nothing passes? That is not going to be easy to necessarily understand for everybody that is listening except that we have got to start this discussion. We really do. I mean, there are too many situations out there that are going unchecked. They are going unchecked in the appropriations process. They are going unchecked in the authorization process. They are unchecked in the way we spend money on the discretionary side. They are going unchecked in the way we spend money on the mandatory side. And today was a discussion about how we can finally bring that into a system to put it into some modicum of check and balance. It is not going to be easy to figure out. We saw a lot of different votes today from Members who oppose some things, they support others. The bottom line is we had to have this discussion. We had to have this debate. We had to have it out here on the floor in the light of day because nothing was working behind the scenes either. But we knew that we had to have this debate in order to begin the discussion about how we are going to control spending. This is not about tax increases. I know the other side wants to have a tax increase. In fact, we had one of those debates earlier today on an Obey resolution that wanted to increase taxes. That is fine. We defeated that. This is not about an increase in taxes. The motion to recommit is going to be automatic tax increases. The motion to recommit this bill is going to say we ought to have what is called pay-as-you- go, as we described, for taxes or for revenue. All that is going to do is amount to an automatic tax increase that we do not need. Today is going to be focused on spending, on controlling spending; and that is why we have we will have, as our last vote today, an opportunity on the base bill to vote up or down whether or not we want to have 2 years of caps for discretionary spending and pay-as-you-go for mandatory spending. That is what the vote will be about, and we will have the opportunity to support that or oppose that. But let me remind us why we are doing it. We are doing it because these are the only two measures of spending control and budget enforcement that have proven to work anytime in the last 20 years, the only two, short of our own personal restraint and ability to vote. And that is the last thing I would remind Members. Even if this does not pass tonight, even if nothing passes tonight, we are going to go back into the appropriations process. We will go back into the authorization process. And in that process, Members cannot just say let us turn this over to somebody else to do or another process to enforce. They have got to enforce controlling spending with every single vote they cast on this floor throughout the year. This cannot be the only time we discuss this in a process or try to blame someone else. We have got to start doing it on a day-to-day basis in the oversight we do and the votes that we cast on the floor.

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

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the good news is it is working. The deficit this year will be reduced by almost $100 billion, we are hearing reports already, over what was predicted just 6 months ago, $100 billion because of the work that we are doing reducing the deficit, which helps keep that economy moving. That is good news. We have got to do more. We have got to continue the debate. This is the first step in controlling spending. Unfortunately, I do not think we are going to pass much today, but we needed to begin that debate today. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion.