Jim Nussle

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say, no, that is not what it says. It says cut taxes $1.1 billion and freeze veterans benefits. That is what the other side's motion to instruct says. You have to read it. You wrote it; you read it. I do not like it, because, quite honestly, I think our budget was better. But if the other side is going to instruct us, at least know what you are instructing us. You are instructing us to freeze on spending at 2003 levels, and you are saying cut taxes by at least $1.1 trillion. That is what the letter of the law in the instruction says. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Con. Res. 44, a resolution expressing support for 150th anniversary celebrations of the Grand Excursion of 1854. In 1854, the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad became the first American railroad to reach the shores of the Mississippi River. To celebrate the achievement, a combined railroad and riverboat trip was organized. A group of 1,000 dignitaries including journalists, educators, and business representatives gathered in Chicago to start their journey. The Grand Excursion, as it became known, traveled by train for Rock Island, IL. From there, the journey proceeded by riverboat on the Mississippi River to the present-day twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN. The Mississippi is widely and appropriately recognized as ``America's River.'' Today's Mississippi is a vital artery for commerce, economic development and tourism in Iowa's communities along the river. The river has shaped much of the Nation's history and will be a vital element for Iowa's future. Next year, events are planned to mark the 150th anniversary of the Grand Excursion all along its 419-mile route. In my Iowa district, these events include celebrations in the riverside cities of Davenport, Clinton, and Dubuque. These exciting celebrations will share with the world the incredible attributes of the upper Mississippi River. Thousands of visitors will learn more about the river's role in America's history, and will learn more about Eastern Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I applaud the efforts of the communities celebrating this historic trek's anniversary. I look forward to welcoming visitors from around the world to experience our mighty Mississippi. As Captain Russell Blakeley said in 1894, ``the success of [the Grand Excursion] did more than the best laid plans for advertising the country than has ever been made since. . . . Good results came back to us in a thousand ways and for many years.''

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have my name removed as a cosponsor of H.R. 919.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. The gentleman is correct. I appreciate his help and support in this endeavor.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as I may consume. I respectfully claim the time in opposition. Mr. Chairman, obviously I support the work of the committee, the underlying resolution, the budget resolution that is forwarded today. I want to thank the Blue Dog Coalition for coming forth with yet another budget proposal this year. I believe this is a consistent track record for the Blue Dogs in providing a budget resolution for consideration. We will disagree with that budget here today as they disagree with our budget, but I want to start by complimenting them because even last year at a time when the minority did not come forward with a caucus position, the Blue Dogs did. And the so-called Blue Dogs in this instance have done so again and I want to respect that. Only people who have actually gone through the process of writing a budget know how difficult that task can be in making some of the choices one has to make in order to arrive at this. I disagree with their approach, however, for a number of reasons. First of all, I do not believe what they are putting forward supports our economy. I believe what we need right now is a growth package. The President has put that forward. We indicated that the second most important part of our budget is providing growth to the economy to create jobs. We believe we need tax simplification. We believe we need tax reform. We believe we need to lower the tax on the American people at a time of recession, not just for the sake of lowering taxes but because we know, we have seen this happen in the past many times in history where when we reduce the tax burden on America, when we reduce it particularly to a level at or below the average of taxes and revenues compared to the gross domestic product, that that does have a growth effect, a stimulative effect, on the economy. And so while we will agree today on national defense and homeland security, probably the biggest departure we will see between these two budgets is regarding growth in the economy and creating jobs. We just happen to believe on our side that getting a growth package through to create jobs is vitally important. We are also going to have a semantical debate here today. I do not want to throw gasoline on the fire, so I am going to try not to. But I have to say that if we are not going to continue an already-reduced reduction in taxes, I mean I do not know what we call that. I know many on my side have come down here and I know it makes my friends in the Blue Dog Coalition cringe when they hear it when we have heard on our side that that be explained as a tax increase, but you might be able to understand why you cringe when you see us cringe when a reduction in the anticipated increase is called a cut. And time after time today we have seen Members come to the floor on the other side of the aisle and explain that we are making excruciating cuts in veterans and education and Medicare and Medicaid and all sorts of different programs when in fact that is simply not the case. One not only cannot find it within our budget document, but in fact that is not the choice that we request. What we request is that we go through the budget and we look for waste, fraud, and abuse and places where we have been spending money we did not have to, and we do not have all of them but these are just some examples that you do not ask us to go after: Foreign Assistance, the Effectiveness and Accountability of Problems Common to U.S. Programs, Taking Strategic Approach for DOD and the Acquisition of Services, Implementation of an Electronic Benefit Transfer System in the Food Stamp Program, IRS's Efforts to Improve Compliance with the Employment Tax. I mean, all of these save money. All of these find places where we are just not doing a good job. All of these ought to be a hearing. All of these ought to be a place where we can introduce legislation and we can say that is not a cut. To go through this and to actually look at the General Accounting Office, and we pay them a lot of money. Talk about waste. If you are going to hire people to go through the programs from the General Accounting Office and then you do not even listen to them, my friend, the comptroller general, would not like my saying this, but why do we hire these folks to give us these good ideas of places we can reduce spending, not cutting benefits, not cutting services, not closing nursing homes, not cutting off senior citizens, not eliminating Meals on Wheels or food stamps or school lunches or, oh, my goodness, all of the things that people have come down here wringing their hands about today, but just going through here: Controlling the Weakness in Property Vulnerable to Improper Use, Loss and Theft. There is a real partisan issue, theft. I mean if we are stealing things from agencies, from departments, and I have heard everything from a 61-inch television; I mean, come on. Does that balance the budget? No. We are not suggesting that alone balances the budget, but we have got to start somewhere. I could go on. The Deteriorating Financial Outlook and the Need for Transformation in the Postal Service, Medicare, Medicaid, FAA. Here is one, let us see, Significant Weakness in the Computer Controls. And, in fact, I believe we spent $8 million trying to get the Department of Agriculture to go to a new computer system; and guess what, after I think 8 years and $8 million, they found out they could not go to the new system. So we just spent $8 million for nothing on that. Defense Acquisitions, Debt Collection, Food Stamps. Again, there is another one. But if we even look at food stamps, people will say we are somehow throwing the poor out in the street. Medicare, here we go again. Boy, do not touch Medicare, though. Do not even look there. Heaven forbid. It must be a perfect program. Just add more benefits, and it will be fine. I mean, we could go on and on. They are replete. I have got a whole pile over on this side. You do not look at that. And that is an important area where we believe it is time to challenge the committees to do the work to find the savings. Last but not least, I believe that it is time that we do something together around here, and that is enforce the budget. I know that we are going to disagree today on a number of these topics. The thing that is so frustrating is when time after time Members, and it happens in the Blue Dogs, it happens on our side as well, where we come down here, we talk about our budgets and then during the appropriations process we blow through those things. We find different ways to come through the process without holding to the budget that we agreed to. I would hope that my friends in the Blue Dog Coalition more than anybody else, and I know they do, believe that once we have a budget, it is time to enforce it because if we cannot even enforce that, having this debate today is going to be meaningless. So as I started off with today, we do not support just allowing these tax cuts to expire. We happen to believe that does increase the tax burden. We want to make sure that we have spending restraint. You claim to do it with interest payments; but we want to do it with actual spending, not just with interest payments; and we want to make sure that we figure out a way to grow the economy and create jobs. And for those reasons I respectfully oppose the Blue Dog budget, but wish them congratulations on actually creating one which is something that many people around here claim they want to do, but do not always accomplish.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that Members have 7 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks with regard to the budget we are about to consider.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would like to begin by thanking our staff from the Committee on the Budget. They have worked enormously hard to bring us to this point in time where we are able to come to the floor to talk about the budget. Usually we reserve this to the end of the debate, but I just want to thank them because we are at a very unique time in our history. It requires some difficult choices. It requires us to analyze the situation very carefully. We have good people that work for us in both the majority and minority. I want to thank them for the work that they do. They have been asked to do a job, they do it, they do it well, and we find ourselves on the floor ready to debate the bill on time and ready to debate the budget within the procedure that we laid out at the beginning of the year. Similarly, we ask young men and women overseas to do a job today. They are doing it in fine fashion. They represent us well. They represent our hopes and our dreams. They represent our freedom. They represent America. We are proud of our troops. We are proud of the job that they do, and we are proud that they do the job without blinking an eye, without any hesitation. I believe they would ask the same of us here today, that while there are certainly trials and tribulations that confound us around the world today, that we do our work, that we are not distracted by a tyrant in Baghdad, and we are not distracted by terrorism around the world. It would be very easy to be distracted by that. It would be very easy to suggest, let's maybe wait for another day. But I think what America demands is that we continue the work of freedom, we continue the work of democracy. That is what they are fighting for, and that is what we need to do as well. Mr. Chairman, we are at war. I did not have to practice that part of the speech because we were at war even before last night. We are at war against international terrorism. The President determined that soon after September 11, 2001. That war continues. The fact that we opened up another front last night and that we will continue to pursue that front should not deter us, and we need to plan for it within our budgets. We need to take that into consideration as we debate this budget here today. So we are debating a wartime budget at a time during very difficult economic challenges and at a time when we face deficits for this foreseeable future. None of us, at least most of us, do not want deficits. In fact, I said in my very first opening statement at the committee this year that I do not like deficits, I do not want deficits, and I will not pretend to this body, to my colleagues, to the President, to the Senate, or to my constituents at home that deficits do not matter. However, we are faced with that; and all of the yelling and screaming and all of the finger-pointing in the world and all of the things that might go on here today will not change that fact, and in fact no one today is bringing forth a budget that balances today or even this year or even next year. In fact, none of the budgets before us balance, and there is a reason. Because this did not just happen overnight. While there are some who will come here today and blame and finger-point and suggest that the surpluses disappeared because of tax cuts, I would suggest that there are many reasons, many reasons why we face deficits here today. It is true that just 2 years ago we faced surpluses and we decided to do something about that. We made a very deliberate decision that when Washington has more resources than it needs to meet those challenges in peace time at that time, that it is appropriate to say let us get the economy going again. Remember where we were, the economy was sluggish. President Bush came into office facing a recession. So we decided we were going to reduce taxes and certainly the tax reduction did reduce the surplus. That is represented by this blue amount. But spending and the economy took most of the surplus and spending on what? An emergency. September 11, 2001, the emergency facing New York, the emergency facing the Pentagon, the emergency facing the airlines, the emergency facing homeland security. In an appropriate bipartisan response, every one of us came to the floor and said it is time to increase spending for those very appropriate purposes. And in addition to that in a bipartisan way, we came to the floor and said we need to cut taxes even further in order to stimulate the economy because the preattack recession got worse. So cheerfully, as a body, we decided it was time to spend a little bit more, stimulate the economy; and as a result, the tax cut took part of it, the spending took part of it, but the economic changes, the economy, the gut punch that each one of us faced whether it was home savings, whether it was increased prices around the kitchen table we had to deal with, whether it was just balancing our own budget around our kitchen table with our family, each one of us was affected by what happened in September of 2001, and certainly it affected our budget. So we can finger-point, and we can talk about the past, and we can talk about Reagan and Clinton and Bush and, I do not know, maybe somebody even mentioned Roosevelt here today. The fact of the matter is that we are in deficit and we have to do something about it. But we do not start behind the eight ball. We build upon some huge amounts of spending. Let me show what we have been doing the last 10 years around here. Cheerfully, and again oftentimes in a bipartisan way, look at the spending, each year increasing. In 1993 when President Clinton took office, we had a $1.4 trillion budget. What are we proposing today? $2.1 trillion, a 50 percent increase just since 1993, 4.5 percent each year. So when people go home and they start talking about how kids are going to be thrown out in the street and education is going to be cut and health care is going to be ruined, please remember that before we even talk about this year's budget, we have been increasing spending steadily during that period of time, and I will tell my colleagues when it really took off. When it really took off was when we got to balance in 1998. Let me show what I mean by that. If we take the spending that we control every year, called discretionary spending or the spending from the appropriation bills, discretionary spending was holding its own, holding its own as we tried to get to balance since we became the majority, and then at 1998 all of a sudden look at it take off. In 1998 we had about $511 billion spent on discretionary spending, and just this last year in the bill that we just finished a month ago, we were at $768 billion, or an average of 7.7 percent each year since we reached balance. So when people talk about how, oh, boy, this cut is going to be tough or there might be ways that this could hurt folks or, boy, there is not a lot of waste, fraud abuse or excess, please remember that we build upon a huge base of spending in discretionary. Let us look at some of the individual programs. I have heard a lot of talk lately about how Medicare is being devastated by this budget, budgets that were proposed, budgets that we will vote on here today, and budgets that we will consider. Since 1995 when the Republicans took the majority of Congress, we have increased spending for Medicare 56 percent. Was that appropriate? Yes. No one is suggesting it was not, but when people talk about how Medicare is being devastated, it is not because of the spending that Medicare is in trouble. It is because the way the program operates. I can tell you in Iowa people are very happy with Medicare; so to suggest that all we need to do is add more money into Medicare and everything will be fine does not recognize that Iowa does not get a fair shake from Medicare. Many other States, Wisconsin and others, do not get a fair shake from Medicare. So to suggest that all we need to do is pile more money on to Medicare, do not touch the program, just add more benefits and everything will be fine is sticking our heads in the sand. It will not work. But again we build upon some huge increases. I have heard Governors suggest that Medicaid is in trouble and how the Federal Government has not done its fair share with regard to Medicaid. Look at the Medicaid budget since we became the majority in 1995. It was $89 billion of our budget. Today it has increased 77 percent since we became the majority. We have supported the health care for the poor and the disabled in this country to the point now where again we will continue in this budget to increase Medicaid. Let us look at education because oftentimes education is used in a partisan way to suggest we do not care about children. Education spending under the Republican majority has doubled. It has doubled. Special education has tripled as a result of the Republican majority again as we move into this budget. This is what we build upon. There are accomplishments that we should be proud of. But when people whine and complain and suggest we are not spending enough, can we ask the question, what did we get for this? Which is why last year we said we need some accountability within our system and not just pour more money into it. I have a number of very important constituents in my district who are veterans who before last night did their part to defend America and give us the ability to stand here today in peace and freedom in this country and debate issues of importance. And what have we done for them? Again, we build upon some important accomplishments. Spending has grown 40 percent since we reached balanced budget, an average of 6.9 percent each year. This budget will continue that trend with a 7 percent increase for veterans healthcare spending. So let us look at what the budget is going to do. First of all, I want to put it into context. There is no question that we have three important issues as we come to the table today to discuss the budget, and some of these are even bipartisan, believe it or not. Number one is protecting America. There is not a person who is going to come to the floor today who does not feel that that is the most important thing that we do, and I compliment all of the budgets with regard to that issue. When it comes to homeland security, when it comes to national defense, certainly there will always be those who say we can do more. In fact, there has even been a few who have suggested that there is a lot of waste within the Pentagon, and I would concur with that. But at this time in our history where our men and women are in the battlefields of Kuwait and Iraq and Saudi Arabia, we need to make sure that we support them; and each one of the budgets that comes here today does just that. It also supports homeland security. The second most important issue that we have is making sure the economy gets growing again, making sure folks have a job. Because while we are going to talk a lot today about the Federal budget, we all know that the most important budget to each and every one of us is the one that I debate with my wife around my kitchen table and that my colleagues may debate with their families around their kitchen table and our constituents debate with their families around their kitchen table when they are trying to figure out how to pay the phone bill and the light bill and the college tuition and buy the clothes for their kids and the washer that breaks down or whatever it might be. That is the budget that matters; and if one does not have a job and if the economy is not growing in their household, it does not matter what we are debating. Get a fancy chart. It does not matter what the fancy chart says if one's checkbook does not balance. So unless our budget puts as a top priority getting the economy to grow and create jobs, we have failed, in my estimation, and that is why the most important second issue that we put forth today is getting the economy to grow. It used to be a slogan. I remember hearing it a few years back: ``It's the economy, stupid.'' Maybe that was not an appropriate way to say it, but the point of the matter was important. Make sure the economy is taken care of. The third issue, and it is an important one as we look forward into the future because again I think there is bipartisan support for this as well, and that is fiscal responsibility. We have all given spellbinding speeches about how the government cannot spend more than it takes in. But do my colleagues know what? There are some times when that has to happen, and by and large we agree when those times are. When there is a war, I do not think anybody begrudges anybody to borrow some money to do that. We have got to take care of business, and we will spend anything it takes to make sure we win and our folks have the right equipment and the right training. The second time we do it is when our country is under attack. Homeland security, again, each and every one of us came down here and cast a vote in support of homeland security spending even though it caused deficits. And there is another time we would do it, and that is when we have a recession or an economic downturn, and both parties during their histories have had to make that challenge. So while we are faced with those challenges, we still want to keep our eye on that fiscal responsibility. So how do we do it in this budget? We ask a simple thing. We say out of the billions of dollars that we spend around here, do the Members think we could find a penny on the dollar? Most people back home in Iowa tell me I bet we could find a nickel on the dollar. In fact, we have heard amazing stories of people who are deceased getting checks from the Veterans Administration. We have even heard of Social Security recipients who are overseas that we send a check to. We have heard about food stamps that have been stolen. We have heard about all sorts of crazy things involving credit cards at the Pentagon where people have been using it for their own personal expenses. Tell me there is not a penny on the dollar. Tell me that the earned income tax credit has not been abused. Tell me that Medicare, according to the General Accounting Office, has not had overpayments and erroneous payments. Tell me that at the end of the year bureaucrats do not run in to their boss and say, You know what? We have got extra money in our budget. We had better use it or we are going to lose it. And what we do in this budget is we say each and every committee can find that, and is it not now the time to find it when every State and every family and every business is doing the exact same thing? The Federal Government cannot do that too? So fiscal responsibility is an important part of it. But we are still going to hear people come to the floor today and talk about deep and devastating, ``excruciating'' was a word I have heard recently, deep and excruciating cuts. Let me show the Members what our budget does. First of all, total budget, here is our budget. This is where we actually are, and look what happens under the budget. It goes up every single year in total spending. So the total budget is not cut. Let us look at another area. Let us look at non-Social Security mandatory spending. What is that? That is Medicare and all the other, what we call, entitlements or automatic spending. Does that get cut? Every year it has been going up. Every year under the budget it continues to go up. All right. Well that is not cut. Let us look at Medicare maybe, see if Medicare is cut. Under our budget, every year it goes up. In our budget it continues. In fact, we say let us modernize it and put in, for the fourth year in a row, a Republican version of a prescription drug package. We are the only body that has passed one, and we will do it again this year, to make sure we modernize the program and make sure that reimbursements and other modernizations for the Medicare program help ensure its seriousness as a health care delivery program for years into the future. So Medicare is not cut. Well, all right, let us look at total discretionary spending, which includes defense and homeland security. No, that is not cut. Every year it has gone up. In fact, look what happens here. Huge increases. It looks like it slows down here. Why does it slow down? Because this is where the budget asks for some relief. It says this first year, outside of defense and homeland security and veterans, we just want to look for a little bit of waste, just a little bit of waste. If there is a Member of Congress that goes home to tell their constituents that there is not any waste in Washington, I want you to ask them if they have read the volumes of General Accounting Office reports that indicate billions of dollars of waste, or the inspector generals that work for the departments that have identified billions of dollars of waste, or if they have talked to the Congressional Budget Office or held hearings on this in committees, because until they do that, do not tell people that there is not wasteful Washington spending. We know there is. For the first time in quite a while, we go after it. Are we looking to cut some spending there? Yes. But do not believe that we are going to throw people out on the street. You do not have to do that in order to find the waste within the program. Everybody has heard about the $500 hammers and the toilet seats in the Pentagon and all those kinds of crazy programs that we hear about all the time. That is what we are asking people to go find, a penny on the dollar. That is not that much to ask, when we are at the same time running the kinds of deficits we find ourselves in. So protecting America, that is first; getting the economy to grow, that is an important second thing to do; third, let us do it in a fiscally responsible way. I believe if we build on those three functions, without raising taxes, without huge spending increases, I think we can get this under control, support our troops in the Gulf right now and around the world defending our freedom, and do so in a way that is fiscally responsible, and gets us back to balance in a very reasonable time. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, as I said, we built our budget upon three principles, the first of which is protecting America. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry) to discuss that issue.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds. Mr. Chairman, in Washington sometimes people define cuts not as less money than the year before, but as decreases in anticipated increases. The gentleman who just spoke has issued yet a new one, that is, if we used to have a draft of a budget that possibly found some savings, now we can come and claim that as a cut. We are not cutting Medicare; we are increasing it. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Ryun) to continue the discussion on national defense.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Brown).

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett), a member of the committee.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Schrock), a member of the committee.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 seconds. Mr. Chairman, I have to scratch my head and wonder out loud how, when we increase the veterans budget in our budget 6.1 percent, the other side of the aisle can call that a cut, yet that is what Member after Member comes to the floor and says. Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman), a member of the Committee on the Budget, to discuss the second important plank of our budget, and that is economic growth and job creation.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds. Mr. Chairman, just to respond to the points on the veterans' issues. First of all, we increase discretionary spending 6.1 percent on veterans, we increase the mandatory spending 7 percent, and they call that a cut. They ask us to honor veterans. In fact, in this country we honor veterans so much that we paid 5,500 of them benefits after they were dead. That is how much we honor veterans. That is why we need to look at every program for waste and abuse. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Barrett).

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bonner), a member of the committee. (Mr. BONNER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter), a member of the committee.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart), a member of the committee. (Mr. MARIO DIAZ-BALART of Florida asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, could I inquire how much time is remaining on both sides.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, that sounds pretty close. It is about as balanced as any of the budgets. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), a member of the committee.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds. I have been looking through my budget, and I cannot find one of the facts that the gentleman just stated. Not one of the cuts he just stated is in my budget document. I have looked through there. I cannot find them. I do not know where the gentleman is coming up with these numbers. I will say this, though: the person I would like to introduce next to speak basically wrote title II, which is our reconciliation construction regarding waste, fraud, and abuse, asking the committees to go out and look for those instances of waste, fraud, and abuse, ways that we can find deficiencies within this budget, and that is the very distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite). Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite).

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

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to my friend, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), the very distinguished vice chairman of the Committee on the Budget, to close the debate.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, and I will not object, I rise only to take a moment to thank my colleague and ranking member from South Carolina for his work in trying to conform this important provision within both of our budgets. We may have some disagreement throughout the day here on a number of provisions, but procedurally we usually have an esprit de corps and unanimity. In this instance I will not object. This is an appropriate thing for the gentleman to do. I made a similar manager's amendment at Rules last night, and this allows us to conform the budget, so I will not object. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.