Christopher Shays

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. I am happy just to continue with the time that I have left. The bottom line to this issue, Mr. Speaker, is that we need to get our budget balanced. We would like to do it in less than 7 years. We are determined to save Medicare in particular. Mr. Speaker, we are determined to balance our budget, get our financial house in order, and save our trust funds.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I would like to point out that the $500 tax credit applies to a single person whose income is less than $75,000. Only then would her child be given a $500 tax credit and a married couple of 110. It is income sensitive to those families at that number and below. I want to reiterate the fact that we have tax cuts in our 7-year plan. We actually eliminate some programs. We slow the growth of other programs. We take entitlements and we definitely slow the growth of entitlements. But with Medicare, Medicare was to grow at 10 or 11 percent. We did what Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested, that we get the growth of Medicare down to 6 to 7 percent. In fact it is actually 7.2 percent. It is .2 percent higher than the First Lady suggested it should be. So what we are trying to do is slow the growth of certain programs. But if our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the President do not agree to that, it is a concept of opportunity cost. If you do not slow the growth of one program, where are you going to slow the growth of another program ultimately to balance the budget in 7 years? So I would just say it is just a misrepresentation of the fact if someone suggests that we are saying they have to agree to our budget. The President does not have to agree to our budget. He has to, for the first time, submit a balanced budget. If I had my wallet in my hand, I would take it out and I would offer it to my colleagues on the other side if they could show me a budget from the President of the United States that is balanced in 7 years using the Congressional Budget Office numbers. It simply has not been done. In fact, when the President submitted his last budget we put it up for a vote and only a very few Members on either side of the aisle supported it. What we are asking is a balanced budget in 7 years, scored by the Congressional Budget Office. It does not have to be our budget. It can be their tax cuts, with or without.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. And we can agree on that. And it forced us to do some heavy lifting this year. We did heavy lifting because the numbers required us to be real and then not estimate our way out of a challenge. And the reason we are doing that is so that, in fact, we will have a balanced budget in 7 years and not think that we might. I could think of 100 analogies to give, but if you basically were working in a business and you knew that you had to balance your budget, you earned $50,000 a year and you said, Well, I am just going to pretend that I am going to get $60,000 a year and I am going to spend $60,000. If I pretend I am going to get $60,000 a year and I spend $60,000 a year, I have a balanced budget. Wrong. You are $10,000 over because you had a rosy scenario of your income. In fact, you knew your income would not be that. So that is why we are willing to use the test of the Congressional Budget Office. It is not about who calls it from any personal standpoint. We just want it to be real. We want to do the kind of heavy lifting that we have. There is a lot more we can talk about. I know we are joined by my colleague from Pennsylvania, and we have two other distinguished Members that will participate in this. I know my colleague from Pennsylvania came first.

Mr. SHAYS. If the gentleman would yield and then I know my colleague has been waiting awhile, you know I am not getting that from everyone because I might get from someone that they do not like the incredible increase in spending that we are doing on Medicare, increasing the co- payment and deduction. I am saying, ``Excuse me, we're not increasing the co-payment, we're not increasing the deduction.'' They say they do not like the fact that we are throwing them and forcing them to have private care and they have to leave their fee for service. I say, ``Excuse me, we're not doing that either.'' So, before yielding to my colleague, I just want to point out something on Medicare that my colleague has pointed out, that Medicare is going from $178 billion to $289 billion by the 7th year. We are going to be spending about in the last 7 years $926 billion for Medicare rather, and in the next 7 years we are going to spend $1.6 trillion on Medicare, an increase of 727 billion of new dollars. Now we did that with no increase in co-payment, contrary to what our colleagues said earlier. I mean it is just a blatant falsehood for them to say that the deductible went up or the co-payment went up. It did not. The beneficiary premium stays at 31\1/2\ percent, 31\1/2\ percent of the cost. Now obviously as the costs go up 31\1/2\ percent is a higher number, just as it has been in the past. But the taxpayers are still going to pay 68\1/2\ percent. Now with our Medicare Plus, Mr. Speaker, people can stay in their fee for service, or they can get private care and get better care. If they do not think it is better care, they have every month for the next 2 years, they have the opportunity to get back. So I just want to correct one point. My colleague is right. I have a lot of people say $4.9 trillion debt is obscene and it stopped deficit spending, do it, and they say, ``Do it sooner than 7 years.'' But some say they do not like what we are doing with Medicare until I tell them what we are doing. When they learn what we are doing, they say, ``Hey, it makes some sense,'' and I just would conclude by saying my colleague from Washington pointed out what we were doing with Medicare and described how you could not afford to continue to pay people $4,900, and I am thinking where is he getting that number from, what is he talking about? We allow--the beneficiary rate is at $4,800 in 1995. It goes to $5,200 in 1996. It goes to $5,490 in 1997. It goes in 1998 to $5,563; in 1999, $5,776, and the year 2000 it goes from--to $6,221, and just two more. In 2001 it goes to $6,634 and the year 2002, as you point out, it goes to $7,108. Where is the cut?

Mr. SHAYS. When you say cuts, if I can just correct the gentleman, we are talking about significant increases. What we are talking about is slowing the growth. If the gentleman is referring to the fact that we are slowing the growth of Medicare to 7.2 percent, and he recommended slowing the growth less than that, as did Mrs. Clinton----

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from California will continue to yield, I would point out that what is incredible is that people actually think we are cutting. When they learn that we are allowing Medicare to grow so significantly, that number that you see at 19 percent says we are not going far enough expands significantly; the number of 27, saying that it is just about right, becomes much larger, and that number of 47 saying we have gone too far, a good number of those disappear, because they realize we are not cutting the program, we are increasing it.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, there is a grain of truth in something the Democrats say, and then they blow it out to an unrealistic statement, and that is that we have decided that the earned income tax credit should go for families. We have said that a single individual will no longer qualify for the earned income tax credit. We do, though, provide for it. The other area where again, unfortunately, my colleagues on the other side have decided to distort what has happened, the earned income tax credit, which was $19.9 billion this last year, grows to $25 billion in the year 2002. It is a significant growth. Had we not made changes in our balanced budget bill, that would have grown to a higher number than 25. So that is kind of where they make their point. Where they fail to acknowledge the facts is that any family that is under the earned income tax credit with our $500 credit will get as much as they got in the past, and in our legislation we hold everyone harmless, we grandfather them so on one will get less. So it would really be I think somewhat of a distortion on our side to overstate the fact that we have made some tough decisions. We are slowing the growth of Medicare, we are slowing the growth of Medicaid, we are slowing the growth of the earned income tax credit. We have made some very real cuts in discretionary spending; actual cuts, not just slowing of the growth. Overall spending goes up, but there are some real cuts. Now, my whole point and why we need to weigh in significantly on the entitlements, Medicare and Medicaid, and why we want to save money in those programs is it is a concept of opportunity cost. If we do not slow the growth of Medicare the way we do in Medicaid, then we are going to have to slow the growth of another program or actually cut another program; and this is the problem that the White House is faced with. They cannot balance the budget, even though the President says so, because they are unwilling to say well, if we put more in Medicare and Medicaid, we are not going to be able to put as much in some other programs. We have had to deal with that. We have made those tough decisions. Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell you that I like everything in our budget. I was kind of hoping the President would come in and look at what we have done in urban areas; I would like to have seen the President weigh in in that area.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I am actually going to yield, speaking of John Kasich, back to the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Shays, a member of the Committee on the Budget to conclude our special order, because he has been right there alongside John Kasich as a real model of integrity. We have been a family of this Republican Party to try to get our financial house in order and try to emphasize that we have an opportunity that does not happen often, and if we fail as this majority party to present a plan to balance our budget and end this obscene debt of $4.9 trillion, if we fail now, we will not have that opportunity for decades. I would just make the point that Mr. Rabin said before his assassination that he was elected by adults to represent children, and that is what we are all about. We are looking to stop mortgaging our country's future, and we have devised a plan that still provides for significant increases in spending, but in the seventh year balances our budget. The earned income tax credit will go from $19 billion to $25 billion. School lunch will go from $5 billion to $6.8 billion. The student loan will go from $24 billion to $36 billion. Only in Washington when you spend this kind of money do people call it a cut. Our Medicaid goes from $89 billion to $127 billion, Medicare from $178 billion to $289 billion. These are significant increases in spending. But by the seventh year revenue and spending will equal. We are doing it for our children and their children. That is what it is all about. We are trying to do it in a humane way, and we are eager to have the participation of the White House in coming forward with its balanced budget, and then compare where our priorities are, and then work out our differences. And our differences can be worked out. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for allowing us to participate in this special order. I just want to welcome, I know we have a new member, Jesse Jackson, Jr., joined by Mr. Fields, to distinguished Members, and it is nice to serve in this body with them.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I came to this floor after listening to my distinguished colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about certain statistics and facts that just simply do not hold up. They are not factually correct. Part of the reason for being here is not only to correct the President and his news conference on Friday, which was not correct and, candidly, he did not allow himself, as you point out, to be questioned by the media. This is a disagreement, be it a very significant disagreement, with the President and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle about the importance of getting our financial house in order and balancing our Federal budget. It is about saving Medicare from insolvency starting next year and bankruptcy in 7 years, and it is about ultimately changing our social and corporate welfare state where you have 12-year-olds having babies and 14-year-olds selling drugs and 15- year-olds killing each other and 18-year-olds who cannot read their diplomas and 24-year-olds who never had a job and 30-year-old grandparents. It is about changing that kind of society into what I would call a caring opportunity society. Behind you you kind of block out that first number, but it is $4.9 trillion, almost $5 trillion of debt. That debt, in the last 25 years, has grown from about $350 billion to now $4,989 billion, et cetera. And so what are we about? We are trying to get our financial house in order and balance our Federal budget. What we are asking the President to do is quite simple. If you do not, if you agree that we should balance the budget in 7 years, and he said yes, that is one step that is very important, we all agree. At one time he said 5 years, another time he said 8 years. But remember, that was 2 years ago. If we did a 7-year balanced budget 3 years ago, we would only have 5 years from now. So even our 7-year budget that he has, has 3 years now. We are talking about a 10-year budget from when he took office. What is this battle about using CBO numbers, the Congressional Budget Office? It is not a partisan office. It is not even a bipartisan office. It is a nonpartisan office. We on our side have had tremendous disagreements with those numbers, but why would we want those numbers to be used instead of the Office of Management and Budget? The Office of Management and Budget are partisan numbers done by the President's political appointee. We know from President Reagan and President Bush before them that when you use those numbers, you end up with what is called a rosy scenario. So 3 years ago, 2\1/2\ years ago, almost 3 years ago now, when the President addressed us in the State of the Union Address, he said, no more will we use the Office of Management and Budget, which is now his office. He said, we will agree to use the Congressional Budget Office.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, we all want to balance the budget in 7 years or less? That is not true. We all want to balance the budget? That is not true. If we all wanted to balance the budget, it would have been balanced years ago. We have been having deficits for 30 years because everybody says they want to balance the budget, they just do not vote to balance the budget. For the last year we have put forward a plan. We have put forward a plan the other side may not agree with, but we have put forward a plan. And now we are waiting for theirs. Until we get their plan, it is hard to negotiate. Because we have one plan on the table, which they do not like, so they need to show us their plan. The plan they do not like increases earned income tax-credit spending from $19 to $25 billion over 7 years. That is an increase any way we look at it, but they call it a cut. Here in Washington maybe it is a cut, but out where I live, when we go from $19 billion to $25 billion, it is an increase. The school lunch program goes from $5 to $6.8 billion--over 7 years. Not a cut, but in this place people call it that. The student loan goes from $24 to $36 billion. It is a 50-percent increase, but the way they seem to call cuts, I guess it is a cut when it goes up 50 percent. Medicaid goes from $89 to $127; Medicare from $178 to $289 billion. No; I am not married to balancing the budget in 7 years. I would like to do it in less. If the Democrats did not want a tax increase, that is fine. But then why did they all vote for a tax cut? If they did not want a tax cut, why did they vote for the tax cut? Why did they vote for the penalty tax elimination for seniors, if they did not want to cut taxes? They vote one way and then say something else. It gets a little tiring. The bottom line is we have put forward a plan. We intend to move forward, however long it takes. We will do it with the President's help or we will do it without the President's help, but we have done our job. Now it is up to the Democrats to do their job.

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

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I just want to stand before this House and thank my colleague, the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Mrs. Johnson], for her courage. She is one of the most ethical people I have ever met. I think colleagues on both sides of the aisle can agree. During this thorough, bipartisan investigation by the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, she was not allowed to defend the actions of the committee. The investigation committee had six different specific complaints. Five of them were dropped. Only one is being looked at, and that is to hire a special counsel to investigate the tax implications of two nonprofit organizations which helped the Speaker in his course, a course that was in 21 universities, a course for which he never received a penny. Was he guilty of encouraging people to call an 800 number to learn more about this course? Yes, if you call that guilt. Was he guilty he had an unpaid advisor help him during the transition to decide who he should hire in his office? Yes, if you call that guilt, I do not. He had a town meeting and he advertised his town meeting on the floor of the House. Bottom line: The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct dropped five of the six complaints and is having a special counsel look at the one remaining issue, the tax implications of the Speaker's college course. I salute my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who serve on the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. They worked hard and resolved a number of difficult issues on a bipartisan basis. I hope we can now get back to the business of balancing our Federal budget.

Mr. SHAYS

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

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out, there are a number of others of us who would like to speak in favor of such effort.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, this has been one of the few issues that has been bipartisan in the extraordinary leadership of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady] and the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank], Republican and Democrat coming together for the first time in 49 years to pass meaningful lobby disclosure. The Senate wants the bill of the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] to pass. They want this bill to be sent back to the Senate. Some do not like the Simpson amendment in it; some do not like for the first time the fact that Senators will have to disclose their blind trusts, the full amount. They want it to come back to them so in conference they can take out the parts they do not want. Others want to send the President a bill that he will veto, to embarrass the President. Mr. Chairman, we have the opportunity to have for the first time since 1946 meaningful lobby disclosure pass this Congress and be signed by the President. When they passed meaningful lobby disclosure in 1946 it was gutted by the Supreme Court in 1954. We have a meaningless law right now on the books. It is the reason that only 6,000 people register as lobbyists, when it is estimated that 60,000 to 80,000 people actually lobby Congress and lobby the executive branch. We have an opportunity to have these individuals lobby, and to disclose that they lobby, to disclose who pays them, to learn how much they are paid and to learn what they do. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] has a good concept. I believe that will pass. I believe that we can bring out a bill on its own, combined with a few others that have come forward in the course of this debate, but I urge my colleagues to recognize we are so close. We have the opportunity to defeat this amendment, maybe defeat one more, and then send it to the President and have it become law. I would just conclude by congratulating the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady] and congratulating the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank], and to tell them that it is refreshing to participate, and to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Bryant] and others, to participate in a bipartisan effort to get true lobby disclosure.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. I notice we have been joined by a new Member, the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Brownback]. We welcome you here. I think of how important the new Members have been as a catalyst, obviously one to give us the opportunity to be in the majority but the second thing, a strong base of new Members that have been determined that we will fulfill the commitments that we made. I am happy to yield to my friend. [[Page H 13713]]

Mr. SHAYS. The bottom line is that that is an important question to have answered along with what the President said, a well-defined mission after describing what our national interest is. That as yet has not been described to us. So we are going to be doing everything possible to get answers to those questions and then ultimately to vote intelligently. It is an extraordinarily important vote. It is just one of many votes obviously that are important in the days and weeks and months to come. I am happy my colleagues have joined me to just have a dialog about kind of what we have seen happen in the last year, and what we might expect ultimately to be the result of this effort. It seems to me that we have had as a majority party three primary objectives: One is to get our financial house in order and balance our Federal budget within the timeframe of 7 years, or less. Ideally less. The other is to save our trust funds, particularly Medicare, from insolvency and then ultimate bankruptcy, and ultimately to work on the long-term savings. We have a short-term crisis, then we have a long- term, when the baby boomers start to enter in as retirees in 2010 to the year 2030. By year 2030, all the baby boomers will be in. There will be a gigantic group from age 65 to 85. The third issue, and it is a little harder to define but is probably as important as the other two and maybe even more important, and I describe it this way. We are looking to transform our caretaking social and corporate welfare state into what I would describe as a caring opportunity society where American citizens feel that this is truly the land of opportunity. Instead of giving them the food to eat, we give them the seeds and teach them how to grow the seeds into food, ultimately has to be our biggest interest. We set out last year with a Contract With America and it has been amply described and we do not need to get into all aspects of it but what I was so proud about was that this was a positive agenda of what we wanted, of what we were going to do as a majority party, a firm commitment to the American people. A number of reforms in the opening day of the session, meaningful reforms, and then a long-term, 100-day effort with 10 major bills. Nowhere in the contract did we criticize Democrats in Congress, and nowhere did we criticize the President. It was interesting that the Contract With America was criticized. Yet if you analyzed it, we were doing something that they say politicians do not always do and, that is, instead of criticizing the other side, we said. ``This is what we stand for, this is what we are going to do,'' and none of it was negative. It was all positive.

Mr. SHAYS. Not to confuse the matter, it is rally one point down. If someone was paying 8 percent, they would pay 7 percent. It is a significant drop in the total amount they would have to pay. I was thinking about the gentleman raising the issue of taxes. We could even in this group here have argument or discussion as to when the tax cut should take place. But we all know that we pay for tax cuts with spending cuts. They amount to 1.5 percent of the total revenue we are going to raise in the next 7 years. So we are just reducing the revenue flow by 1.5 percent. One of those, the capital gains exemption in the minds of many will create revenue rather than cause a loss. We have to score it by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office as a revenue loss.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman and I would encourage him to participate in this special order. We are joined also by the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Longley]. Mr. Speaker, this is obviously a time that many of us are focused in on Bosnia, and whether or not we are going to be committing troops. We are going to devote most of this special order to the budget, not Bosnia. However, I just want to put on the record that the vote on what Congress does and decides to do on the issue of whether we commit troops to Bosnia is going to be not a partisan debate. Each member of a vote like that is going to look to his own conscience, is going to be checking and talking with people in the administration and outside of the administration to know ultimately what is the proper vote. I know that if I had to vote today, I would not be sending troops to Bosnia, but I have pledged to have a very open mind about this issue. The President has committed our Government to send 20,000 troops, has made it very clear that he intends to work with NATO, and that obviously has to count for a lot. He is the Commander in Chief. However, then we [[Page H 13712]] have to wrestle with whether or not there is a defined national interest, whether we know exactly what that mission is, and if we know what that mission is, how we are going to carry it out and ultimately what will be our exit policy. We cannot be there indefinitely, how do we ultimately exit Bosnia and leave it better off than it is. I am tempted to suggest to my leadership that we invite the participants who signed the agreement to come to Washington and convince us that they truly want peace. Because if we are just going there sending our troops, 60,000 sounds like a lot, ultimately, 20,000 Americans, but spread over such a wide part, a large area, there will not be a heavy concentration of troops practically in any one area, our troops will be at risk if the warring factions are not committed to the concept of peace. So I want to start out this special order by just being on record as saying that I intend to keep an open mind, though if I had to vote, I would vote no, that it is not a partisan kind of decision, that we know we are talking about the lives of Americans, men and women who while volunteering trust us to engage them when there is a national interest and not when there is not a national interest. I do not know if either one of you would care to comment.

Mr. SHAYS. Do not spend any time. We do not have much left.

Mr. SHAYS. That partly answers the question the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] raised about how come we failed in the past. I can speak from direct experience. I voted for the 1990 budget agreement. The part I liked in it that said if you expanded an entitlement you either had to come up with revenue or cut spending to pay for an expanded entitlement. What I failed to fully grasp was the budget being presented and being scored by the Office of Management and Budget, a Republican administration at the time, projected a tremendously rosy scenario which said the budget would be balanced in no time without a lot of heavy lifting. They said the economy is going to grow at a rate it never came close to growing. The challenge we had, and the President when he addressed it in the State of the Union Address 2 years ago, said let us use the Congressional Budget Office, a fair referee for determining how the economy will grow. Obviously, if the Congressional Budget Office scores it less than the Office of Management and Budget, we will have to do greater heavy lifting, we will have to make greater cuts to some programs and slow the growth in others, which I think we really have to do.

Mr. SHAYS. Which raises the question, where are we headed right now? What we have is an agreement with the White House, and I take them at their word that they will work within the parameters of balancing the budget within 7 years and also, very important, that they will use real numbers scored by the Congressional Budget Office, not the bipartisan office, the nonpartisan office. So we have now the framework to have a meaningful dialog. We have presented our budget. Candidly, there are parts of that budget I do not like. I am proud of what we have done. I am in awe of what we have done. But there are parts I do not like. Maybe some of the parts I like the gentleman from Michigan may not like or the gentleman from Georgia or the gentleman from Maine or Arizona. Even in that conference, we had our disagreements. Ultimately, we agreed as the majority party to do something no Congress has ever done, and that is take the initiative to balance the budget and get our financial house in order. Now we have the right, and the President has the obligation to respond, we have the right to ask him where is his 7-year budget, where are your priorities, Mr. President, and then we will evaluate them and say we agree here and we disagree here. Candidly, I have some suggestions on how he could make our budget better. I would like to see it a little more friendly to urban areas. The gentleman from Michigan may want to see it more friendly to farming areas. We may be lobbying the White House to weigh in in a particular way. Ultimately, if we can agree to balance the budget in 7 years, interest rates will not go up, they will go down. Maybe one of my colleagues would like to talk about the benefits of getting the balanced budget and what it means in terms of the interest rates.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman for how incredibly persevering he has been in waking us to the fact that we cannot continue to increase our national debt until we get our financial house in order, and this made an incredible difference making sure people recognize increasing the national debt is very much related to the deficit that we have every year. We have deficits because we spend more than we raise in revenue each year, and the end of each year they just keep getting added to the national debt. I was thinking about my colleagues talking about Thanksgiving and how much we have to be grateful for. This is a very bountiful Nation, but we are mortgaging our children's future and we need to wake up to that fact. Thirty years ago, as one of the documents that you gave us pointed out, we had a debt of only $375 billion, and as your document pointed out, we had World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam War that was financed by debt, and now, with no war basically, we have gone from $375 billion to $4,900 billion, a 13-fold increase in a short period of time.

Mr. SHAYS. If the gentleman would yield, more than half of the tax cut is a $500 tax credit to families who, if it is a single mother, would be any family under $75,000, and a dual family, husband and wife, father and mother, $115,000. Not above that income level. It is focused in on truly those most in need. To illustrate the argument for it, it is a very clear one. You were talking about families in the 1940's. I was 1945 baby. My three older brothers were raised by my family in the 1940's and 1950's. My parents were given in today's dollars the equivalent of $8,200 per child tax deduction off their income, an equivalent of $32,800 off their total income in today's dollars. A family today is given $2,500 as a deduction. My family raised me when they paid less than 15 percent of their income in taxes. Today a family raising children are faced with anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of their income going to taxes. So there is just no question why we want to do it. Someone asked me this question. They said, ``Isn't the most important issue balancing the budget and getting the economy moving again?'' The answer is yes, I say taxes would be second to that. But if we are going to balance the budget and take 7 years to do it, we can afford a tax cut. If we agreed that we could balance the budget in 4 years, maybe we could not do it with a tax cut. But that is not what is before us. It is a 7-year balanced budget effort. So we clearly can reduce the burden on taxpayers over that period of time.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, if Members want to kill lobby disclosure, just amend it. Find the best amendment and just amend it, and you have killed lobby disclosure. The last meaningful bill we had was in 1946. Then the Senate gutted lobby disclosure. We have 660,000 to 780,000 people who lobby. Only 6,000 are registered lobbyists. I urge my Members to wake up and see what is happening here. This is, in the end, an attempt to kill lobby disclosure. Defeat all amendments. Send this to the President. Get this signed into law, and then bring out these bills after they have had public hearings.