Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. WOODALL. Reclaiming my time, I am not suggesting anything of the kind. I am suggesting that the language that folks are describing as offensive says from the Congress to the Library of Congress, use the laws passed by Congress. If we don't like the laws of the land, we have a process to change them, and for better or for worse, that process begins in the committee on which the gentlewoman serves. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time so that I can continue my discussion with my friend from Florida.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, when you turn on the television, when you open up a newspaper here in the election season, it seems like folks are pretty angry. I enjoy coming down to the floor on rules to work with my friend from Colorado because I genuinely enjoy him. If we are going to get anything done across the aisle, I have no doubt that he is going to be a part of that solution. As you listen to his words down here today, you heard that. Time and time again, there are things we can do together, there are ways we can be better together. Let's find some commonsense alternatives. Sadly, in an election year like this, oftentimes that is as far as the conversation goes. If you can't fit it on a bumper sticker, you don't have that conversation. You heard the gentleman say--for example, with respect to my own tax bill, H.R. 25, the FairTax, the most widely cosponsored fundamental tax reform bill in the entire United States Congress, he had favorable things to say. But if you look at any Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee-run advertisement, they skewer the men and women who take a chance on growing the economy with the FairTax. They skewer the men and women who take a chance on repealing the taxes, the most burdensome tax on the 80 percent of American working families who have to pay it. In the name of politics, folks don't get past the bumper sticker to the real substance. I listen to my friend from Colorado. He gives me hope. He gives me hope that we are going to be able to get over that line, Mr. Speaker. But the truth is, we have to get past the bumper sticker slogan. My friend from Colorado is going to be part of whatever fundamental tax reform change is made here. But we ought to be able to agree that just adding more taxes to an already broken system--as the President proposes--can't possibly be the right answer. My friend is absolutely right that we need to fund American infrastructure, and I would argue the user-fee system is the way to do it. Not repatriation, which takes completely unconnected dollars, but user fees which say that, if you are on the roads, you should pay for the roads. But that is a discussion we will have to have. This is the right place to have that discussion. We will have that discussion, and I hope that we will come to a conclusion. My friend says that job creation is job one, but supports complete re-regulation of industries which is destroying jobs across this country. I will give you an example, Mr. Speaker, and it is what is so frustrating to folks back home. Again, Prime Minister Modi stood where you are standing. He spoke for 1.3 billion people. I only speak for about 700,000. But those 700,000 open up the newspaper when they get into their office on a Monday morning, trying to comply with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, the ozone standards. Those standards, released in 2008, finally got around to having the regulations for how to comply with them finalized in March of 2015. I will say that again. This crisis of human health that my friend has described, we identified in 2008, and the administration got around to telling folks what the rules were by March of 2015. So all the job creators across the country began to scramble to comply with those rules, Mr. Speaker. And then in October of 2015, the administration says: Oh, no, wait. We have a much better idea. Now let's do ozone compliance, part two. In 2008, we decided we had an issue we wanted to address. In March of 2015, the administration finally got around to addressing it. As soon as folks began to spend the money and the intellectual effort to comply with those rules, by October of that same year, the administration says: Oh, no. We have got a better idea. Scrap that. When my friend reads from all of the conservative economists, the libertarian economists, the folks who care about making sure our limited resources do the most good for the American people and those folks support a carbon tax, they don't support a carbon tax in addition to the nonsensical regulatory structure that I have just described. They support a carbon tax instead of that structure. If we monetize harms in this country, we don't have to have a bureaucracy that guesses at what the issues are; we don't have to have a bureaucracy that moves not in a day or a week or a month, but takes years, almost decades, to move in the marketplace. We move quickly, and we maximize. For every dollar that compliance costs, for every dollar that environmental stewardship costs, for every dollar that NG exploration costs, we get the maximum return for every American family. I think there is a pathway there. I think there is a pathway there. But understand, more of the same won't get us there. The power to tax is the power to destroy. Stop destroying job creation. The power to tax is the power to destroy. Stop destroying American corporations and moving them overseas. Golly, we have got opportunity to come together. I believe these three provisions before us, Mr. Speaker, are going to move us in that direction. Make no mistake; our ozone bill that we have before us today makes every amendment from this body in order-- save one that was virtually exactly the same as another, and we didn't want to be duplicative here of the Members' time--made every discussion in order, including the one from the gentleman from Colorado. The sense of Congress today says we don't need to tax fossil fuels as an answer to anything, that taxes are just taxes; and in the absence of a coherent environmental policy, in the absence of a coherent stewardship policy, in the absence of men and women on the ground who are balancing the needs of jobs and the needs of community, it is just a bumper sticker slogan. Let's reject bumper sticker slogans today. Let's take advantage of the serious men and women that serve in this institution, like the gentleman from Colorado. Let's get together and do the heavy lifting. Mr. Speaker, if it were easy, they would have done it already. The reason you are here, the reason my friend from Colorado is here, and the reason I am here is not to do the easy things; it is to do the hard things. What I have come to know in my 5\1/2\ years in this institution is I have not met a man or a woman who is serious about making a difference for the country who wouldn't take their voting card and turn it in tomorrow if they could make that kind of lasting difference that would serve not just this generation, but generations to come. We have that opportunity, Mr. Speaker. It is an election year, but let's not squander it. We can make these next 8 months count for the American people. Mr. Speaker, I urge strong support for the rule. I urge support for the underlying resolutions as well, but I urge strong support for the rule that will begin this discussion.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 767 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, with that level of agreement, I am prepared to tell my friend I don't have any speakers remaining, and if he is prepared to close, we will get right to the underlying bill and exercise that enthusiasm. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), my good friend, pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. WOODALL. I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 767 provides a structured rule for the consideration of three bills. You heard the reading Clerk read them, but I will read them again: H.R. 4775, Ozone Standards Implementation Act; H. Con. Res. 89, Expressing the Sense of Congress that a Carbon Tax would be Detrimental to the United States Economy; and, H. Con. Res. 112, Expressing the Sense of Congress Opposing the President's Proposed $10 Tax on Every Barrel of Oil. It is a little unusual that we put three different bills into a single rule, but today has been a bit of an unusual day. It has been a bit of an unusual day. Mr. Speaker, it is no surprise to you, standing not 3 feet from where you were just 30 minutes ago was the leader of a democracy of 1.3 billion people. That is 1.3 billion people. In the midst of his remarks, he commented on the reputation of the United States Congress, known far and wide around the globe. He commented on the comity--that is with an i-t-y, not an e-d-y--that we have been known for. And I hope this rule will be no exception, Mr. Speaker. We are not going to agree on all the underlying bills, all the underlying policy, but what we can agree on is that this Congress needs to have its voice heard. If we approve this rule today--and I recommend to all of my colleagues that we do approve this rule today--we will be able to get to the underlying debate. And in the underlying debate, Mr. Speaker, we have two senses of Congress and a piece of legislation--a piece of legislation for which amendments were submitted to the Rules Committee to say that we have ideas as Members of this body about how we can improve the underlying bill. One of them came from my friend from Colorado. I don't particularly support the idea that he is pushing, but I support his right to have the idea heard on the floor of the House. This rule makes the Polis amendment in order, along with every other non-duplicative amendment submitted. I add non-duplicative because virtually the same amendment was submitted by two different Members and we decided to debate it once instead of twice, as is customary. We are going to disagree, but we are going to have the debate over those disagreements. And my great hope is that the work product we produce will be a stronger work product because we have had an opportunity to discuss it here on the floor. My great hope is that, after we have had a chance to perfect that work product, we will send it on to the Senate with a big bipartisan vote from both parties. Mr. Speaker, it is easy to talk about taxes as if they don't come from someone. When we have an academic conversation about tax policy, what is the saying? Don't tax him, don't tax me, tax the man behind that tree. I have heard folks say: You are always trying to put the tax burden on somebody else. What the President proposed was $10 a barrel on every barrel of oil consumed in America. Now, historically, we have had some low oil prices of late. That $10 a barrel tax would have amounted to almost a 50 percent increase in the cost of a barrel of oil. Today it is going to be closer to a 20 percent increase in the cost of a barrel of oil. This tax is implemented in the name of what, Mr. Speaker? It is in the name of improving our failing infrastructure because we do need to improve our failing infrastructure. We do have to have a conversation about user fees in this country and how it is we are going to build the best logistical system the world has ever known. But that is not what this tax would do. This is a tax that is part of what has been a long campaign against the consumption of any fossil fuels whatsoever. My great frustration, Mr. Speaker, is that if your goal is to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, we have a lot of ways we can do that. We have a lot of very reasonable ways we can do that. And this proposal makes no effort to try to find the most efficient way to make that happen. It is a blanket $10 a barrel tax across the board. If you are using that barrel of oil to generate space-age plastics, Mr. Speaker, and you are going to use those space-age plastics to build the most efficient photovoltaic cell array the world has ever known, such as is going on in my district, there is no special dispensation for you. In the name of trying to create a better environment, we will tax the very inputs that we are encouraging folks to use in order to create a better environment. It doesn't make sense, Mr. Speaker. Folks use it as a bumper sticker line. It is a campaign year. That uncertainty has an impact on job creation. That uncertainty has an impact on where these funds around the globe go toward trying to create a better environment for us all--where those funds land, where those jobs are created. Today this House takes a stand. Today this House makes it clear, even in an election year, even in the uncertainty of a political season, even in this time of conflict on policy, that we can provide some certainty out there for not just the American business community, but the international business community. There is one thing I think that we can all agree on, Mr. Speaker, and that is that America has the most productive workforce the world has ever known. If given a level playing field, there is not a single opportunity that we cannot succeed in. If we commit ourselves to it, we can succeed. Lower-paying jobs, cheaper finger jobs are always going to go overseas, but the higher-paying jobs, the higher-skilled jobs, the energy-intensive jobs, those jobs can come here. We have an extraordinary disadvantage in this country in that we have the single worst Tax Code in the world. The single worst. If you want to create a business, if you want to grow jobs, don't come to America is the tag line that the Tax Code suggests. No one punishes productivity more than we do in America. It is nonsense. We can absolutely fix it. The Speaker and our Ways and Means Committee chairman, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady), are working incredibly hard to make that happen. If we go from worst to first in terms of a competitive job code, we bring more jobs to this country. But number two, we have an advantage that no one else does, in that we have gone from being worried during the Carter administration that we would exhaust all of our energy reserves to having the largest energy reserves this Nation has ever known. If you need to produce a product that requires high energy inputs, I challenge you to find a better location than the United States of America. Those jobs are coming here. We have an advantage for job creators here. And what the President would do in his budget is to give that advantage away. And for what? Not because of a coherent energy policy designed to make the world a better place, make the environment a better environment, and the health of American citizens better, but in the name of pursuing an agenda of no fossil fuels--nowhere, nohow. I am glad we are down here having this conversation today, Mr. Speaker. It is one that needs to be had. It is one that has been a long time coming. But we have an opportunity today to speak with one voice in this body. I hope we will speak with one voice in supporting this rule and speak with one voice in supporting the three underlying resolutions. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the proceedings had during the recess be printed in the Record.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. If my colleagues don't know, one is used to seeing the gentlewoman from North Carolina leading on the Education and the Workforce Committee. All day today, she has been leading on the Rules Committee--chairing those actions that are going on up there. I hoped she was here to file a rule to tell us that that process had been moved right along, but we will have to wait for that. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I am slow to come to the floor because you can't compete with a Muhammad Ali commemorative Special Order. That is too much passion to follow. I just have little old legislative business on my mind. I am not talking about changing the world. I am just talking about changing our little part of the world. I don't know if you remember, Mr. Speaker, when you first got here, you had to go downstairs and sign your name so that we could use that instead of a postage stamp on every piece of mail that you sent out the door. It is called the franking privilege. I have a bill--it is H.R. 1873--that Tammy Duckworth and I introduced together to abolish that franking privilege. It is not going to take a lot to get that done. It is something that is within the complete control of us here in this institution, but it has been a challenge that is hundreds of years in the making. I put mine on here, Mr. Speaker. This is my signature there on the front of every envelope I send out. If you want to know how to forge a check in my name, all you need to do is look at any envelope I send out the door. Back in the day, had we been here in 1817, it might have been hard to find a postage stamp. In the name of getting congressional business done, the law of the land, carried over from England, was that you could sign your name on all of your government documents in order to get that important government business done. You couldn't just walk down to the local grocery store and buy stamps. You had to have a mechanism for getting your constitutional responsibilities accomplished. We do that still here today. In these cynical times, Mr. Speaker, I would tell you that I hear most often from folks that they think one of two things is going on with the franking privilege: one, that we are involved in some sort of incumbent protection plan--self-promotion here in this institution, self-glorification--by sending our names out on the front of all of the mail that goes out the door. If not that, I hear the second criticism, which is, Rob, why do Members of Congress get free mail? The Postal Service is in dire straits--free mail for all Members of Congress. It is not free mail. For every letter that goes out the door that reads ``Rob Woodall'' up at the top, I get a bill. I get a bill from the United States Postal Service for what a stamp would have cost had I put it on that letter. For every piece of mail that goes out the door with ``Rob Woodall'' written up at the top, I get a bill from the Postal Service for whatever the bulk rate would have been for the large amounts of mail that I send out the door. It is not free mail for Members of Congress. I want to dispel that myth. I get all of the emails that I know so many of my colleagues do, which read: ``Go and serve one term in Congress, and get your pension for life.'' Nonsense. Not true. I do get the emails that come in and that talk about the special health care privileges that Congress has and that nobody else can have access to. Come on down, and join the ObamaCare exchange. You can have the same health care privileges that I have. Of all of the myths that go on out there, the myth of free mail continues still today. It is not free mail. We just don't put a stamp on it. Why don't we end this confusion once and for all? I would like to tell you that this was my brilliant idea--a small idea but my brilliant idea. Not true. We, actually, went down this road in the 1800s. I hold here--Mr. Speaker, you can't read it--an article from The New York Times on March 3, 1875. It reads: By a vote of 113-65, the House has concurred in the Senate amendment to the postal appropriations bill partially restoring the franking privilege. The precise extent of this restoration is an allowance of free transmission through the mail on a Congressional frank of the Congressional Record, agricultural reports and seeds, and all public documents now printed or authorized to be printed. The New York Times, as it is still known for today, goes on to editorialize just a bit: So far, as our observation goes, there has never been any demand for the restoration of the franking nuisance except on the part of Congressmen. The new men, especially, long for a taste of the sweets of privilege. This the New York Times in 1875. The ``sweets of privilege'' is how they described the signing of one's name to a constituent's response so you can tell your constituents how it is that you feel about the war in Iraq, so you can tell folks how you feel about the FCC's new regulations, so that you can respond to that young Eagle Scout applicant who wants to get the Citizenship in the Nation merit badge. We knew in the 1800s that something just didn't seem right about not using stamps like everybody else did. We knew that something didn't feel quite right. For several years, we abolished the franking privilege, and then we brought it back. I don't have any problem finding stamps, Mr. Speaker. If anybody in this institution has problems finding stamps, I have several local locations that are here by the Capitol. You can send a staffer down to pick up stamps in bulk. For me, I am in the Longworth House Office Building, up on the seventh floor, so I have got to go all the way down to the basement in order to buy my stamps. It is about seven floors away. They don't do that anywhere else in Washington, D.C. They don't do that. If you are at the IRS and if you need to send out a tax form, you don't sign your name at the top of the letter. If you work over at the Department of Agriculture and if you need to send out a newsletter, you don't sign your name at the top, because everybody else in government uses what is called ``penalty mail.'' It is the same stamp up at the top of a corner that any businessperson would use, that any bulk mail house would use. It is section 3202. It is called ``penalty mail.'' It reads: Subject to limitations imposed by sections 3204 and 3207 of this title, there may be transmitted as penalty mail official mail of officers of the Government of the United States, the Smithsonian Institution, the Pan-American Union, the Pan- American Sanitary Bureau, the United States Employment Service, and the system of employment offices operated by it in conformity with the provisions of section 4949(c). Understand that we have a special section in the United States Code that deals with how mail gets out the door, because it is very difficult. We have only been doing it for a couple of hundred years. It requires some special attention from the United States Code, so we have a special section of the Code that allows officers of the Government of the United States, of the Smithsonian Institution, of the Pan-American Union, of the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau, and of the United States Employment Service some special dispensation so they can get mail out the door. But was that good enough for Congress? The answer is ``no.'' Congress has yet another special exception beyond the special exception, as is highlighted in section A, ``officers of the Government of the United States other than Members of Congress,'' because what we have is our special signature program. Mr. Speaker, we have got big things we have got to solve in this country--big things we have got to solve. You can't solve those big things when folks believe that you are not telling them the truth about the little things. You have got to build trust with one another. You have got to build trust with one another not just here in this institution but with our constituencies back home; but when people see what they think is free mail that is going out the door, it undermines that trust. I refer now to the House Manual, Mr. Speaker: Postal expenses incurred only when the frank is insufficient, such as certified, registered, insured, express, foreign mail, and stamped, self-addressed envelopes related to the recovery of official items, are reimbursable. Postage may not be used in lieu of the frank. I got to Capitol Hill, Mr. Speaker, and I thought: Do you know what? I know what it is like not to be on Capitol Hill. I am going to go get a bulk mail permit. They said, No, Rob. You can't get a bulk mail permit to send out mail on Capitol Hill. I said, Most of what I do isn't bulk mail. I will go buy stamps to send that out. They said, No, Rob. You can't buy stamps to send out mail. You have to sign your card. You have to put your signature on it. We have to have a special congressional mail privilege for you. Tammy Duckworth and I--one Republican, one Democrat--say we can do better than that. It is an election year. Do you know what happens in an election year? The law of the land is: you can't send out mail anymore. If I have a town hall meeting that is going on next week, I couldn't have sent out an invitation last month to have invited you to come meet your Congressman. I couldn't have sent out a newsletter last month to have told you what we were doing with the National Defense Authorization Act. I couldn't have sent out a newsletter last month to have told you about an employment and jobs fair program that was going on, because the law of the land so recognizes this privilege as something that incumbents use to boost their election prospects that it is banned in the 90 days before any election. So I ask you: If this practice is so offensive that we ban it within 90 days before any election, why don't we just do away with it altogether? If it is so offensive that it must be banned for 180 days out of the year, why don't we do away with it for the other 180 days, too? I don't need my name on the front of every letter that goes out the door, and I don't need someone to protect me from the challenges of buying stamps; but I have rules in place that prevent postage from being used in lieu of the frank. I serve on the Budget Committee, Mr. Speaker. I want to balance the Federal budget. We are not going to do it with this bill. I am the lead sponsor of the FairTax. It is the most fundamental reconstruction of our Tax Code that has happened since the income tax came into being in the early 1900s. It is the most prominently cosponsored piece of fundamental tax reform legislation in this body. Those are serious pieces of legislation. This is something minor--this is around the edges--but the National Taxpayers Union has seen fit to say that repealing the so-called ``franking privilege'' is a simple reform to introduce pay-as-you-go budgeting. It is absolutely right. Public Citizen hardly supports the Woodall-Duckworth legislation to rein in the abuse of taxpayer-funded franked mail. I want to do the big things together, and I want to do the things that matter together. When silly things like this undermine the sacred trust that we have with our constituents, they need to go. Our colleagues who served in this body in the 1870s knew it. They abolished it, but they just couldn't let it go, and they brought it back. Even The New York Times asked: Where was the outcry for free congressional mail? Why was it brought back yet again? I tried to get this done on my own. I say to my colleagues that I didn't want to waste your time in this way. I tried to go to the Chief Administrative Office to see if I could just get an exception so I didn't have to send out this mail. I tried to go through the House Administration Committee to see if there was some sort of dispensation so that I could opt out of this system. I tried to go through the Office of the Speaker to see if my MRA could be spent in a different way so I didn't have to perpetuate this. Again, it is a practice that is, apparently, so hideous it is outlawed for 180 days out of the year; but I couldn't get any of those things done. Now it has come down to us to pass that simple line of code. It is a bipartisan bill--Rob Woodall, Tammy Duckworth, a host of other cosponsors. I invite you to join me to abolish the franking privilege. You are welcome to use our hashtag of ``Stop the Frank'' any time you feel like you can move that forward. We are not going to reestablish trust overnight, but with one little accountability action at a time, we can do it. Let's do this little one today. Let's show up again and do another one and tomorrow and do another one and the next day and do another one and the next day and do another one. Then we are going to wake up a year from now or a month from now or a week from now, and we are going to find out that we have really made a difference together. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx), my friend from the Rules Committee. Skills Gap

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, when you serve on the Rules Committee, you spend a lot of time dealing in acrimony at least here on the floor. When you serve on the Rules Committee and your job is to get the business of the House accomplished, when we are not on the House floor, it isn't acrimony. It may be impassioned. It may be, at times, divisive. But it is all focused on a single goal, and that is making sure that this institution fulfills not just the expectations of our constituents back home, but the expectations of our framers who established it to begin with. Members of Congress come and go, Mr. Speaker, and, inevitably, what makes a Member of Congress successful is being surrounded by a team of excellence, a team of excellence back home in terms of bosses and constituents and a team of excellence here in Washington to help make sure that all the i's are dotted and all the t's are crossed and that the big things get done. When Miles Lackey leaves this institution, Mr. Speaker, it is going to be harder to get the big things done. It is going to be harder because the biggest commodity we have in this town is not a Member pin, is not a Member representational allowance, is not how much mail goes out the door. The most precious commodity in this town is trust, and not everybody has it. Sadly, not everybody wants it. But to do anything that is worth doing in this town, it has to be built on a foundation of trust. If you don't have people like Miles Lackey on the other side of the aisle--I sit on this side of the aisle. He is physically sitting on that side of the aisle today not just emotionally, not just intellectually, but physically. If you don't have folks that you can trust, you can't begin the conversations about how to make things happen. There is no committee that brings more measures to the floor than the Rules Committee. That doesn't happen by accident. It happens intentionally. It happens with good folks like Miles Lackey. There is no committee that has to deal with more contentious issues than the Rules Committee. The committees of jurisdiction have dealt with as many as they can. The hardest ones, the worst ones, end up on the Rules Committee's plate. We don't deal with those issues successfully without the trust built by folks like Miles Lackey. Mr. Speaker, we can read the resolution that the Rules Committee put out for Miles, but it is only a page long. Truthfully, it doesn't do justice. When you lose folks who have built that trust, it takes years to find folks to rebuild it. I want you to look at the folks who come to speak on Miles' behalf today, Mr. Speaker. I want you to look at the folks who sit in Miles' chain of command. He is certainly not leaving the ranking member high and dry. He has trained a tremendous team of folks who are going to step up and try to fill those shoes. I came to this institution to make a difference, Mr. Speaker. I didn't come just to make a point. Because Miles Lackey has served in this institution not for a day, not for a week, not for a month, but for decade upon decade. We have been able to make a difference. I don't want to date Miles. He dates back not just before I got here, but before my predecessor got here. He dates back before Republicans took over this institution, Mr. Speaker, and has seen the control change time and time again. Watch folks when power changes, Mr. Speaker. Watch folks when power changes in this institution. Watch whether they behave the same once they have it as they did yesterday when they didn't. We are all in the minority at some point, Mr. Speaker. We are all in the minority at some point. The rules exist to protect the minority. Watch the folks who have the ability to use the rules. See if they treat you the same when they have the power as when they don't. There is not going to be a man or woman who stands in this Chamber who will tell you that Miles treats you any differently when he is in as when he is out. He is an advocate for his position, but he is an institutionalist who believes in all of us collectively. I thank him for his service.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend from Colorado (Mr. Polis), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, you heard the Reading Clerk read. Sometimes it is tough to follow what we do up there in the Committee on Rules. I would remind folks that rules.house.gov has the copy of the rule, and folks can get into all of the details. I am real proud of the work that we did up there yesterday. I am glad to be down here on the floor today representing it. House Resolution 742, Mr. Speaker, is a standard rule for consideration of a House amendment to the Senate-amended H.R. 2576. That is the Toxic Substances Control Act Modernization Act. It also provides a closed rule for consideration of H.R. 897, the Zika Vector Control Act. Mr. Speaker, the year was 1976. That was the last time the Congress and the White House dealt in a serious way with the Toxic Substances Control Act. In fact, that is when the bill was first passed. For the intervening four decades, science has changed, technology has changed, consumer demands have changed, and yet the way that we regulate these chemicals has not. And it is not for lack of trying. For Pete's sake, Mr. Speaker, long before I arrived in this Chamber 5 years ago, Members were trying to find an agreement on how to deal with the Toxic Substances Control Act, how to update that for late 20th century or early 21st century technology. In fact, the late Senator Lautenberg, Mr. Speaker, was probably the largest champion for this reform that we had on either side of Capitol Hill. He passed away 3 years ago next week. Three years ago next week, many thought that the opportunities we had to succeed here passed away with him. Despite the headlines, Mr. Speaker, that read that gridlock controls Washington, D.C., despite the 1-minutes that you hear down on the floor, Mr. Speaker, where it is their fault and it is their problem or it is his fault and it is his problem, there really are a serious group of Members on both sides of this Capitol who want to get the people's business done. What we have today is one of those efforts, an effort 40 years in the making that culminates here today. It happened with a lot of serious, hard work on both sides of the Hill, Mr. Speaker. It happened because folks didn't give up when people said it couldn't be done. It happened because nobody said: It is my way or the highway. But they said: How can I work with folks who may disagree with me in order to reach an end that is going to be better for the folks that I serve back home? We have that product today, Mr. Speaker. In fact, I have it right here. It is also available. It is the Rules Committee print. It is available at rules.house.gov if folks want to give it a read. I won't confess it is a short read. I won't even suggest that it is an exciting read. But what I will suggest is it is the product of negotiation and consensus building. You may remember, Mr. Speaker, that when we first dealt with this issue on the House side, it passed 398-1--398-1. It passed by unanimous consent on the Senate side. Now here we are today, having bridged those two bills. Mr. Speaker, that is the TSCA legislation. The Zika Vector Control Act, Mr. Speaker, is designed to bring those pest control technologies that we have, those pest control opportunities that we have, to bear in the name of public health as soon as safely possible. Mr. Speaker, for years the EPA has had in its understanding of how to regulate in this country that, as long as it had already certified a pest control as being safe, they did not have to go back and run it through the Clean Water Act approval process as well. The law of the land, strictly speaking, says, yes, you need to do that. Folks thought it was duplicative. They hadn't been doing it. This bill today clarifies that. It says: For Pete's sake, the law of the land is the law of the land. You ought to follow the law of the land. The law of the land ought to bring solutions to market as quickly and safely as we possibly can. Mr. Speaker, we get one bite at this apple. We get one bite at Zika control. We get one bite at making this a public health risk that does not balloon here in the United States of America. This bill gives us an opportunity to put our best foot forward in terms of pest control. Forty years, Mr. Speaker. For 40 years we have been working as House Members, as Senate Members, as Republicans, as Democrats, trying to look for the next effort to make sure that the chemicals we use in everyday household products are as safe as they can be, as viable as they can be--40 years, Mr. Speaker--and that process culminates here today. This is a rule that all Members can support, and I would encourage them to do exactly that. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I sometimes wonder why folks have such a negative opinion of Congress. And then sometimes I listen to my colleagues speak and I understand why folks back home have a negative opinion of Congress--because the folks who serve in this institution seem to have a negative opinion of Congress. I would say to my friend from Colorado, I am not thrilled about everything in TSCA reform either. Generally speaking, when it takes 40 years to get something done; generally speaking, when Democrats ran the entire show and they failed to get it done, and when Republicans ran the entire show, they failed to get it done; generally speaking, those are really hard things to get done. It takes serious, serious people working serious, serious hours, struggling with serious, serious issues to come to a conclusion. And candidly, Mr. Speaker, if I loved everything in this bill, I would wonder why we didn't get it done sooner. The easy things have already been done. All that is left for us are the hard things. Candidly, we have a good team on the field to do those hard things. Mr. Speaker, I hope when we get into the debate on the underlying bill, you are not just going to hear from the Republican chairman of the committee about the good work here, but you are going to hear from the Democratic ranking member about the good work done here. I am hoping you are not just going to hear from the Republican subcommittee chairman about the good work here, but that you are going to hear from the Democratic ranking member on the subcommittee about the good work here because that is how this bill came before us. Mr. Speaker, there has been a discussion of partisanship. I hold in my hand a report from the Congressional Research Service. That is the nonpartisan, academic research arm of the United States Congress. The title of this report is ``Congressional Efforts to Amend Title I of the Toxic Substances Control Act,'' the House-and Senate-negotiated bill. I agree with my friend from Colorado. If he and I were to sit down here and be able to write the bills ourselves--not just this one, but all of the bills ourselves--we would come up with some really great solutions; oftentimes, different solutions from the ones that are presented on the floor. But the reason no amendments are allowed to this bill is because we have been working on it for 40 years because we couldn't agree. We already passed a bill in the House. They already passed a bill in the Senate. They were different bills. We had to come together and agree on the same language. Now, to all of my friends who would like to offer their great ideas here at the eleventh hour, I would just tell you there were times before the eleventh hour that those ideas could have been offered, there were opportunities before the eleventh hour to come together. This is the final language. We don't want amendments to the final language. I believe in an open process. I believe in an amendment process. I am proud that this is a closed rule on this topic because the amendments and the process have gone on in the past. This is the final product here today. That is TSCA, Mr. Speaker. Now, the Zika Vector Control Act. My friend from Colorado, again, describes smoke-filled backroom deals when he describes this bill. Again, why do folks have such a negative opinion about what we do? One man's smoke-filled backroom deal is another man's 30 years of common practice. That is right. This is the bill that codifies what the EPA has been doing for 30 years. This codifies what the EPA, under Democratic administrations and Republican administrations, has already been doing. They got sued, Mr. Speaker. Folks sued them and said: Hey, we don't think you are doing it right. We don't think that is what the rules allow. So what did the EPA do? The EPA came out with a rulemaking process and said: Just to make it clear, this is the way we think we can best protect the public health. They got sued again. And the court said: No, EPA, you can't make those decisions. Yes, you have been doing it for 30 years, but no, you can't make those decisions. Congress needs to make that decision. So what did Congress do? We made that decision, and that bill is before us here today. It is not a smoke-filled backroom deal, Mr. Speaker. It is light-of- day, common sense, common practice, trying to align the laws of the land with the expectations of our constituencies back home. Absolutely, Mr. Speaker, every day of the week we could show up in this institution and we could run out somebody about something that is not going the way it is supposed to go. But together, we are succeeding today where previous Republicans and previous Democrats have failed. Together, we are succeeding today where previous Congresses found it too hard. Together, we are about the business that our constituents sent us here to do. This is not a day to denigrate the institution, Mr. Speaker. This is a day to celebrate those things that we are able to do when we come together in the best traditions of the United States House. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 742 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, before I go through all of the things the gentleman from Colorado got wrong, I want to talk about what he got absolutely right, which is that this institution is going to miss Miles Lackey when he leaves at the end of this week. We are going to have more time to talk about Miles' contribution here. But folks like Mr. Lackey we don't need here on the easy days. We need them here on the hard days. We don't need them here to get the little things done. We need them here to get the mammoth things done. We have a lot of mammoth things left on the calendar, and it is going to be harder to make those happen in your absence, Mr. Lackey. It has been a great, great joy serving with you these 5\1/2\ years, and I appreciate your commitment to this institution. We are what we are here, Mr. Speaker, because of the commitment of individual Members, individual staffers, individual constituents back home, who will not allow us to fail. The two bills that we have before us today are examples of exactly that. It is hard to cut through the rhetoric sometimes, Mr. Speaker. If we went up to the gallery right now, Mr. Speaker, and polled folks about whether or not this Zika Vector Control Act had failed on the floor of the House, whether we had brought this to the floor and it had failed, I suspect everybody up there would say: Absolutely it failed. I have been hearing about it all morning. The truth is, Mr. Speaker, because it is Washington, D.C., and sometimes the rules don't work here like they do elsewhere, the definition of failure in this House means that it got 262 votes ``yes'' and 159 votes ``no.'' Let's make that clear. The bill that we are voting on today that is, apparently, the controversial of the two, is the one that last week when we voted on it got 262 bipartisan ``yes'' votes and 159 solely partisan ``no'' votes. Now, why is that true, Mr. Speaker? Why can a bill get 262 votes, a clear majority of this institution, and not pass? Well, because it was on the suspension calendar, that calendar used for completely noncontroversial bills to try to move things to conclusion faster. Why is this a completely noncontroversial bill, Mr. Speaker? Because this has been the practice of the land for three decades, because this has been the EPA's intention for three decades, because this has been the EPA's goal through its rulemaking process. But courts being what courts are, EPA couldn't get the finality on what it wanted to do by itself, so it needs Congress' approval. I am in favor of that, Mr. Speaker. I celebrate that. Thank goodness we finally found an Agency downtown in this one very isolated circumstance that doesn't think it can just do whatever it wants to do without Congress' approval. I am glad we have come together today to give it that approval--262 ``yes'' votes, bipartisan; 159 ``no'' votes, partisan--to codify what has been the practice of the land in the name of safety, in the name of clean water, in the name of trying to do the very best we can for our constituents back home. I am proud that this bill is a part of this rule today, and I hope the House will move it quickly forward. The second bill that we are talking about, Mr. Speaker, is the TSCA bill, the Toxic Substances Control Act. TSCA is what folks call it in the industry. Not a single amendment is being allowed today, Mr. Speaker. Why? Because we have already done the amending, because we have already done the negotiating, because we have already done the heavy lifting that was required to do what no Congress and no White House has been able to do since 1976, the heavy lifting that was started 10 years ago and folks could not get it across the finish line. We have a group of men and women here today, Mr. Speaker, of House Members and Senate Members today, of Republicans and Democrats today, who wouldn't take ``no'' for an answer. It is outrageous that we would regulate chemical safety in 2016 in the exact same way we contemplated it in 1976. It is outrageous, but it is hard. It is hard to bring people together. It is easy to tear people apart, Mr. Speaker. I can come down here. I can lay down the fire and brimstone. We can tear folks apart. That is easy. We have all been on those home improvement projects, Mr. Speaker. It is tearing out the drywall that is fun. Putting it back up is hard. Today we are in the construction business. We are in the building business. We are in the bringing people together and making possible what folks thought was impossible. My friend from Colorado is right, Mr. Speaker. Every day is not the same here in the U.S. House of Representatives. Some days are better than others. This is a good day. This is a good day not because there is something special about this particular day of the week, Mr. Speaker, but because it is the culmination of days, weeks, months, and years of folks fighting hard for what they believed in, folks fighting hard for what their constituents sent them here to do, folks fighting hard for what they thought was right and finding a way to come together and making a difference for the American people. Mr. Speaker, I hold here in my hand a Statement of Administration Policy, the President urging Congress to move this bicameral, bipartisan compromise to his desk for his signature. This isn't a day about show; this isn't a day about politics; this isn't a day about a November election. This is a day about making a difference for the folks who sent us here. With the passage of this rule and the passage of this bill, we will do together what others found too hard to accomplish. I am proud of that, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I want to begin by yielding to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Zinke), one of the great freshmen here leading our institution. Honoring the Service of Rear Admiral Brian Losey

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, folks wonder sometimes what kind of men and women serve in this Chamber. And when I am asked, What did you learn new, Rob, that you didn't expect when you got to Congress, I talk about the caliber of the men and women who serve here. If you have not had any time to spend with the gentleman from Montana, the former commander at Navy SEAL Team 6 spent 20 years serving his country in the SEALs and said: I have more leadership to provide. I want to run for Congress because I want to be able to make a difference in that way. And he is making that difference here every day. Madam Speaker, there is so much time where we spend tearing each other down and talking about all the problems that exist in Washington, and certainly, they are multiple. But to confront serious problems, you have to have serious people; and we do have serious people in this Chamber. Congressman Zinke is one of those, and I am proud to serve with him, and I appreciate his leadership. Madam Speaker, I want to talk about another topic that I think lets people--again, we can talk about all the challenges that exist in this country, but figuring out what the problem is and who to blame for it should not be our primary goal. Our primary goal should be solving those problems. Madam Speaker, I want to talk about unleashing America's economic potential, and I want to talk about the FairTax. You know about the FairTax. The FairTax is not two words, as you know. FairTax is one word. FairTax is the name of a bill in Congress. Not many bills in Congress command the notoriety that FairTax does, but it is H.R. 25. Anybody can pull it from congress.gov and read it. It is short, about 100 pages. But it says, for Pete's sake, Madam Speaker, if we are going to try to make America competitive in the world, if we are going to try to create American jobs, if we are going to try to make America the country that you follow, if we are going to make America that leader in the world, what are we going to do it on? Madam Speaker, if you want to create more jobs in America, you could depress salaries. We could pay everybody pennies, as some nations do, and try to create more jobs. That is an awful plan. That is not the right way. If we wanted to create more jobs in America, we could stop caring about clean water and clean air and just throw our environment out with the job creation. But that is not what we want to do. That is a terrible idea. Madam Speaker, as we sit here today, one thing that all the men and women in this Chamber control is the United States Tax Code. And the United States Tax Code, time and time again, is rated as the single worst Tax Code on the planet, the single worst Tax Code on the planet. Once a week, you can open up a newspaper, find a story of a company leaving America to pursue incorporation outside of America's borders so that they can face a lower tax rate. And folks say: Oh, how unpatriotic; what an awful thing to do. Madam Speaker, I would tell you that the law of the land requires them to do that. The law of the land says if you are the board of directors of a publicly traded corporation, you have a fiduciary duty to maximize return to shareholders. If you are trying to incorporate in a company that is punishing you, and you can go to a country that rewards you, you must make that. It is not optional. It is required. So we can either try to pass laws that trap companies here, or we can try to pass laws that encourage every Nation on the planet to locate here. The FairTax does exactly that. Madam Speaker, let me tell you a little bit about what the FairTax does. It is a fair chance for every American family to build a better life. We talk so much about the income tax in this Chamber, but the truth is that 80 percent of American families pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. All the time we spend complaining about the IRS, complaining about the American Tax Code, the Income Tax Code, it is the payroll tax that is the largest tax burden that 80 percent of American families face. If you are a millionaire, a billionaire, if you are running your own giant, megacorporation, you can accept your salary any way you want to. You can do it from capital gains, stock options. You can have your privately held company pay you dividends. You have your choice about how you receive your income and, depending on what the Tax Code punishes and encourages, you can manipulate your income accordingly. Madam Speaker, but if you are the rank-and-file American middle class family, you don't have a choice. You don't have capital gains or dividends or stock options to choose from. You get a paycheck, and out of that paycheck, the government takes the first dollar, and it is 15.3 percent that the government takes in payroll taxes alone. Now, Madam Speaker, payroll taxes are a valuable tool in this country. They fund the Medicare program, and they fund the Social Security program. These are two very important programs to America, but they are both threatened. The revenue stream for those two programs is insufficient to fund the demands on those programs. We have to find a better way. The FairTax says: don't take the money out of an individual's paycheck. The power to tax is the power to destroy. When you tax productivity, you destroy productivity. Rather than taxing income, let's tax consumption. We all wondered on April 15, Madam Speaker, what our neighbors paid in income taxes. Don't you wonder? Money magazine did a study one time. Fifteen different accountants worked on the same tax return, and they came up with 15 different answers. It was impossible to figure out which one was right, and none of those was the answer that Money magazine came up with for themselves. But you wonder what you are neighbor is paying, and you wonder if they are paying their fair share. What the FairTax says is we are going to charge you not based on what you produce but what you consume. So if you have a brand-new Mercedes sitting in your driveway, we think you ought to be able to help fund the American way of life. If you have a used Ford Festiva sitting in your driveway, maybe we ought to cut you some slack. If you have just built yourself a new, 9-bedroom, 12-bathroom house, we think you ought to be able to afford to pay to help grow America. If you are a family of six living in a two-bedroom apartment, we think we ought to cut you some slack. If you are working hard trying to improve your life, don't punish productivity, as today's Tax Code does; tax folks based on consumption. That is not a crazy idea, Madam Speaker. In fact, America is one of the only OECD countries, one of the only industrialized countries that doesn't have a consumption tax. But America was founded on a consumption tax. That is exactly the way America began, saying that if you have enough money to import silver from Europe you ought to be able to pay the tax on that. It was excise taxes at that time. I am talking about a simple retail sales tax. But people spend at different rates, Madam Speaker. People spend at different rates. What I have here--you can't see it; the print is going to be too small--but it is the relative tax rates of a two-adult, two- child household. What the FairTax says is, listen, we all have basic expenses in our lives. If you are struggling and you are trying to make a better life for you and your family, you are going to have to buy your food, you are going to have to have an apartment, you are going to have some form of transportation, whether it is a car or riding public transportation, and you are going to have to have clothing. These are the basic necessities of life. So we have created a system so that no American family pays retail sales taxes on those basic necessities. That is what we will call poverty-level spending. When you go above and beyond that, you begin to pay the taxes. What that means, Madam Speaker, is that if you are earning $32,000 a year in that family of four, you are not paying a penny in taxes. Again, payroll tax is today the largest tax that American families pay. We are not asking you to pay a penny. But if you are earning $50,000 a year, then you start to pay an effective rate of about 7\1/2\ percent. If you are earning $64,000, then it is about 11 percent, and on and on and on until you get all the way up to a 23-percent tax. There are no exceptions, no deductions, and no exemptions. Everybody pays on everything after that poverty-level spending. Again, Madam Speaker, if you can afford to have a boat and a new jet ski sitting in your driveway, then I think you can afford to help struggling families in America succeed. If you are one of those struggling families and you are saving every penny that you have because you want to send your child to college one day, then we ought to cut you some slack. Madam Speaker, the FairTax was created by a group of economists, a group of public citizen activists, who said: If we started from scratch today, then what Tax Code would we write? There is not a man or a woman in Congress, Madam Speaker, who believes that if we wrote a Tax Code today that we would write the one we have. The one we have is atrocious. It is atrocious. What that does is it targets every individual working at the IRS. The IRS is the most vilified institution in this town. By moving the burden of taxation from income to consumption, the FairTax would close the IRS forever. Madam Speaker, the problem with the IRS could be the occasional rogue man or woman that works there, but most of the men and women that work there are conscientious and hardworking civil servants charged with implementing the atrocious Tax Code that this Congress has passed. Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, said: The best way to escape this trap that we are in is to throw the whole thing out and start over from scratch. He is exactly right. Madam Speaker, #PassTheFairTax is the way we are driving this particular debate. Imagine if working American families never, ever, ever had to deal with the IRS again. If you are a sophisticated business, you are going to collect that tax in sales taxes. You are going to have to deal with a State tax collector, and you are going to have to deal with an occasional Federal audit. But if you are a rank- and-file American family, you will never be threatened by the IRS again. Madam Speaker, you know, as I do, we handle casework all the time from constituents being pushed around by the IRS, getting threatening letters from the IRS and having their home threatened by the IRS. Why? Because, despite their very best efforts, they messed up their tax return. Money magazine hired 15 professional accounting groups to fill out a tax return. They all got different answers. But when an American family makes that same mistake, they are punished. I want to close the IRS for good, Madam Speaker. I want to get folks out of the business of being threatened by their government. I don't think folks mind paying their fair share, but they would like a thank- you for paying their fair share, not a threatening letter from the IRS at the end of the day. What are we talking about in terms of productivity, Madam Speaker? The Tax Code grows longer and longer and longer every year. The National Taxpayers Union this year, by this April 15, said that in this 1 year alone we spent 6.1 billion--billion--hours filling out tax returns, that we spent collectively $330 billion to comply--$330 billion to comply. Madam Speaker, what would have happened to the economy if we had dedicated that $330 billion to economically productive activities? We could have dedicated that $330 billion to paying down the debt. It is not just the $330 billion that we lose because we are spending it on taxes. Our Tax Code is so convoluted. The New York Times reported last month that $458 billion, almost one-half-trillion, go uncollected every year, sometimes through fraud, sometimes through deceit, and oftentimes just through an inability to understand the Tax Code and folks not reporting it properly. Collectively, we are talking about $1 trillion in lost productivity here in this country. There are 11 million words of laws and regulations in the Tax Code. Madam Speaker, you know that you haven't read it. I haven't read it either. We are paying people to help us with our taxes; they haven't read it either. You call the IRS Help Line for help; they haven't read it either. Eleven million words, nobody has read it, and nobody understands it. We make a criminal out of every family in this Nation when we ask them to comply with it. Madam Speaker, sadly, particularly over the last 2 years, we have been reading about abuses at the IRS, whether it is targeting groups based on what their conservative beliefs are, whether it is inappropriately leaking confidential information, selectively leaking that information to support one effort or another. Madam Speaker, the IRS knows more about each and every one of us than many of us are willing to tell our children, and it is wrong. You cannot give that kind of power to an agency without having agency abuses. We can close the IRS. We can get every American family out of the business of dealing with the IRS on April 15 by simply paying a retail sales tax when they shop at their local stores. Madam Speaker, we are talking about igniting America's economy. We are talking about doing those things that encourage productivity, doing those things that encourage risk-taking, and doing those things on which America's economy was founded but many of which we have lost sight of in the past several years. We can't avoid paying taxes. Death and taxes are certain. What we can do is make it easier, what we can do is make it more effective, and what we can do is make it less punishing. We are having a debate right now, Madam Speaker, about what kind of new Tax Code to provide for America. I believe we are going to get there. I don't think we are going to get there this year. I think it is going to require some Presidential leadership. I think all the Presidential candidates remaining are talking about what they would do to change the Tax Code. We all realize we are getting shellacked by the rest of the globe. All of our major trading partners are bringing their corporate rates down and down and down, creating the kind of corporate flight that we are talking about. I don't want to talk about changing America's Tax Code so it fits in kind of the middle of the pack, so that we are kind of average with all of our peers around the globe. I would tell you, America has no peers around the globe. America is a leader around the globe. America stands alone around the globe, and America should lead the world with the single best Tax Code around the globe. I don't want to lower wages, I don't want to impact environmental regulations, and I don't want to change those things that deliver value. I want to change those things that don't. And a complicated Tax Code benefits no one except lobbyists in Washington, D.C. Madam Speaker, Americans for Fair Taxation, again, hired some of the best economists we have in the land, who predicted that we could create 13 million more jobs--13 million more jobs--with a Tax Code that encouraged investment, that encouraged savings, and that got us out of the business of punishing productivity and into the business of rewarding. Michael Boskin, the former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Madam Speaker, said that the long-term gain to GDP from a consumption-based tax reform would be roughly 10 percent--a 10-percent change to GDP simply because we take away a punitive Tax Code and put in one that makes sense. Madam Speaker, I don't know about families in your district; families in my district can't wait. Families in my district don't think the economy is going so great that it is okay if we shave off 10 percent at the top. We can do better and we must. ``Long-run GDP per capita would be 9.7-percent higher under a national sales tax,'' says Alan Auerbach at the University of California, Berkeley. Time and time again, economists from the left and economists from the right come to the same conclusion: the power to tax is the power to destroy. Taxing income punishes and destroys productivity. ``Near-term 9- to 13-percent increase in the GDP,'' says Dale Jorgenson, the former chairman of the economics department at Harvard University. There is a reason all of these different economists come together around the same figure, Madam Speaker, again, from the left and from the right. We have an opportunity to do better, if only we will agree. Madam Speaker, it is #PassTheFairTax. The FairTax has more cosponsors--again, it is H.R. 25--more cosponsors than any other fundamental tax reform in this institution. On the Senate side, it has more cosponsors than any other fundamental tax reform bill on the Senate side. Madam Speaker, the FairTax has supporters in every State across the Nation. It is not coming out of Washington, D.C. Passing the FairTax would take away so much of the power that this town can exercise over people. We will give you a tax credit for buying an electric car, we will give you a tax credit for buying a windmill, we will give you a tax credit for having more children, and we will give you a tax credit for this, that, and the other. With the FairTax, all of those exceptions and exemptions go away. Hear that. I started telling you about the amazing men and women who serve in this Chamber, folks who come to work every day to try to build a better America in cooperation with their bosses, their constituents back home. We talk so often about how the Washington culture creates all these exceptions and exemptions and somebody is benefiting from it and somebody is getting paid off for it. Nonsense. There is one bill in this Chamber that abolishes every single special-interest exception, exemption, carveout, and credit in the entire United States Tax Code. That bill is the FairTax, and that bill has more support in this Chamber than any other fundamental tax reform bill in Congress. Madam Speaker, we have an opportunity to do this together. We have an opportunity to build a better economy together. We have an opportunity to take the IRS out of every single one of our constituents' lives forever. It is going to take a lot of courage. It is going to take a lot of courage to abolish all of those exceptions and exemptions. It is going to take a lot of courage to hit the reset clock on the American Tax Code. It is going to take a lot of courage to get out of the business of trying to be mediocre with the rest of the world and kind of settle right there in the middle and to move from the very worst Tax Code on the planet to the very best Tax Code on the planet. Worst to first, Madam Speaker. That is what the FairTax offers. I ask the support from each and every one of my colleagues that has not yet cosponsored this bill. With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, we all got elected. I have been here 5 years now. You are fairly new to this institution. Everybody comes with a dream. You don't come because you are looking for new business cards. You come because you want to make a difference for folks back home. We all have about 700,000 bosses back home, and they want us to make a difference. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about some of those differences today. You can't see it from where you are sitting, but I have got a little America's to-do list down here. I didn't have enough paper back in the office to do the entire to-do list. There is a lot out there, as I know you hear every weekend when you go home as well, but I put a couple of the top things out there. I have ``fix our roads and bridges'' out there--just a terrible infrastructure issue. What separates America in terms of getting our goods to market around the globe is a world-class infrastructure. Investment in that infrastructure has waned in recent years as we have dangerous bridges and we have roads that are in desperate need of repair. That is one of those things--to maintain the postal roads--that the Constitution uniquely assigns to the United States Congress. That is on the to-do list. Update our national WRRDA policy, Mr. Speaker. We are going to have wars on this planet--mark my words--not over oil, but over fresh water. Having a freshwater infrastructure, maintaining our natural resources, taking care of and being good stewards of those resources that we have been entrusted with are critically important. It is one of those things that the Federal Government has a dominant role in doing. We have to get on that. Tax relief, Mr. Speaker. Where is that family back home who isn't trying to figure out how next month works and the month after that and the month after that? I keep hearing about this economic recovery, and yes, the numbers are getting better slowly, but they are not improving nearly fast enough. The folks cannot afford to support an inefficient Federal Government. Tax relief is on that list. Medicare, Mr. Speaker. There is not a man or a woman in this Nation who depends on Medicare who does not know it is in fiscal peril. There is not enough money in the Medicare trust fund to meet the promises that we have made to America's seniors. There is not enough money in the Medicare trust fund even though working age men and women begin paying in on their very first paychecks to meet the promises of this generation and the next. We owe America better than that. Fixing that is on the to-do list. Improving veterans' care, Mr. Speaker. For Pete's sake, talk about something that is uniquely this government's responsibility. We ask so much of the young men and women in uniform who serve and protect this Nation, and they ask nothing of us. We make promises to them, and we must keep those promises. It is hard to open up the newspaper and not read a story of America's failing its veterans. We must do better, and we can do better. Mr. Speaker, cutting spending. For Pete's sake, when folks back home do send a dollar's worth of taxes to Washington, D.C., they don't believe they are going to get a dollar's worth of value out of it. They think it is going to get thrown down some rat hole somewhere, on some pet project that is not going to benefit anyone. They think it is going to get wasted on a regulatory infrastructure that isn't modernized for the 21st century. Every family has to do more with less in tough economic times, and the Federal Government is no different. This is just the beginning of the to-do list, Mr. Speaker. It is dreary outside. There is a steady mist coming down. I haven't seen the Sun out there for days. Sometimes I get back home, and I hear that same kind of spirit coming from folks who are trying to feed and provide for their families. There is a dreariness out there, Mr. Speaker, such that folks feel like self-governance is not serving them in the way that it should. That is why you and I ran for Congress and that is why I have come to the House floor today with good news. It is true that when you open up the newspaper, it is failure after failure after failure, but that is not telling the story of the work that the good men and women of this Chamber are doing, that Republicans and Democrats are coming together to do, that the House and the Senate are coming together to do, that the Congress and the White House are coming together to do. In this election season of everybody's talking about what divides us, of everybody's talking about what the failures are, I want to talk about those things that unite us and on which we are succeeding for the American people together. Mr. Speaker, there have been 36 short-term transportation extensions since the last time we passed a long-term transportation bill. Thirty six short-term extensions. If anybody is in the construction business, Mr. Speaker, they know you can't plan to build a bridge in a matter of days. This is a multiyear project. You need long-term planning and you long-term certainty. Historically, that is what the Congress has provided: Republicans and Democrats coming together in a bipartisan way and Congress and the White House coming together to provide for a multiyear transportation bill. But it has been more than two decades, Mr. Speaker, since this body has passed a 5-year transportation bill--a multiyear transportation bill--that provides certainty to folks back home and that fulfills the commitment that every American citizen expects from the Federal Government in having collected gas taxes on every gallon of gas that the American consumer buys. We all know about the infrastructure needs in this country. For more than two decades, Congress and the White House had not been successful in fulfilling that responsibility. When Republicans ran the show, we failed. When Democrats ran the show, we failed. When Republicans were in the White House, we failed. When Democrats were in the White House, we failed. But this Congress--the men and women gathered here with this President in the White House--came together, and we succeeded with the first long-term transportation bill in more than 20 years. Mr. Speaker, 5 years of funding is just the beginning. I won't tell you this is the end of the show. Our Transportation and Infrastructure chairman, Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, wants to do more. This isn't the end. This is the beginning. It is a fantastic beginning, and it is one that we ought to celebrate of $305 billion going back to communities around this Nation to focus on safety and infrastructure. Mr. Speaker, it streamlines the process--the most dramatic streamlining of the regulatory process. It often takes longer to get regulatory approval to build a bridge than it does to build the bridge itself--years wasted on approval processes that could have been streamlined while we are still being good stewards of our environmental resources. This bill does that. It also eliminates the increase in costs that come with those delays, Mr. Speaker, the increase in costs that come from that bureaucracy so as to make sure the American taxpayer is getting more value for his dollar. Mr. Speaker, it shores up the highway trust fund, and we will talk a lot about trust funds in this time today. The highway trust fund was going bankrupt. The highway trust fund didn't have enough money to meet the needs of the American highways, so $70 billion has been transferred into that trust fund to make sure that we are keeping the promises that we have made to America. Mr. Speaker, it has been two decades since America has had this kind of transportation success. We did that together. Open up the newspaper and see the divides and see the failures, but know that this is a success that we had together. Mr. Speaker, I had water resources on America's to-do list. It had been 6 years since we had passed water resources legislation in this body, not in 2008 when Republicans controlled the White House, not in 2009 when Democrats controlled everything, not in 2010 when Democrats controlled everything, and not in '11 or '12 or '13, but we have come together, and we have gotten that done. It is not easy. It is hard. It doesn't happen quickly. It happens slowly and deliberatively. It has been 6 years since we have been able to succeed together in passing what we call the WRRDA bill, Mr. Speaker. Now it is done. Now it is the law of the land. I want to make that clear, Mr. Speaker. I am not talking about bills today that the House has passed and are going nowhere. I am not talking about bills today that the House has passed and the Senate has passed but that are going nowhere. I am talking about bills today on which the House has worked entirely through the process, on which the Senate has worked entirely through the process, and those which the President of the United States has signed into law--bills that are laws and are making differences for America's families. This WRRDA bill, the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, is the most comprehensive policy reform bill, again, in two decades, Mr. Speaker. It accelerates project delivery because, again, there is no more urgent need--as we see in Flint, Michigan--than having a stable and safe water infrastructure. Mr. Speaker, it goes into $18 billion worth of projects--projects that have been on the books for years but have failed, projects that folks have not committed the time and resources to complete--and it pulls those back in. It cancels all of those projects, saves that money, and rededicates it to projects that the American people can benefit from; and it strengthens the oversight and accountability because these are American taxpayer dollars we are talking about here. When they go out the door to localities back home, folks deserve to know they are being used responsibly. It is an increase in oversight and accountability. Again, it has been more than two decades since we have seen something of this kind. We got it done together--Republicans, Democrats, House, Senate, and White House. Mr. Speaker, tax relief is on the list for American families, and tax relief was delivered by this body--this Congress--and this White House. Mr. Speaker, what Republicans failed to be able to do--and I am not knocking them. It was a difficult environment. I am a hardcore Republican from the great State of Georgia, but when George Bush was in the White House and when Republicans were running the House and when Republicans were running the Senate, they provided tax relief, but they couldn't make it permanent. They didn't have the votes to make it permanent, so it languished out there--families uncertain about what the tax future would hold, businesses uncertain about what the tax future would hold. Together, in this body, with the President's signature, we provided 99 percent of Americans the certainty that even George Bush and a Republican House and Senate could not do. Divided government is hard, Mr. Speaker. Divided government is hard. The differences that we have on policy are dramatic, but there is still more that unites us as a Nation than divides us as a Nation. That is true in this Chamber as well, so we came together on tax policy and did that. Taxes were going to go up, Mr. Speaker. In this tough economy, taxes were going to go up on almost every family in the land. We prevented that income tax increase from hitting 99 percent of all Americans. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to prevent the tax increase on 100 percent of Americans, but I couldn't get the votes to get that done, and I know you would have joined me in that. Sometimes you have a choice between can you get something done or will you get nothing done. Mr. Speaker, I promise you, if you are working hard in trying to provide for your family back home, you do not care who is to blame for a problem; you just want the problem fixed. We could have stood around this Chamber and we could have argued amongst ourselves about whether the perfect is the enemy of the good. We did not. We struggled to find agreement, and we found that agreement, and we made a difference for 99 percent of Americans in the struggling economy to date. That counts, Mr. Speaker. We talk about the to-do list as to the Medicare trust fund. Mr. Speaker, back in the late 1990s, when Newt Gingrich was the Speaker of the House and when Bill Clinton was the President, they made an effort to protect the Medicare trust fund from going bankrupt. This is something that has been on the minds of Americans all the way back to 1965. The Medicare trust fund has never been properly funded. Healthcare costs have always had a rate of inflation that has been higher than that of other services, and we have struggled with how to make the math work. They came up with a plan back in 1997 to fix it. The plan didn't work, and it was going to cause a dramatic reduction in what doctors were reimbursed and a dramatic reduction in the benefits that were available to senior citizens. Mr. Speaker, so what happened in 2003, when it came time for those first painful cuts to go into place, the first effort to protect the Medicare trust fund? Congress kicked the can down the road. They delayed those cuts from going into place for 1 year. What happened the next year? They delayed it for a year again. The next year, they delayed it again. Then the next year, again and again and again and again--17 times, Mr. Speaker. We had come together and passed legislation that was designed to protect the Medicare trust fund, and when it came time to actually do the heavy lifting, we kicked that can down the road, all the while having the trust fund becoming more and more and more unstable. We all knew there was a problem, but nobody wanted to take the responsibility of fixing it. Mr. Speaker, in this divided Congress, in this divided government, in this Washington that supposedly can't come together to fix American problems, we passed H.R. 2. It was the first bill out of the gate. Well, it was the second bill out of the gate, but it came right out in front. H.R. 2 was the first Medicare reform proposal to be signed into law in more than 10 years, and it solved a problem that had been created almost 20 years ago but that no Congress before or no President before had had the courage to permanently fix. Mr. Speaker, we talk about Medicare as one of the third rails of politics--don't touch that rail, or else you will be defeated. This body is not about who wins and who gets defeated. This body is about who can make a difference. We needed to make a difference for folks who were relying on Medicare. There were 392 House Members and 92 Senators who supported this bill. We hadn't been able to fix it for almost 20 years. We hadn't been able to fix it, so the can had been kicked down the road 17 times. We came together, grappled with it, struggled with it, but ultimately came up with a proposal that almost all of the House and almost all of the Senate could support. They called it the sustainable growth rate, the SGR, that eliminated this failing piece of Medicare policy, that bent the long-term cost curve of Medicare, extending the life of the trust fund. In fact, it cuts the actuarial deficit in Medicare by almost 10 percent. This is heavy lifting, Mr. Speaker, that Congress has punted on and punted on and punted on. With the leadership we have here today, with the collaboration that we have here today, not only did we pass it, not only did the Senate pass it, but we were able to pass it into law. There are many parts of Medicare, Mr. Speaker. There is part A, part B, part C, part D. $2.4 trillion, Mr. Speaker, is the way we bent the cost curve on those various components of Medicare in order to protect and ensure Americans for another generation that Medicare would be there for them. Veterans: Mr. Speaker, again, you cannot open up the newspaper today without seeing the way that the system is failing our veterans. There is nothing that brings us together more in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, than standing up for those who have stood up for us. We did that in the Veteran Access, Choice, and Accountability Act, Mr. Speaker. It was the largest overhaul of veterans health care, again, in more than a decade. When Republicans ran the whole show, we couldn't get it done. When Democrats ran the whole show, they couldn't get it done. When we are divided, but focused, on crisis in this country, we have come together and we have gotten it done for the first time, Mr. Speaker. For the first time in the history of veterans health care, we have said: If the veterans healthcare system is failing you, but you, as a serviceman or -woman, did not fail us, we are going to give you a process to get outside of that veterans system. We are going to give you a chance to go see your own doctor. We are going to give you a chance to go see any specialist you need. We are going to give you a chance to get the care that we promised you, but that the bureaucratic healthcare system has failed to deliver. Mr. Speaker, in all of these many years of budget cutting that we have talked about--trying to clamp down on spending, trying to make sure that all taxpayer dollars are being accounted for--so many accounts are going down, but veterans spending is going up. Why? Because budgeting is about prioritizing. And when we come together not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans, we prioritize those who have served us. It is the biggest change in health care for veterans in over a decade, Mr. Speaker, and folks are finally able to get the health care that they need. That is not it. There is more. There is still a system in place that is failing veterans, Mr. Speaker. We couldn't come together on reforming the entire Veterans Administration. But we did come together on saying that: If you work at the Veterans Administration and you are failing our veterans, there is no place for you on the Federal payroll. You know how hard it is to get rid of failing Federal employees, Mr. Speaker. We came together in a bipartisan way to say: If you are in the upper echelons of the VA, we are asking more of you. If you are in charge of serving our veterans, we are asking more of you. If you fail, we are going to ask you to leave so we can get somebody else in there. We streamlined the firing process, Mr. Speaker, to get rid of ineffective employees as we had not done before in Federal employment. Mr. Speaker, let's talk budgets. You know ending budget deficits is one of America's priorities. You know getting out of the businesses of mortgaging our children's future is one of America's priorities. From 1966 to 2009, Mr. Speaker--and I chose that time because that was the beginning of Medicare and Medicaid, which are two of the largest spending programs on the ledger today. They are two that have ballooned much larger than their authors ever suggested that they would. This is when we got into some really difficult entitlement spending decisions. From 1966 to 2009, that 43-year period, the debt in this country went up by 55 percent relative to GDP. It is still these mandatory spending programs that are driving our debt, but over a 43-year period our debt went up 55 percent. Mr. Speaker, in the first 3 years of the Obama administration, our debt went up another 34. For 43 years, it had gone up 55 percent, way too much, but a gradual increase. In 3 years, it went up 35 percent. We went from going up about 1 percent a year to going up 10 percent a year, Mr. Speaker. Today, with this Congress, this House, this Senate, divided government, from 2012 to 2015, when we have been grappling with this issue together, when we have been looking for answers together, when no side had complete control, but we had to work together to find solutions, we have collapsed that increase back down to that 1 percent a year. There is so much more to do, but we just disagree. The President introduces a budget every year. That budget never balances, not this year, not next year, not 10 years from now, not 100 years from now. The President has different investment priorities than I do. I serve on the Budget Committee. We do a budget every year. It always balances. So I have budgets that balance and budgets that never come to balance. Clearly, that is a big gap to bridge. We have begun to bridge it, Mr. Speaker, collapsing the dramatic increase in the debt to levels that are still too high, but don't threaten our security as years past have. But no one ever believed we would be able to come together to do that. No one ever believed we could work with the President to get that done, and, yet, we have. Mr. Speaker, a lot of that comes from the Budget Control Act. One of the best votes I have taken in this institution was the vote for the Budget Control Act. It was the largest reduction in Federal spending in the history of the republic. Hear that, Mr. Speaker. In divided government--in fact, there was a Republican House, Democratic Senate, Democratic President, dramatically divided government. Power of the filibuster in the Senate. Hard to get anything done. We came together because America needed us to, to reduce spending in the most dramatic way in the history of the republic. It is not because somebody had all the votes and they jammed it through, but because we worked together to find a policy that made sense. Mr. Speaker, people always think, when you talk about big budget and deficit reductions, that you are talking about some sort of phony Washington, D.C., math. You have seen the examples where you raise spending by $5 instead of $10 and then you call that a cut. We have all seen that math. Nonsense. When I talk about budgets, I am talking about real numbers. I am talking about money going out the door. I am talking, even though we have 10,000 men and women a day qualifying for Social Security and Medicare, 10,000 new applicants every day for Social Security and Medicare, working together, we reduced the total amount of money going out the door not just for 1 year, but for 2 years. That is not funny Washington, D.C., math, Mr. Speaker. Those are real numbers, real dollars, going out the door. We bent the curve together. Some of my colleagues might say we did too much. I would say we haven't done nearly enough, but we came together and we made a difference for deficits. Mr. Speaker, one of the biggest differences we can make for deficits is putting folks back to work. It turns out you can't pay taxes if you don't have a job. You have to have money coming in the door in order to be part of the system. So we focused together on creating American jobs. We focused together on putting families back to work. Again, this is something that unites us. It does not divide us. We have done it in the spirit of trade, Mr. Speaker. We have done it in the spirit of manufacturing. We have passed legislation here that the President signed into law that is working today to make sure, if you work in a manufacturing industry in America, you are not disadvantaged relative to foreign competition. If we are trying to export the best products made in the world today, those manufactured by American hands, we are tearing down the trade barriers that are preventing those products from getting into the hands of customers who want them overseas. We have done that together. When it comes to tearing down those trade barriers, Mr. Speaker, America is already virtually a free trade zone. We always say we will play fair with other nations, but other nations don't always say that to us. So this Congress empowered the President to go out and do those negotiations, to tear down those barriers, to make sure that American working families always get a fair shake on the global scene. Mr. Speaker, we haven't seen that happen in a decade. A Republican Congress came together to work with a Democratic President to say we are all in this boat together. Putting families back to work is not a Republican priority alone, though it is a Republican priority. It is not a Democratic priority alone, though it is a Democratic priority. It is an American priority. That is why America's House and America's Congress and America's President work on it together. Mr. Speaker, that takes me back to where I started. I will put America's to-do list up here on the board. I talked about the dreary weather outside and kind of the dreary spirit that I feel sometimes when I talk to folks about how Congress is operating and how Congress and the President are working together and how America, in the spirit of self-governance, is succeeding or failing at addressing America's priorities. Mr. Speaker, we did the first roads and bridges bill, $305 billion, in more than two decades. It is more long-term certainty than America had seen in 20 years because it was the right thing to do. We updated the national water policy, Mr. Speaker. We have done more--it was the most substantial, positive improvement to delivering clean water to American citizens than we have seen in more than a decade. We did that together. Tax relief: Mr. Speaker, working together, we prevented taxes from going up on 99 percent of American families. Working together, we did things that George Bush and a Republican Congress couldn't do because they didn't have the votes 15 years ago. We did that together because it was the right thing to do in this tough economy. Mr. Speaker, we came together on Medicare reform. There were 17 short-term extensions, kicking the can down the road, Congress and the President afraid to take a stand and solve a problem. We came together and did that, Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, President Obama and America's Congress. Improving veterans health care: Mr. Speaker, for the first time in American history, if the veterans healthcare system is failing you, we give you an exit ramp to go and see your physician, your specialist, the best that America has to offer, because, as a serviceman or -woman, we have made promises to you and, in a bipartisan, bicameral way, we are committed to keeping those promises. It is the biggest reforms in more than 10 years. Mr. Speaker, we have cut spending. We have cut spending not with phony Washington, D.C., math, but with real dollars going out the door. The biggest deficit-reduction package in American history we did together, a divided government, divided Congress. But it is the right thing to do for the American people, and that is what this Congress is about. Mr. Speaker, that is just the beginning of the to-do list. I don't want to feel like I am tooting the horn of bipartisanship in this institution. I didn't even have education reform on that list. I didn't have education reform on that list. But we have done it. We have come together in a bipartisan way, bicameral, with the White House, signed into law the biggest evolution of education policy that we have seen in 10 years. Again, it has been more than a decade since we have come together to make sure that principals, teachers, and parents have more control over the education of children in our communities. We repealed 49 different programs, Mr. Speaker. I am not saying hardcore conservative Republicans repealed them. I am not saying liberal Democrats repealed them. I am saying together we scoured the entire Federal education landscape looking for ways to do better for our families back home. When we rolled up our sleeves, when we took off the Republican and Democratic labels, when we all sat down as parents and grandparents and community leaders about how to do better for our children, we found 49 programs, all of which had a constituency out there, all of which had somebody making a buck off of them, but they were programs that were failing our children and we ended them. We ended them together because it was the right thing to do. It is the biggest education reforms, Mr. Speaker, again, in more than a decade. Mr. Speaker, I don't have the time to go through the difference that we are making together. From our veterans, H.R. 91, H.R. 203, H.R. 313, H.R. 2499, on and on and on, not bills that we have passed here in the House, though we have, but bills we have passed in the House, bills that have been passed in the Senate, bills that the House and Senate have come together on, bills that have been sent to the President's desk, and bills that the President has signed into law, making a difference. Mr. Speaker, reducing the size and scope of government. H.R. 1626, H.R. 2029, H.R. 2048, and the list goes on and on and on. Doing things together for our bosses back home because they are going to make a difference. Mr. Speaker, creating jobs and expanding economic opportunity. Again, H.R. 2029, H.R. 22, H.R. 1000, S. 535. Mr. Speaker, yes, there are even some bills that originated in the Senate that are delivering for the American people. I am proud to say most of them start with H.R., but there are even a few Senate bills in there. Good ideas from the other body that we took on, that we made better, that we sent to the President's desk, that he signed. Defending America's freedom and security, patient-centered healthcare solutions. Mr. Speaker, everybody talks about the President's healthcare bill. You are either for it or you are against it. It is a divisive issue. Nobody talks about the fact that there are parts of the President's healthcare bill that I believe are broken from the hard core right and that my friends on the left believe are broken, too. And so we have come together not once, not twice, not three times, not five times, but almost a dozen times to repeal parts of the President's healthcare bill that we all agreed were not serving the American people. Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day, it is not about who can be a good Republican or who can be a good Democrat. It is about who can be a good public servant, and that is never going to make the front page of the newspaper. It is never going to be a part of this Presidential election cycle. It is never going to be in a commercial on TV talking about how successful we are when the cameras go off, when the labels come off, and when we are focused on what we all came here to do, and that is to make a difference. Mr. Speaker, we are going to keep going on through this election cycle. There is going to be more division, there is going to be more strife, and there is going to be more finding out who is to blame and whose fault it is. I have gotten to know the men and women in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker. I confess, there were some of them that I wanted to dislike from the get-go. Oh, I wanted to dislikes them. I had seen them on TV, and I knew they didn't have any merit, didn't have any business being here, didn't have any desire to serve the American people. Mr. Speaker, my confession here today is I was wrong. I was wrong. There are colleagues on the other side of the aisle with whom I disagree with about virtually everything, but for that one small issue on which we find some common ground, they will roll up their sleeves and they will bleed with me and sweat with me until we find a way to make a difference for families back home in their district and mine. Mr. Speaker, there are folks on the other side who come down here on this floor and rail and rail and rail, and it is every partisan tagline that you could imagine, but when the camera goes off, they roll up their sleeves and they get to work on making a difference for their district and for mine. Mr. Speaker, my voice is not loud enough to drown out all the division that is in a Presidential election campaign. Mr. Speaker, my voice is not loud enough to drown out all the commercials going on all over the country and all the headlines all over the country that talk about how Washington is a big cesspool, and it is broken, and we should just give up on self-governance altogether, but not me. My voice may not be loud enough, but it will be tireless. I believe in self-governance. I believe that my district has priorities that are going to be different from priorities in another district, and that is okay. I believe that division sometimes brings out the best of ideas, and that is okay. I believe that my colleagues believe that there is no challenge too big for America to confront when Americans confront it together. I do not know what November holds, but I know this: We have the best system of governance on the planet. It is not easy. It is not clean. It is not simple. But when you put the American people in charge, it is effective. Mr. Speaker, you are not going to sell good newspapers talking about the difference that we make together in self-governance, but we are going to make that difference together. Folks here didn't come for the headlines. They came to do the things that mattered, and I am proud to work with folks on both sides of the aisle to get that done. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.