Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

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

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. One of the things I love about this institution is the passion with which folks come to the floor of this House, and so often that passion is directed at improving the services for those who have served us. My friend from Florida is absolutely right when he said in his opening statement that in the Rules Committee last night, the frustration with the VA and in trying to provide accountable services to our veterans was universal. This is not a partisan issue. Serving those who have served us is an issue that comes from the heart, and it comes from every Member of this Chamber. But I will remind all of my friends, if you are wondering whether or not we are fulfilling that commitment, this is the bill that this institution passed last year with only one dissenting vote. And this bill increases funding over last year by 6 percent. Mr. Speaker, let no man and no woman question the commitment of our friends on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, our friends doing the Military Construction and VA Appropriations bill. I know the commitment to be universal, which is why in a time of budget cuts, which is why in a time of sequestration, which is why in a time when almost every account of the Federal budget is under strain, this account goes not down but up, and up by 6 percent over what this body passed almost unanimously last year. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I am also prepared to close.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I enjoy serving on the Budget Committee with my friend from Kentucky. The budget is that first step of any accounting process for the year, and my friend is absolutely right. If we could have, we would have passed that budget conference report first thing when we got into town this week. Anybody who is reading the newspaper knows it slowed down in the Senate. We have all the numbers worked out. There are some other issues going on. I won't bore folks with those details. So this rule absolutely does, in the name of getting the people's business done, take those budget levels that have passed in this House, that have passed in the Senate, that are on their way back over here in a conference report, and sets those as the funding levels for this year. Again, these are the levels that exist in law. That is the fantasy part of some of our funding debates. I could agree with all my colleagues that we need to triple funding on X, Y, or Z project, but the law won't allow it. We will pass that on the floor of the House, but as soon as the beginning of the fiscal year rolls around, the law will sequester those dollars, snap that funding back down. We have an obligation to prioritize these dollars ourselves. Golly, when we have tough decisions to be made, I don't want to leave those tough decisions to an automatic sequestration process. I don't want to leave those tough decisions to some automatic process of law. I want to take responsibility for those decisions here. I want us to make these decisions together. If we have to grapple with it, let us grapple together, but let's be honest with folks that there is no free lunch here. If we want it, we have to pay for it. Now, to my friend from Kentucky's point, we are paying for a lot of it out the overseas contingency operations account. I voted ``no'' on that decision when it came to the House floor, as my friend from Kentucky did as well. We lost. That is the funny thing about this institution, Mr. Speaker. I told my constituents about all the amazing things I was going to get up here to do, I was going to do them on their behalf. It turns out, if I can't get 217 of my colleagues up to agree with me, I can't do squat. We tried and we failed on that account. So now we have the numbers that we have; we have the bill that we have; we have the law that we have; and as much as we might want it to be different, it isn't. That is why this open rule is so important, Mr. Speaker, because we have the bill that we have; we have the law that we have; and now we have a process that allows every Member of this Chamber to come down here and improve it. We don't know what it is going to look like at the end of the process. It is not a foregone conclusion who has the votes and who doesn't, and I believe in my heart the bill will be better at the end than it was at the beginning because that is what the collective wisdom of this institution brings. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I know the Speaker is constrained to just ruling on parliamentary issues. I have no such constraint here. I can opine on the budget process itself. And I would say to my friend that I share her frustration. I absolutely do. I have been in this Chamber 4 years. We have had to deem appropriations levels every single year. Not once--not once--have we been able to agree on conference budget numbers in the 4 years that I have served in this House. Now, for the previous 4 years, I confess, I pointed the finger at the Senate, and I pointed the finger at the Senate's leader who, at that time, was Senator Reid from Nevada. Today we have a new Senate leader, and I can't point the finger at the other party. If we can't get this right, it is my leader in the Senate who can't get this right. But I believe we are. Mr. Speaker, I believe we are. Open up any newspaper, look at any report. It was supposed to be done earlier this week. We have never had a shot at getting it done in the past. We are on the brink of that agreement. So what is happening here today, far from being an unusual circumstance, is the best we have done in 5 years. Now, candidly, that is what I expect from new leadership in the Senate. I expect us to do better than we did last year; I expect us to do better than we did 2 years ago; and I expect us to be even better next year than we are this year. The first time in more than a decade, the first time in more than a decade we have had a shot at a governing budget document. But to be fair, Mr. Speaker, I want to distinguish between the budget and the law. A lot of folks believe that the budget of the United States becomes the law of the land. It does not. The President never signs the budget of the United States. It is an agreement between the House and the Senate. That distinguishes it from the budget caps and the Budget Control Act, which are absolutely the law of the land, passed by the House and Senate, signed by President Obama. So when we talk about what it is that we want to see in funding levels, we can decide anything we want to in this Chamber. But the law of the land is not what we decide in our budget document; it is what was decided back in August of 2011 when the budget caps from the Budget Control Act came into being. Mr. Speaker, the opportunity to have this conference budget agreement, the opportunity to be working from the same sheet of budgeting music on both sides of the Hill, is amazing. I can't tell you, as a Budget Committee member, how hard we have worked to achieve it and how much I anticipate it. It wasn't yesterday; so far it is not today; but it is going to be soon. I don't want that to stand in the way of getting the people's business done. We have two great appropriations bills here, again, passed by voice votes out of committee, composed in collaborative ways within the Appropriations Committee. These two bills deserve to be heard on the floor of the House; they deserve to be heard this week; and with passage of this rule, they will be. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, my friend from Florida says, It's not over 'til it's over. I say to my friend, it is only just beginning. It is only just beginning with this rule today. With the passage of this rule today, Mr. Speaker, we are beginning the 2016 appropriations process. And we are doing it in ways that we have not done before since I received a voting card in this body. Number one, we are beginning at the earliest date in 40 years. Not since 1973 has this Chamber gotten about the people's business as early as we are this year. The people deserve it. The people have earned it. And we are delivering on it today. I am proud of that fact. Number two, Mr. Speaker, we are, in fact, on the brink of the first balanced budget conference report this body has seen since 2003. It is too long coming. We have had to deem appropriations levels year after year after year, not on just two bills, as we are today, but on the entire package. That report could be filed as early as this afternoon, and there is no question but that it is going to pass both of these bodies. It is good work from this institution and the Senate across the Hill. But, Mr. Speaker, as you could hear in the passion in my friend from Florida's voice, not everyone is going to be happy with every line in these two bills. I don't have to just look to the Democratic side of the aisle. I can look to the Republican side of the aisle. Not everyone is going to be happy with every line of this bill; but do you know what, any Member can come and change any line. The Rules Committee protected no language in this bill. Any Member can come and change any line. Any Member can come and make these bills better. Any Member can come and have their district's voice heard. All you have to do is find 217 of your friends to agree with you; we will pass it, and we will send it to the United States Senate for consideration. Mr. Speaker, that is the way it ought to be. These are going to be some long nights we are going to have; these are going to be some lengthy amendment debates we are going to have; these are going to be some vote-a-ramas we are going to have, but America is going to be the better for it because the laws of the land that we pass are going to be better for it. I have the Statement of Administration Policy here, Mr. Speaker. I have one for each one of the bills that this rule makes in order. The President has said in these Statements of Administration Policy that his senior advisers are going to recommend that he veto these bills. Why? It is because these bills and other legislation implement the current Republican budget framework which blocks the needed investments for our economy to compete in the future. Mr. Speaker, it is not the Republican budget framework. It is called the law of the land as signed by President Barack Obama. We can pretend the law doesn't exist, or we can confront the law as it exists. That is what these bills do, a 6 percent increase in veterans funding and a 3 percent increase in our energy and water investment. In a time of austere budgets, we are plussing up those accounts that are so important to our constituents back home. Mr. Speaker, I urge strong support for this rule, I urge strong support for the underlying bills, and I urge strong support for beginning the process where every single Member will be able to have his or her voice heard. It is the way this institution ought to be, and it is the way this institution will be if we pass this rule today. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution. The previous question was ordered.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we have an important responsibility in budgeting in this institution--again, one that has not been fulfilled, I would argue, in more than a decade, that will be fulfilled this year for the very first time. We had a choice in the Budget Committee. I serve on the Budget Committee as well, Mr. Speaker. We had a choice in the Budget Committee about whether or not we were just going to pretend that we could fund at certain levels or whether we were going to actually follow the law. Mr. Speaker, it may not surprise you that we have those conversations in Washington; but, yes, the conversation goes: Am I just going to do whatever I want to do? Or am I going to follow the law? It is very striking to me that this conversation occurs at all. I would have said that that is kind of the definition of the law: you don't get whatever you want to do; you have to follow the law. I wish that we could drive that message home across so many different parts of our society. The law is the law. The President absolutely sent some budget requests to us for these bills, as he will for other appropriations bills, Mr. Speaker. In the case of the Energy and Water Appropriations bill, the President requested a 5 percent increase in that funding. Now, had we passed that 5 percent increase without changing the law, we are going to roll around to October 1, at the beginning of the fiscal year, and the law is going to snap that 5 percent increase right back down to legally allowed levels. The choice we had in the Appropriations Committee--and I so admire my friends on the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Speaker--we had a choice of either pretending we were going to spend a lot of money funding all of our priorities, only to have the law snap those down across the board, or we could be honest about how much money was available and make sure we were prioritizing every single dollar as best we could. In the case of Energy and Water, the President asked for a 5 percent increase. The Appropriations Committee provided a 3 percent increase, as the law allows. In the case of Military Construction and the VA, the President asked for just over an 8 percent increase. The Appropriations Committee provided a 6 percent increase, as the law allows. I would challenge my friends on the other side of the aisle. I would challenge my friends on this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker. Thirty years ago, two-thirds of what the Federal Government funded in this country was funded out of this institution. It was funded through the Appropriations Committee. It was this body making decisions and choices based on our constituents' needs and desires about how to use taxpayer dollars--not so today. Today, it is exactly the opposite; instead of this institution funding two-thirds of the budget and one-third of it being mandatory spending, now, two-thirds is mandatory, and only one-third is available for this body to make decisions about. I would challenge my colleagues: let's find that agreement that reforms mandatory spending, as every Member of this Chamber knows needs to happen, and let's reallocate those dollars to what was designed in the Budget Control Act of 2011 to allow us to fund these discretionary priorities at a higher level. Mr. Speaker, I want to build things. I want to build things. For Pete's sake, in this Energy and Water Development bill, we do. We fund the Corps of Engineers in this bill. We have the Savannah Harbor expansion project in the great State of Georgia. We are the fastest growing container port in the Nation, Mr. Speaker--the fastest growing in the Nation--trying to prepare for the new Panamax ships coming through the new Panama Canal. The Corps of Engineers tells us that in order to maximize the use of taxpayer dollars, in order to make sure that taxpayers get the best bang for their buck on this project of national importance, we need to build it in 6 years, at the rate of $100 million a year. Six years, $100 million a year, is the way we maximize taxpayer dollars. This bill funds that project at $21 million. That is $21 million. We are going to string that project out year after year after year, costing the taxpayer more. Now, I don't blame my friends on the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Speaker. As it turns out, the rules of the House don't allow us to prioritize those projects. That is what the President asked for. The Appropriations Committee wasn't able to ask for any more than the President asked for. This is the President's funding level, but that is not the right way to appropriate, and if we could work together to reallocate those dollars, I would do it tomorrow. I challenge my friends to find a mandatory spending reform bill that I will not support. It is critical that we do it. It is critical to our seniors. It is critical to the young people. It is critical to the governance of this Nation. But to the degree that I have complaints about this bill, my friends have complaints about this bill, with the passage of this rule, we are going to allow every single Member to come down here and make those improvements known. We will have up-or-down votes. Some amendments will lose; some amendments will win. We will perfect this bill together. That is the way this bill was written, and that is the way this bill will be passed, and that should make us all very proud. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. If Members were listening to the Reading Clerk read this rule, we got into some housekeeping issues at the end. We have got a district workweek coming up next week. We needed to give the Speaker some authorities to continue to conduct the business of the House in a collaborative and a pro forma way. But it was the first part of that rule that is exciting. I confess, I was talking to the Parliamentarian the other day, and he was telling me about the way the history of the rules had evolved, as folks stand on the House floor during Committee on Rules debate and actually go through line by line explaining to the House what is in the rule. It is not every day that I am excited about doing that, Mr. Speaker. The Committee on Rules has a tough job. Sometimes the Committee on Rules' job is saying no. Sometimes the Committee on Rules' job is being that gatekeeper to the floor of the House, and we have to deliver some bad news to folks. I don't particularly enjoy reiterating that bad news on the floor of the House. But today is good news. Today it is all good news for every Member of the House who has any ideas at all about how better to fund the responsibilities of this Nation. They are going to be able to have their voice heard. Let me read, as the Reading Clerk did. We have two bills in this rule, Mr. Speaker: H.R. 2028 and H.R. 2029. I have them here. H.R. 2029 makes appropriations for military construction, Veterans Affairs, and related agencies. I daresay there is not a single Member on the floor of this House that has not grappled with how to better serve the veterans at home in our districts, that has not grappled with how to provide better accountability to the Veterans Administration that is tasked with providing those services. This rule provides that any Member of this Chamber--Republican or Democrat, senior or junior, freshman or retiring--has an opportunity to have their ideas heard. It is the best of what we do in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, and we are going to do it on H.R. 2029. This rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 2028. That is the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations bill, Mr. Speaker. Again, I daresay that there is anyone, particularly east of the Mississippi, that has a district that is not in some way impacted by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps of Engineers is funded in this legislation. Individual projects are funded in this legislation. What this rule provides is that any Member of this Chamber that has an idea about how to better appropriate these dollars--these dollars that belong not to us as individual Members, but to the American taxpayer--how to better be accountable, be effective, be efficient with these tax dollars, Mr. Speaker, they can come to this floor and have their amendments heard. Mr. Speaker, you have heard it said often that the Senate only has two rules: the unanimous consent and exhaustion. The Committee on Rules prevents us from having to have that structure here, but it is true that you can effectively filibuster in this Chamber as well: you can come down; you can move to strike the last word; you can have debate go on forever. I don't believe that serves us particularly well. There is obviously an opportunity and a need to have your voice heard, to have your constituents' voices heard; but what this rule does do, which is why we are going to call it a modified open rule instead of a completely open rule, is it restricts what one might call dilatory amendments, what one might call clarifying conversation. It restricts these pro forma amendments, where you are not actually trying to change any language, you just want to come down here and talk, 10 on each side controlled by the subcommittee chairmen. Mr. Speaker, what is so neat about these two bills that we are going to make in order under this bill is they both passed out of the Committee on Appropriations on a voice vote. As you know, Mr. Speaker, there are some contentious things that we do in this institution and, arguably, appropriating is one of the hardest things that this institution has to do, but passing these bills out of committee on a voice vote tells us about the collaborative way in which these bills were put together. Now, I can tell you, there are going to be folks on both sides of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, who disagree with the funding levels in these bills. There are going to be Republicans who wish that they funded less, Democrats who wish they funded more; there are going to be Democrats who wish they funded less, and Republicans who wish they funded more. The funding levels of the total bill, that is not for debate today. That is set in the funding allocations. We call them 302(a) allocations, Mr. Speaker. That is my responsibility on the Committee on the Budget and others who serve on the Committee on the Budget. As you know, Mr. Speaker, we are this close--oh, golly, we are this close--to having conferenced the first balanced budget for the United States of America in over 10 years--in over 10 years. The House and the Senate are about to agree on funding levels for this Nation. It is embarrassing that we don't do it every year, but it is wonderful that we have an opportunity to do it this year, and we will. Ordinarily, Mr. Speaker, we would have done that first. And candidly, as a member of the House Committee on the Budget, a Member who proudly supported the budget that passed here on the floor of the House, I thought that conference report was going to be ready on Monday of this week. It is not. It is not. So this rule also deems those levels that the House has already passed, those levels that we absolutely expect to be the levels of funding in that conference report, to be the levels of funding for this Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations bill, for this Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill, as is appropriate. We are beginning the appropriations process today, Mr. Speaker, at the earliest point in 40 years. How many of my colleagues are frustrated, disappointed, disillusioned when this Chamber cannot get its work done? Oh, the list is long, Mr. Speaker, and there are legitimate reasons why we cannot accomplish some of the goals that we have set out to accomplish, but I promise you, Mr. Speaker, the funding clock waits on no Member. Come September 30 of this year, funding will expire for the entire Federal Government. The earlier we start to solve that issue, the better chance we have of getting it done. And working together, collaboratively, voice votes out of subcommittee, big votes out on the budget bill, we are starting earlier than we have since 1973. Good processes yield good results, Mr. Speaker; flawed processes yield flawed results. This is the kind of rule that I think every Member of this body wishes we could see more of here on the House floor. This is going to allow for the kind of debate that is not going to predetermine the outcome, but is going to allow Members to come down to the floor and make their case to their colleagues, have the kind of debate the American people expect, and let the chips fall where they may. You get 218 votes, you get to change this bill. Mr. Speaker, I signed up to be on the Committee on Rules because I knew that we would have the opportunity to unleash this institution, the opportunity to allow every Member who comes from such diverse backgrounds, who have so much to contribute. Mr. Speaker, I just got here 4 years ago with my voting card lent to me by the Seventh District of Georgia. Folks in my class that came in 4 years ago, they are already in the top 50 percent of seniority in this institution. The American people have been turning folks out at record speed, which means we have been bringing in new talent like never before. Sometimes folks think the system around here is geared towards those who have been here the longest. They think that only after you have achieved a subcommittee chairmanship or a committee chairmanship will you be able to have input on the process. The Committee on Rules says no. The Committee on Appropriations says no. On these bills in this process, every single Member has a chance to have their voice heard, a chance to come down here, make their case, and have an impact on the final product. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be carrying this rule today, and I urge strong support from my colleagues on both sides of the aisle as we consider this bill throughout the afternoon and on final passage. I reserve the balance of my time.

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, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), 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, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 223 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow; and further, when the House adjourns on that day, it adjourn to meet at 2 p.m. on Monday next and that the order of the House of January 6, 2015, regarding morning-hour debate not apply on that day.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you making time to be down here with me today. Mr. Speaker, I am down here to talk about the war on coal. And when I say ``the war on coal,'' people think of that as if we can actually go and attack a natural resource. I am not worried about attacking natural resources. I am worried about the impact it has on American families. In particular, I am worried about the impact it has on families in my district in Georgia. Mr. Speaker, you can't see this chart, but it is a chart that represents section 111(d). It is the language that the President used to create his new carbon emission targets. I am not saying that Congress passed a law to do this, because Congress didn't pass a law. The President just decided he was going to do it. I am not saying that the House and the Senate got together and debated it, because we didn't get together and debate it. The President just decided this was the way it was going to be. It is 292 words that were already in statute. The President has turned it into a 130-page regulation that he is implementing on the country--hundreds more pages of technical support documents going behind that. This is what President Obama's constitutional law professor had to say. Again, this is a regulation that the President, Mr. Speaker, is implementing without any action of Congress whatsoever. Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who was President Obama's constitutional law professor, said this in December of last year: ``To justify the Clean Power Plan''--the President's energy plan--``the EPA has brazenly rewritten the history of on obscure section of the 1970 Clean Air Act''--that is these 292 words I talked about--``passed by Congress in 1970.'' Professor Tribe goes on to say: ``Frustration with congressional inaction cannot justify throwing the Constitution overboard to rescue this lawless EPA proposal.'' Mr. Speaker, a Clean Air Act passed in 1970--and I will get into some charts that show the successes we have had of previous Clean Air Acts in 1970, 1990. The President wants to do things differently than the law of the land allows, and he is frustrated, as described by Professor Tribe, that Congress refuses to do what the President wants us to do. I am going to talk about why it is we don't want to do what the President wants us to do. We don't want to do it because it is destructive to the American economy and it is destructive to American families. We don't want to do what the President wants to do. The President hasn't come up here to lobby Congress to try to get Congress to do what the President wants us to do. The President, to quote Professor Tribe, is ``throwing the Constitution overboard to rescue this lawless EPA proposal.'' We will come back to Professor Tribe. I want to talk about it in terms of my constituency, Mr. Speaker. I am right there in kind of the northeastern Atlanta suburbs there. It is only two counties, Mr. Speaker, but they are two of the fastest growing counties in the State of Georgia. They have also just been named two of the healthiest counties in the State of Georgia. This is what we are talking about in Georgia. This is our Georgia Public Service Commission, that group of elected officials in charge of keeping energy prices affordable for Georgia families, that group that is tasked with keeping energy supplies reliable in Georgia, that group that is tasked with regulating energy in the State of Georgia. It is not the EPA; it is not President Obama. It is the Georgia Public Service Commission. They say this about the President's rule: This rule will be unduly burdensome on Georgians, placing upward pressure on electricity rates, an outcome that is not acceptable to our organization or the citizens that we serve. These are not Republicans and Democrats, Mr. Speaker. These are folks who are concerned, literally, about how families are able to keep the lights on. How do you keep the lights on? We talk about getting the mortgage paid. We talk about getting the car note paid. How do you keep the lights on? The Georgia Public Service Commission is concerned about the burden of this new rule. The Clean Power Plan--that is what the President calls his plan--has nothing to do with clean power. It has to do with a war on America's energy security. He says this: The Clean Power Plan is illegal, unfair, and unwise. That is Georgia's attorney general. That is the one elected official in Georgia that is tasked with enforcing the laws of the land as they exist in Georgia, a statewide elected office. He calls this plan illegal, unfair, and unwise. It is not just President Obama's constitutional law professor, Laurence Tribe, calling it unconstitutional. We hear it from our Georgia State attorney general as well. This is from one of our power suppliers in Georgia. You may think of power suppliers, Well, of course, they want to pollute. That is what those big energy companies do--nonsense. Oglethorpe Power is the group that supplies power to all of the electric co-ops in the State. Mr. Speaker, I know you have electric co- ops in your State, as I do in mine. These are citizen-owned utilities. These are citizen-owned companies that make sure the lights stay on. Oglethorpe Power provides the power to those citizen-owned groups. This is not some big investor-owned utility. This isn't some dirty power producer. This is the group of citizens that represents every single one of us in the State of Georgia who receive our power in this way. This is what Oglethorpe Power says: Consequently, there is substantial probability bordering on certainty that Oglethorpe Power will suffer economic injury if the EPA finalizes the proposal in its current form or in any substantially similar form. Mr. Speaker, it is a bad idea to do it because Congress wasn't involved in it. It is a bad idea, as Professor Tribe suggests, to do it because the Constitution doesn't allow. It is a bad idea, as Georgia's attorney general says, because it is unfair and it is unwise and it is unlawful. It is a bad idea to do it, as Oglethorpe Power says, because it is going to burden every single American family, particularly these Georgia families that Oglethorpe Power serves, if that goes into effect. Mr. Speaker, who is going to get hit the hardest? I will just use my State of Georgia because I get so tired on this House floor of pitting one group of folks against another. There is that part of me, Mr. Speaker, that remembers when President Obama was first running for office, and he promised to be the President that had the most transparent administration in American history, and he promised to be a uniter, bringing America together, as we have not heretofore been together in recent times. That is not what I see, Mr. Speaker. What I see is division. What I see are politics of division each and every day, so often along economic lines. I would argue what is the right metric is not how much money you make in a day. It is how much money you are able to make tomorrow. The opportunity is the metric on which we ought to measure. Do you have opportunity for tomorrow? Do you have choices that you can make to make your life better? Quoting an energy economist who testified before the Energy and Commerce Committee just this week, Mr. Speaker, he said this: Lower-income groups will bear the burden of higher energy costs imposed by the EPA's plan but will be among the least likely to invest in or benefit from the energy efficiency programs that the proposed rule envisions. I want you to think about that. The President has big plans in this unlawful rule, this unconstitutional rule, this undebated rule; but he has big plans. It is twofold. Number one, he is going to get American families to invest in energy-efficient products in their home which, in theory, Mr. Speaker, if I am using less electricity in my home, I am going to be spending less money on that electricity. The President's plan is if I can get families to have more efficient products in their home, I can drive up the cost of electricity to the home, but families are still going to be out about the same amount of money. That is not the way the economists see it, Mr. Speaker. Look at families with their aftertax income of less than $10,000 a year. Now, that is not altogether uncommon in the great State of Georgia, and certainly, those are the folks who already have a tough time keeping the lights on. Thirty percent or more of their income, on average, is dedicated to energy costs. Thirty percent or more of everything that family has is dedicated to paying their energy costs. This rule proposes to run those costs up dramatically. Now, you move up to folks who are making aftertax incomes higher than $50,000, Mr. Speaker, and you are down below 5 percent of their income that they are spending on energy costs. The folks who can handle an increased rise in energy prices are also going to be those folks who invest in the more energy-efficient system. It is those folks who are trapped at the bottom of the income ladder, who don't have those opportunities to invest in more energy-efficient products, who are going to be hit the hardest by rising energy prices. Mr. Speaker, there is not a man or woman in my District--700,000 strong--who doesn't want to see clean air, but the President's rule isn't about clean air. It is about picking winners and losers in energy production. The President doesn't like coal. He doesn't like coal miners. He doesn't like coal processors. He don't like coal power plant operators. This isn't about clean air. It is about coal. Is going to have an economic impact on constituents in my District. Mr. Speaker, let me go back to the words that folks use. This is the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. They obviously have an obligation to grow the economy in Georgia. Let me just tell you that you can't pay taxes if you don't have a job, right? It is an essential point of basic government economics. You need people to work. You need people to be successful because, if they are not successful, they cannot pay their taxes. The Georgia Chamber of Commerce is dedicated to success in our part of the world. They say: EPA's regulations will impose billions of dollars in costs on the United States--and Georgia's--economy but fail to meaningfully reduce CO2 emissions on a global scale. If EPA adopts policies that substantially increase the cost of energy, thereby decreasing the competitiveness of the United States, investments and emissions will be sent to other, less efficient countries with higher CO2 emission intensities. As a result, overly restrictive and costly United States policies to reduce emissions will not only be offset around the globe, but could actually result in a net increase. I want you to think about that, Mr. Speaker. I want you to think about that. We just had this conversation in respect to the Keystone pipeline. The President vetoed bipartisan language passed in this House, passed in the Senate, to build the Keystone pipeline. This pipeline has been in the approval process for longer than it took to build the entire Hoover Dam. The entire Hoover Dam, start to finish, was built faster than we can even get an approval. This law wasn't to mandate the building of the pipeline. This law was to mandate that the approval process come to conclusion. The process still hasn't come to a conclusion--the President won't do it--as if, if America decides not to build the Keystone pipeline, oil will not be harvested in the independent nation of Canada--nonsense. Canada didn't ask us whether or not they should bring the oil out of the ground. They asked us to help them get the oil to market. They are America's largest trading partner. They said: America, will you help us with this pipeline? The answer should have been: Absolutely, yes. If not yes, perhaps the answer could be no; but, instead of a yes or no, we had 7 years of delay. Well, that oil is going to come out of the ground. It is going to be shipped to a port in Canada. It is going to be shipped overseas to China. I promise you it is not going to reduce emissions. It is going to increase emissions because they are not going to process it in China as responsibly as we process it here. What is the President asking of us? We are talking about how this is going to raise the cost of producing goods. Again, just in Georgia, between 2005 and 2012--the last 7 years, Mr. Speaker--we have reduced carbon emissions in Georgia by 33 percent. The President's targets have Georgia needing another 44 percent in reductions by 2030--44 percent. According to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division--again, these aren't the folks who are in charge of polluting the air; these are the folks who are in charge of protecting the air, our Georgia EPD, which is our equivalent of the EPA. They are tough on polluters; they are tough on folks who don't want to be good corporate citizens. They say, ``The CPP''--this is the President's proposal--``does not provide flexibility to Georgia. In fact, the CPP is inflexible and punitive to States that have taken early action.'' I want you to think about that. If you were sitting around doing nothing; if you didn't come from two of the healthiest counties in the country, as I do, Mr. Speaker; if you weren't worried about protecting the planet, about our stewardship responsibilities to the Earth; if you weren't worried about any of those things, the President is going to set some targets for you. Again, these are the unlawful, unwise, constitutional targets, but he is going to set some targets for you that you need to achieve. If you have been working, as we have in Georgia, to do the right thing ahead of time, he is still setting those targets for you, giving you no credit for the good things you have done in the past, asking you to do even more in the future. It is not going to be economically feasible. Georgia, number six in the Nation, is being asked to do the most by the White House in this unwise, unlawful, unconstitutional rulemaking. Let's talk about the dollars and cents that are required here. For the Nation, Mr. Speaker, we are talking about between $360 billion and $480 billion to implement the President's proposal-- again, the unlawful, unwise, unconstitutional proposal--but the President's proposal, $360 billion to $480 billion. According to the economic projections, Mr. Speaker, that is going to be about a 12 or 13 percent increase in electricity prices across the country--a 12 or 13 percent increase in utility prices, electricity prices, across the country. Now, in Georgia, that translates into about $400 a year. We have a pretty mild climate in the great State of Georgia, but it is about $400 a year per family. In my District, Mr. Speaker, it is about $94 million a year. You put all of my constituents together, all those folks who are the boss of the Seventh District of Georgia together, we are talking about almost $100 million lost to implement the President's plan, Mr. Speaker. Now, my question is, for what? My folks are responsible folks, Mr. Speaker. They are dedicated to their stewardship responsibilities. They are dedicated to doing the right thing for the right reasons. We are not a district where we try to figure out who is to blame. We are a district where we try to figure out how to fix it. How do you fix it? But the current worldwide carbon emissions--again, this isn't about clean air. This is about carbon dioxide in the air. Carbon dioxide is in the air. It is a natural part of the air. It is a required part of the air. Carbon dioxide emissions across the country, Mr. Speaker, across the world, rather, if we talk about developed nations, we generally talk about the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD. Carbon emissions of those developed nations, Mr. Speaker, are projected to be relatively flat for the two-generational future. Two generations from now, still flat. You are not seeing those increase. You look at non-OECD nations, Mr. Speaker, those emissions are projected to double, and then triple. From 1990, when we passed the Clean Air Act, you see level emissions coming from both OECD and non-OECD nations. About 2000, Mr. Speaker, you begin to see those lines diverge, and there is no expectation that non-OECD nations are going to change their carbon dioxide emissions. There is a funny thing about the Earth, Mr. Speaker: we are all in this together. I don't know if you have reflected on that. There is no escaping this big ball of rock that we are all floating through space on. We are in this together. We will succeed or we will fail together. For the price tag of $400 per American family, for the price tag of $100 million a year, just in my one congressional district, Mr. Speaker, for the price tag of more than $400 billion a year--that is about 10 percent of everything we spend in this country, about 10 percent of the Federal budget--is the cost of implementing the President's unwise and unlawful regulation. And what we get for that, Mr. Speaker, what we get for that investment of American treasure, what we get for disadvantaging American businesses relative to foreign businesses, what we get for raising the costs of American products so that other products around the globe can be cheaper, what we get for that--golly, Mr. Speaker, I don't know if you can even see it--is this little bitty red line in terms of carbon reductions. What I have charted here, Mr. Speaker, are metric tons of carbon being produced, carbon dioxide being produced around the globe. This is the entire globe here. I have 1990, I have 2010, I have 2020, I have 2030. The benefit of disadvantaging American workers, the benefit of disadvantaging American manufacturers, the benefit of raising prices for every single American family is that the amount of carbon produced on the entire planet will drop the distance of this little bitty red line. Mr. Speaker, I don't think you can see it. Now that is 2020. 2030, perhaps the line gets visible enough to see. It is virtually nothing. Virtually nothing. The President talks about this unwise, unlawful, unconstitutional proposal as if it is designed to save the world. It is not. It is not designed to save the world. It is not designed to reduce carbon emissions around the globe. It is designed to put coal out of business in America. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal, Mr. Speaker. We have coal. We have clean coal. We have coal. Now, if we pulled up the charts of the Energy Information Administration, they are not going to tell you that coal production in America is going to go to zero. It is not. It is falling off dramatically. We are putting coal mining families out of business in record numbers. If you go into coal mining country, Mr. Speaker, it used to be all Democrats, all the time. You know, there is not one Member of this Chamber from the Democratic Party that represents coal country today because coal miners threw every one of them out, not because they, as individuals, were bad Members, Mr. Speaker, but because the President was driving those individual families out of business. Those families said, We are doing honorable work. We are doing lawful work. We work hard for a living, and we are providing a national service. They are absolutely right. $500 billion annually in American treasure for virtually no reduction in carbon around the globe. Now, if we were actually going to talk about clean air, Mr. Speaker, and I wish we would. I wish we would get out of the business of picking winners and losers and talk about clean air. I wish we would get out of the business of having an ax to grind about energy producers and get to talking about clean air. If we were going to talk about clean air we would talk about things like NOX and SOX. That is nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide, Mr. Speaker, NOX and SOX. We passed the Clean Air Act of 1990--and I will remind you, Mr. Speaker, that was a Republican President and a Democratic Congress-- that bipartisan legislation where the President just didn't decide what he wanted to do; he came to Congress and worked with Congress to craft the law. It went after what at that time was so frequently referred to as acid rain, Mr. Speaker. You would get this nitrogen oxide, this sulfur oxide in the air. It would come out of the air when it rained. It had an impact around the country. NOX and SOX we went after in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. The dark green line represents the sulfur, the yellow line represents the nitrogen. 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2011, and 2012. We came together as a nation, Mr. Speaker. We targeted these pollutants in the air, and we changed the way we produced power in this country. We didn't abolish coal; we made it cleaner coal. We didn't abolish electric power coming from these big power plants; we changed the way the scrubbers and the smokestacks worked, and we positively impacted air quality in this country. We didn't pass the Clean Air Act of 1990 because we had an ax to grind; we passed the Clean Air Act of 1990 because we had a problem to solve. And as you can see by this chart, we solved it. We didn't just spend money to feel better about it; we solved it. We weren't just trying to pick winners and losers; we were trying to solve a problem. Mr. Speaker, I want to quote the Associated Press. They are talking about coal in this country, talking about the President's rule, talking about carbon production. They say this--they say it is leaving this Nation's shores, but not the planet. The fossil fuel trade which has soared under President Obama soared because we have had record exploration going on on private land. As you know, Mr. Speaker, the President has completely eliminated exploration on public lands. Those permits are not going out the door. Private exploration has soared under President Obama's administration. They said this fossil fuel trade threatens to undermine his strategy, the President's strategy to reduce the gases blamed for global warming. It also reveals a little-discussed side effect of countries acting alone on a global issues. As the U.S. tries to set a global example by reducing demand for fossil fuels at home, American energy companies are sending more dirty fuel than ever to other parts of the world, exports worth billions of dollars each year. Let me go back, Mr. Speaker. When we were working together, when we were working together in Congress, working together with the administration, we changed the way we produced energy. We changed the way we burned this coal to drastically reduce the pollutants coming from that coal. In a classic example of Federal overreach, Mr. Speaker, again, acting alone, unlawful, unwise, and unconstitutional, the President has said, I want to do more. And in doing more, according to the AP, which is no conservative defender, in doing more, what the President is doing is telling these energy companies, Don't try to do better; don't try to be cleaner. We are going to put you out of business in America, so bring these products out of the ground and ship them overseas. Mr. Speaker, where do you think our overseas competitors rank in terms of reducing these pollutants? Where do you think? Where do you think India ranks? Where do you think China ranks? Where do you think these nations competing with American workers rank? Do you think they are producing it as cleanly as we were in 2012? Maybe you think they are a little worse like they were in 2000. Maybe you think they are as bad as when we started way back in 1990. Nonsense. They are way back here off the chart altogether. If you believe in a stewardship responsibility to the planet, if you believe we have a multigenerational obligation to care for our environment, then you know that only nations with a robust economy have a robust environmental protection program. You think about that, Mr. Speaker. You will not find a single nation living in poverty that has advanced environmental protections. You can't afford to care about the environment if you can't keep the lights on. You can't afford to care about the environment if you can't feed your families. We do both in this country, Mr. Speaker. In the name of protecting the environment, the President is forcing these natural resources overseas, which has the combined negative effect of polluting the planet to a greater degree and making American workers competitive to a lesser degree. You are shipping cheap energy overseas, which makes that manufacturing more productive. You are raising energy prices in America, which makes our manufacturing less productive. Mr. Speaker, I am all about making a difference. I am all about solving a problem. The President wants to spend half a trillion dollars, more than 10 percent of what we spend in this country every year, focused solely, solely, solely, on reducing carbon emissions by the size of this line that you can't even see. And the people who are going to pay the price for that, literally, the price, are going to be American citizens with higher energy bills and American workers with fewer job opportunities. We have two models that we can choose from, Mr. Speaker. We can choose from the model that we used in the Clean Air Act of 1990, where we came together in a bipartisan way, and we solved a problem together. We identified the problem, we solved the problem, and we have measurable results. Or we can go it alone--and by alone, I don't mean America going it alone. I mean the administration and the EPA going it alone--unlawful, unwise, unconstitutional, spend a half a trillion dollars more than the size of our budget deficit this year, making us less competitive, trapping more American families in poverty, to achieve absolutely no result at all. Mr. Speaker, I will end where I began, an obscure section, section 11(d), 292 words that were never intended to allow the President to do what the President is doing; where the President's own constitutional law professor, Laurence Tribe, says the President's desires cannot justify throwing the Constitution overboard to rescue this 130-page proposal; this 130-page proposal which promises to do virtually nothing to change global emissions but promises to disadvantage the American economy in a global economy. Mr. Speaker, we can solve our energy challenges. We can find energy independence in this country, energy security in this country. We can solve our environmental stewardship responsibilities. We are doing things cleaner and better today than we ever have, and we will continue to do so. Mr. Speaker, the value of divided government, as it is today; the value of folks who hold different ideas, as we do today. Two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, Mr. Speaker: the President and the Democratic Party on one end, and Republicans and Congress on the other. The value of that divided government is that it allows us to do the big things, the big and necessary things. If it is all Republicans or all Democrats, folks just tend to try to jam their own ideas through, whether America likes it or not. That is not the way to build a stronger nation. Divided government requires--not just allows, but requires--that we come together to solve problems. Every time the President goes it alone, every time Congress goes it alone, we miss an opportunity to come together and solve a problem. To justify the clean power plan, the President's power plan, the EPA has brazenly rewritten the history of an obscure section of the 1970 Clean Air Act. Frustration with congressional inaction cannot justify throwing the Constitution overboard to rescue this lawless EPA proposal. We have an opportunity to do better, Mr. Speaker; and more importantly, we have the ability, with the men and women in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker--the men and women who serve this entire institution, this entire Nation, good men and women on both sides of the aisle who care about American workers and who care about the American economy and who care about not just America's environment, but the global environment--we can come together, and we can do better. But this proposal by the President is not it. Mr. Speaker, I hope you will help me to encourage all of our colleagues to reject this proposal, to rein in this overreach, and then to work together to do those things that matter to our constituents-- our bosses back home. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my chairman for yielding me the time. I have a great deal of respect for the gentleman from Maryland. I am just categorically opposed to the motion to instruct, but it is good that we are down here doing motions to instruct. Because what we have an opportunity to do, Mr. Speaker, for the first time since I was elected to this body 4 years ago, is to send House Members and Senate Members together and actually establish a budget of the United States. Mr. Speaker, I wasn't teasing. I was elected 4 years and 4 months ago, and this is the first time that we have been able to come together--and not just on a budget, but on a balanced budget--under the idea that it might be immoral to pay for our benefits today on the backs of our children yet to be born, that that might just be the wrong thing to do. Mr. Speaker, in particular, in this motion to instruct, what troubles me is the attempt to do away with the Medicare premium support program that we have been working so hard to establish. If anyone has a mom or dad who is on Medicare, if anybody is on Medicare themselves, they have experienced two things. They have experienced going into the doctor's office and questioning some provision of benefits, asking the question about whether or not this should be provided, whether or not this is the right cost, and they have had a physician say, they have had a hospital attendant say: What do you care? Medicare is going to pick that up. You know it is true. Every single person has had that happen in their family, and the result of that is a Medicare Program that will not be there for us. Mr. Speaker, I don't know if everybody across the country knows, but everybody in this Chamber knows that most American families pay more in Medicare and Social Security taxes than they do in income taxes. The highest tax burden on most American families is not the income tax; it is the tax we pay for the promise that Social Security and Medicare will be there for us when we need it the most. There is only one budget we have got to vote on in this town that solves that Medicare issue, that says: You know what, we know the program is going to go bankrupt, and we know there are no easy solutions, but we are going to make the tough decisions today. We are not going to put it off until tomorrow. My friend from Maryland said he wished the rules were different so that we could just substitute the Democratic budget for the budget that was passed in this House. Of course, that budget raised taxes by $2 trillion and did nothing to solve this problem--nothing to solve this problem. The Medicare premium support system holds the promise of keeping the commitments that we have made to every single working American through the Medicare and Social Security Programs. If you didn't want to take tough votes, don't run for Congress. If you didn't want to be in the solutions business, you just wanted to be in the blame business, don't run for Congress. If you want to be in the business of restoring the faith of the folks who pay that heavy tax burden, that the promises we make today will be there for them tomorrow, there is but one budget on Capitol Hill that fills that need, and this House had the wisdom to pass it. This House had the wisdom to pass it, Mr. Speaker. I am so proud that, when we had an opportunity to either kick the can down the road or make the tough decisions, we said, Not on our watch will we break more of these promises. It is all done by giving patients more choice. Imagine that radical idea: give patients choice in their medical decisions. Folks love their Medicare, Mr. Speaker, but they don't love it as much as they love their Medicare Advantage. Have you seen those numbers? Folks love their Medicare Advantage. For the first time in Medicare history, we gave patients choice. It is the most popular program in Medicare. For reasons unbeknownst to me, this administration has been trying to stomp the life out of that program since the day it was elected, but the program persists because the American people love it. You want to talk about doubling down on something, Mr. Speaker; we are doubling down on patient choice. We are doubling down on the idea that, if you put Americans in charge of their own healthcare decisions, they will make better decisions than the government will on their behalf. We cannot fail at this. We cannot fail. We owe America a balanced budget, and we owe America the confidence that the promises we made in exchange for the highest tax bill that they pay will be there for them when they retire.

Mr WOODALL

Mr WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time, and I would like to start our time tonight by yielding to my friend from Florida (Ms. Wilson). We Brought Back Five of the Kidnapped Girls

Mr WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, as you know, this is the conclusion of budget week here. I sit on the Budget Committee. I enjoy budget week. It is a statement of our values as a nation. Where you put your money is where you are putting your emphasis. A lot of folks don't want to put their money where their mouth is. We have a lot of mouths in this town. This is the week where everybody gets to put their money where their mouth is. One of those issues that we have been struggling with has been the issue of transportation funding. I come from a very conservative district in Georgia, Mr. Speaker, and one of the counties--I only represent two--one of those counties, Forsyth County, just voted to tax itself with a $200 million bond initiative to widen a highway. Because we are the fastest growing county in the State, we sit in traffic hour upon hour upon hour. It is not that conservatives don't want to tax themselves. It is that conservatives don't want to tax themselves and then throw that money down a rat hole. If we can develop a trust that, if you tax a family a dollar that they will get a dollar's worth of services--needed services, desired services--for that dollar, we would have a very different relationship with the Federal Government. Mr. Speaker, I have up here a reference to article I, section 8, clause 7 of the United States Constitution which says: The Congress shall have the power to establish post offices and post roads. Commerce, at the time of the writing of our Constitution, Mr. Speaker, took place through the post office and those post roads. There was an obligation that our Founding Fathers recognized to develop routes of commerce so that goods could travel, so that messages could travel, so that people could travel. I say that because too often the conversation in Washington devolves into: Should we spend money at all, or should we spend obscene amounts of it that we have to borrow from our children? That is not the conversation we are having. We have a constitutional obligation to maintain, establish and maintain the post roads, those corridors of commerce around this Nation. The Federal Government took that responsibility on in one of the great building projects of our history, building the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. I want to build things, Mr. Speaker. So often this Congress gets involved in doing things that my community is doing just fine back home, that my county is doing just fine back home, that my State is doing just fine back home. And for some reason we think when the 435 of us gather together, we are going to come up with a better idea about how to better serve my community back home than my community back home has about how to serve my community. I think we get off track there. I think we get into those unconstitutional uses of power. Establishing post roads--one of those things our Founding Fathers asked the government to do, because, quite simply, no one else can build an interstate highway system. It does no good for Georgia to have 12 lanes running to the Alabama border if Alabama doesn't have a road when we get there. This is a collaborative decision, and rightfully so. So how do we fund these highways, Mr. Speaker? We fund them primarily through what is called the highway trust fund, and the highway trust fund is funded through taxes on users of the highway system. I am a huge fan of user fees. If you don't like to sit in traffic every morning, if you want to build an extra lane on your highway, as we are in Forsyth County, you should pay to build that extra lane on your highway. You shouldn't ask somebody in Wyoming to pay to build the road in Georgia. We should build the road in Georgia. Users of the roads should pay for the roads. So that is what we do. What you can't see here, Mr. Speaker, is a graph of how the highway trust fund is funded. Primarily, it is through a gas tax. It is 18.4 cents that comes out of every gallon of gas that Americans buy. That gas tax is primarily the funding mechanism. But we also tax diesel, so all the truckers who are on the road, every time you are driving down that two-lane highway and you wish the guy in front of you was going a little bit faster, just know that he is paying a lot in taxes while he is on that road. He is helping to build that road. Diesel taxes are higher than gasoline taxes, but because there are fewer diesel vehicles on the road, bring in less revenue. We also have a tax on all trucks and trailers. We have a tax in this blue line on heavy vehicles, and we have a tax on tires. Again, all of these taxes come together not to tax one group of people to pay for another, but to tax users of our roads to pay for our roads. It has been a system that has served us fairly well in this Nation. But we haven't raised that gas tax since the early 1990s. In the early 1990s, we set the gas tax at 18.4 cents a gallon, and we haven't raised it since. Mr. Speaker, I am not in favor of raising taxes. I am in favor of paying less taxes. I am in favor of taking on more of that responsibility back home. But, again, in the case of post roads, we have to take on this responsibility. And the reason I am having this Special Order tonight, Mr. Speaker, is because the highway trust fund expires in May. We have about 2 months to sort out all of the challenges of how do we fund the Interstate Highway System going forward. And for folks who say, Well, we have been funding it with an 18.4 cent gas tax for 25 years, why isn't that good enough today? the answer is, it may be, it may be good enough today. But understand that the buying power that we are getting out of that 18.4 cents has declined each and every year. Of course it has. The price of a Big Mac has gone up over the past 20 years, the price of a car has gone up over the past 20 years, the price of a home has gone up, the price of building roads has gone up, so the purchasing power that we are getting for our gas tax has gone down and down and down and down. Right now we are getting about 60 percent of the value out of that gas tax that we were getting when it was last changed in the early 1990s. Now, what is the impact of that? Well, it is not just that the value of the purchasing power is going down; the mileage we are getting in our cars is going up. My first car, Mr. Speaker--I don't know what your first car was--mine was a 1971 Volkswagen camper. I had 59 horsepower in the back of that camper to drive me anywhere I wanted to go. If I coasted downhill and only used the accelerator a little bit uphill, I would max out about 35 miles an hour. But I could get 14 miles a gallon if I tried. If I tried to drive that camper as efficiently as I could, I could get 14 miles to the gallon. Today, Mr. Speaker, I am driving a Chevy Volt. Most of my driving is free. It is coming off the battery. I am not paying any gas taxes at all. When I do have to turn on the electric generator in that Chevy Volt, I am getting 40 miles to the gallon. Just in my lifetime, the fuel efficiency is either triple, based on an engine, or no gas tax at all because I am using electricity. This is what has happened. You go back to 1975, Mr. Speaker, this is the average miles per gallon that passenger cars and light trucks were getting. You get into the last half of the last decade, you see that fuel efficiency is driving sharply forward, and the Obama administration wants to drive that fuel efficiency even higher. I am in favor of using private industry to create more efficient solutions. I am in favor of being able to reduce the fuel costs of families across this country. But what that is going to do as families are buying fewer and fewer gallons of gasoline is that the highway trust fund is going to get smaller and smaller and smaller. Take a look at what has happened with the highway trust fund, Mr. Speaker. Beginning back in, I would say, the early 1990s, when folks were buying lots of gasoline and fuel costs were relatively low, the economy was doing well. We were running a trust fund surplus. Again, all of this gas tax money is coming in from all of these sources. We were spending it on those priorities that we have in the Interstate Highway System. Some of those priorities were building new interstate highways, some of those priorities were maintaining old interstate highways, some of those priorities were simply widening part of the Interstate Highway System. But we operated with a bit of a surplus in the transportation trust fund. The reason this conversation has to happen today, Mr. Speaker, is that folks are returning to their districts for 2 weeks, where they are going to be hearing from folks who are sitting in that traffic, where they are going to be hearing from folks whose contracts to build those highways are about to expire. They are going to hear from their Governors and their state legislators who are no longer able to let the contracts for needed projects. Why? Because the money is expiring in 2 months. We are starting to run a trust fund deficit. There is not enough money coming in to meet the current needs. Mr. Speaker, I don't really enjoy talking about the current needs. I didn't run for Congress to be in the maintenance business. I ran for Congress to be in the transformation business. I am more than a little embarrassed that what we are talking about here is, How do we maintain and improve the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. Eisenhower was long gone from office before I was even born. We are talking about how to maintain this infrastructure. I would like to be in the driverless car infrastructure business. I would like to be in the hypersonic jet infrastructure business. But where we are, because the calendar dictates it, is: How do we continue to maintain safe highways just 2 months from now? You can't see these tick marks, Mr. Speaker, but we are talking about in the ballpark of $50 billion a year that goes into this effort, thousands and thousands and thousands of miles of interstate highways around the country, about $50 billion a year. The deficits are running down ultimately, by the end of our 10-year budget window, to almost $130 billion in highway deficits. We have to find a way to meet those needs. We had a hearing in our committee just the other day, the Transportation Committee, Mr. Speaker, and I want to quote the mayor of Salt Lake City. He was there on behalf of the National League of Cities. This is not a notoriously conservative organization. Mayors are a practical bunch by nature. They have to respond to the needs of all of their citizens. They are a relatively liberal bunch by nature. But he says this: I can tell you as someone who has spent a career working as a NEPA planner and lawyer that what has happened with what I view as an absolutely great environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act, is truly unfortunate. We have gone from processes that should be a year or year and a half to processes that are 5 to 7 years in many big transportation projects. NEPA is the Environmental Policy Act. That is what federally regulates all environmental decisions across the country, particularly as it relates to construction. Time is money, Mr. Speaker, in transportation projects. There is not a Member in this Chamber who wants to see environmental degradation in this country. There is not a Member in this Chamber who wants to see the sky is less blue or the grass less green. Every Member in this Chamber cares about children and grandchildren and the next generation. But here we have an advocate for the environmental protection laws that are available to us in this country and he says: Something has gone awry. We wrote this wonderful law in order to protect our environment, but now, instead of being able to complete needed projects in a year or 18 months, with litigation, special interest groups, these processes get dragged on for 5, 6, or 7 years, and that time means more money out of the highway trust fund in order to complete that project. So what are we going to do, Mr. Speaker, about these coming trust fund deficits? Well, one thing we can do is help to address the policy failures that are delivering less than a dollar's worth of value to my constituents and your constituents for their dollar's worth of gas tax. If I could build a project today with that dollar, I could get a dollar's worth of value out of it, if I have to litigate the issue for 7 years, the value of that dollar is going to erode. I am going to have to waste that dollar on litigation costs. We can change the law, and we can do so in a bipartisan way that absolutely respects all of our commitments to environmental protection but allows us to complete these needed taxes. Because I will tell you what doesn't help global warming, Mr. Speaker, and that is folks sitting on Atlanta highways for an hour every day not moving. If you are concerned about the use of fossil fuels in this country, I promise you that having people move slower in Atlanta is not helping. We need those folks to be able to move more quickly to their goal. We will reduce emissions as a result. What else can we do, Mr. Speaker, as a body? What I have here--and I just chose the State of Georgia because it is that area that I know best--these are the Georgia statewide designated freight corridors. I live right up here, just outside of Atlanta, Mr. Speaker. I am right off I-85. That is Interstate 85, Federal Interstate 85, and that is designated as a freight corridor. Our use of the roads is not just to get to and from the grocery store, of course, not just to get to and from school, but for farmers to get their produce from Iowa to our grocery store, for manufacturers to get their products from the computer factory in California to our schools. We had a national interest in these freight corridors. One of these freight corridors runs out I-16. It runs out to the Port of Savannah. The Port of Savannah, Mr. Speaker, I don't know if you know, it is the fastest-growing container port in the country, a container port being those ports that specialize in getting those 18- wheeler cargo containers off the ships, onto a chassis, delivering goods to where they need to go. Fastest-growing container port in the country, it sits out here at the end of I-16. We have major construction projects to get all the product off those ships out across the southeastern United States. So this map of red lines, Mr. Speaker, represents not only interstate highways, but also some major Federal roads. I have got U.S. 1 listed here. U.S. 1, Mr. Speaker, as you may know, runs about, golly, about 2\1/2\ miles from this building. About 2\1/2\ miles west from this building you are going to hit U.S. 1. U.S. 1 runs all the way down the eastern coast, from the great Northeast all the way down to Florida. It is a Federal transportation corridor. What is not on this list, Mr. Speaker, for example, is U.S. Highway 29. It runs right past my house in Gwinnett County. It is a U.S. highway, and it consumes U.S. transportation dollars. While once upon a time it was a major corridor for moving nationally important equipment--freight, produce--today, it has become a sidebar. My question is: If we are limited with our dollars, can we be more discriminating in choosing which roads have national importance? I told you the tale of Forsyth County, which I represent, Mr. Speaker, and of its having the $200 million bond initiative to expand its major highway. Georgia 400 is its major highway. We don't need the Federal Government to take care of every single square inch of pavement in this country. When we talked about establishing postal roads in 1787, there was kind of the understanding that--of course, they had not contemplated pavement at all--if this were going to be a major maintained thoroughfare, we might have a Federal interest in it--not so anymore. I talked about U.S. 1, Mr. Speaker. U.S. 1 is right out here, about 2\1/2\ miles away, but it is just between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. The Federal Government, with Federal tax dollars that are collected from all across the Nation, maintains three separate Federal roads. We maintain the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, which is a National Park Service road. We take care of U.S. 1, and we take care of Interstate 95. Those roads are never more than 5 miles from each other; yet, because tradition dictates it, we are spending national dollars to maintain three relatively duplicative pieces of highway. We have got to have that conversation. Maybe there is a reason unbeknownst to me why it is we can't just maintain one of those roads and why we have to maintain them all. The Federal Government doesn't have to do everything for everybody, Mr. Speaker. We just have to make sure that those interstate corridors are being maintained, that those primary nationally designated freight corridors are being maintained. It is okay to leave the rest for communities and States to handle. I want to give you an example. I am not picking on anybody in particular. These projects go on all across the country, Mr. Speaker. You can see someone's home right here. They have got some holly bushes out in front and a little maple tree here that has been planted on the right-of-way. What you see here are brand-new curbs and sidewalks and about a 3\1/2\-foot bike lane that we spent a million Federal dollars to build. Now, assuming this family wants a giant curb and a big sidewalk and a bike lane in their front yard, I am glad they were able to get it. I am glad that we are planting maple trees in the right-of-way there. We are not quite mowing the grass in that space, but I hope the community is going to take on that challenge. This is not a major freight corridor. This is not an Interstate Highway System. This is a small, small road somewhere in America that $1 million worth of Federal taxpayer dollars are going to in order to beautify a street. Mr. Speaker, it comes from a program called the Transportation Alternatives Program. Over the last 2 years, that has been more than $1 billion going towards these kinds of projects, almost $2 billion. Let me tell you what kinds of big, important Federal projects are kind of rising to that constitutional level of building post roads for commerce. Anything that you build that relates to a sidewalk counts. Anything that you create relating to bicycle infrastructure counts. Traffic calming techniques--I don't know what a traffic calming technique is, but if you can identify one, Mr. Speaker, we can pay for it out of this multibillion-dollar trust fund. The construction of turnouts, overlooks, and viewing areas--Mr. Speaker, you do not want to be behind me when I am riding through a national park. You do not want to be behind me while I am going down that beautiful highway in Virginia that is running all the way down to the great State of Georgia because I am driving slowly, sucking it all in, and am turning in to every turnout along the way and am taking pictures. I love a good drive, particularly in the fall, but I promise you I do not need one taxpayer dollar paying for one turnout on one highway so that I can get a better picture. We have got an entire Georgia transportation and tourism board, Mr. Speaker. If we need a turnout in the great State of Georgia, if it is going to bring more tourist traffic to our area, if it is going to allow us to put in a small restaurant where folks can stop and eat and enjoy our beautiful scenery, we will build that because tourists will demand it, and it will grow our economy. At a time when trust fund dollars have been eroded by inflation, at a time when we know we don't have enough money coming in to maintain our current Interstate Highway System, at a time that we are talking about raising taxes on the American consumer in order to provide those resources, isn't it also time to end the non-Federal priority spending that is currently embedded in the Federal gas tax, like turnouts? Mr. Speaker, one of the projects that was built with that multibillion-dollar trust fund was down in the great State of Georgia. It is called the Silver Comet Trail. The truth is that we only have one really good, long bike trail in the entire metropolitan Atlanta area. It is the Silver Comet Trail, and it is fabulous. It is absolutely fabulous. If you go out there on any beautiful day, you are going to have joggers; you are going to have walkers; you are going to have bike riders; folks are going to be pushing strollers. It is a festival of humanity there on that bike trail. It is a wonderful, wonderful way to spend your day. We spent 3.7 million Federal dollars so that my neighbors and I could have a fabulous biking and walking trail in our backyard. It was not my idea. I was not in Congress at the time. We have got to ask ourselves: Is it worth raising taxes on the American driver and on American industry, which uses our roads, so that more local communities can build more fabulous bike trails in their own backyards? I don't ask my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, whether bike trails are valuable or not. I believe them to be so. I ask my colleagues whether or not metropolitan Atlanta, which is the most prosperous major metropolitan city in the entire Southeastern United States, can afford to build its own bike trails or whether or not we need to call on the rest of the Nation to aid us in that effort. Mr. Speaker, I have got another project here. It was only $60,000. Isn't that sad when we get to this place where we start talking about projects that are only thousands and thousands of dollars? When you are managing a $3.8 trillion budget, Mr. Speaker, it is hard to keep track of the thousands. That is why we don't want a big Federal budget. We don't want to be in the business of wasting money. $60,000 went to a project called Ped Flag. Now, this is in a small downtown area out West, and there is a crosswalk going across the street, and folks are concerned about pedestrian safety. There are pedestrian tragedies every year in this country and every year in my community. We certainly want to do everything we can to stop them. The $60,000 Ped Flag program goes to each end of a crosswalk, and it puts yellow flags in big buckets on each end of the crosswalk, Mr. Speaker, so that, when you are prepared to walk across the street, you can grab one of these flags, and you can wave it as you cross the street. The street is two lanes, but you can wave it as you cross those two lanes to make sure that drivers coming down that low speed limit thoroughfare don't run into you. I think that is fabulous. I like a good parade, Mr. Speaker, and I love waving flags. My question to you is: With all of the challenges facing this Chamber--we have got Social Security that is going bankrupt; we have got Medicare that is going bankrupt; we live in a dangerous world with ISIS and Russia and Iran--is it the priority for the tax dollars that we have been entrusted with--really, that we have confiscated from the American people--to spend 60,000 of those tax dollars to have buckets of flags on both sides of a two-lane street so that pedestrians can wave them as they cross? If folks love parades as much as I do, Mr. Speaker, that local community can put those flags in place. A Federal grant program is not necessary to do so. I have got an article here, Mr. Speaker, from just last month. It is talking about this program that allows these grant dollars to go out for all of these non-high-priority Federal purposes. They cite a $112,000 grant for a white squirrel sanctuary. Mr. Speaker, I have nothing against white squirrels. I will slow down when I am driving as the gray squirrels in my community cross the street, but I have no interest in confiscating Federal tax dollars that were intended to maintain a critically important national highway infrastructure and having a local community who views that as free money spend it to create a white squirrel sanctuary. Mr. Speaker, these dollars are going to build boardwalks in our beach communities. They are going to resurface bike trails. They are even going to buy driving simulators at car museums because that is kind of peripherally related to transportation. In my day, Mr. Speaker, it was just that Atari 2600 on which you could do the night driving program. Today, we can spend 198,000 Federal gas tax dollars to buy driving simulators to go into museums so that, when folks come by--after they have driven on the ratty roads that were unmaintained to get to the museum--they can have a wonderful driving experience inside the federally taxpayer paid simulator. Mr. Speaker, I don't fault museums for wanting simulators. I don't fault communities for wanting bike trails. I don't fault communities for wanting flag-waving crosswalks. I fault this Congress for facing a fiscal challenge of: How do we complete our constitutional responsibility to maintain our roads and to even have the discussion of raising tax dollars before we have completed making the current accounts more effective, more efficient, and more accountable? Mr. Speaker, I do not value Members who simply talk about everything that is wrong and who make no recommendations about how to fix it. We need to narrow the number of roads that qualify for Federal support. We need to prioritize what are those roads that fall into that constitutional responsibility and which ones, obviously, do not. Prioritize that spending. Take care of only those mission critical roads. Leave the rest to local communities. Two, deal with our environmental regulations that are slowing needed construction, not abolish our environmental regulations, not ignore our environmental stewardship responsibilities, but recognize that advocates for the environment, advocates for the NEPA Act--as the mayor of Salt Lake City suggested, even those advocates realize we have gone far afield from what was intended as we have years of expense and delay for projects that we ought to be able to complete in a year and in 18 months. Let's streamline that. That is two. Three, take all of these feel-good projects that every one of us has heard of in our districts--those projects that don't have anything to do with major national thoroughfares, those projects that don't have anything to do with our constitutional responsibility to maintain our interstate corridors--and abolish those altogether. Mr. Speaker, they did a poll the other day amongst young people in this country. Young people, of course, when you get your first job at 16, you get that paycheck, you thought you were making $8 an hour. It turns out after the government gets its share you are only making about $5 an hour. We find out we get lots of new voters when they get their first paycheck because folks realize the importance of having your voice heard. The largest tax that 80 percent of American families pay, Mr. Speaker, is that payroll tax that is taken out of that paycheck before you even see it, that FICA line in your paycheck. The largest tax that 80 percent of American families pay, it goes to fund Social Security and Medicare; and yet in a recent poll among young people, more American young people believed they would see a UFO in their lifetime than believed they would see a Social Security check in their lifetime. Mr. Speaker, you cannot break promises to taxpayers in that way. We have serious responsibilities in this Chamber. They do not include feel-good projects in local communities. They do not include squirrel sanctuaries, flag-waving projects, and boardwalk resurfacings. What they include is maintaining those mission-critical interstate corridors. As we gather together to reauthorize the surface transportation bill, as we gather together to sort out the diminishing value of the highway trust fund, let us come together to restore some of that faith with the American taxpayer that we will be accountable, that we will be efficient, and that we will be effective in the use of every one of their taxpayer dollars. We cannot ask them for more until we have proven to them that we have used responsibly what they sent to us yesterday. Mr. Speaker, we have talked transportation on the surface level. I want to briefly talk transportation at a port level. I mentioned the port of Savannah, Mr. Speaker, that fastest growing container port in the world. You can't see it here on the map, but I have got one of those container ships coming into the port of Savannah, just loaded full. These giant cranes, it is amazing how quickly they can load and unload these giant container ships. Funding for these kind of nationally important projects, these kind of projects that deliver value to the American taxpayer, that allow them to get the goods and products that they want from around the globe into their local markets for a lower cost--we are dredging the Savannah River right now in order to expand the Savannah harbor, this port, so that it can handle the New Panamax ships that are going to come through the new Panama Canal. These ships are giant, Mr. Speaker. If you haven't been to see them, you should take a look. They can bring in the order of three times more cargo in one ship. When you are taking a multiweek voyage across the Pacific Ocean, that is a big deal. This project is going to cost $706 million, and it will benefit the entire eastern seaboard in greater value and lower costs. But it is going to benefit Georgia more than it is going to benefit most places. Why? Because we are going to have workers there, because our rest stops are going to be full, because our gasoline stations are going to be full. So the State of Georgia, even though this is a nationally significant project, is funding 40 percent of it out of our local coffers. We believe it is important to put your money where your mouth is. Thinking about those delays that run up costs, we first started talking about doing this in the late 1990s, Mr. Speaker. We finally got Federal approval to begin last year. This was not a $700 million project 17 years ago when we wanted to begin it, but we couldn't begin it 17 years ago. We have only been able to begin it now. About $100 million is going to go out the door, Mr. Speaker, to get this project under way. If all goes well, we can finish this in about 5 years, but we are going to have to have that Federal-State partnership. For these projects that are not uniquely Federal, for these projects that are not uniquely State, we need both entities putting skin in the game to make these projects successful. Mr. Speaker, what we are talking about is about $100 million from the State coming this year, about $100 million from the Feds coming next year. What I want to ask my colleagues, as we talk about how to prioritize funding, how can we get together to squeeze out those projects that are of local import--and leave those to local dollars and local concerns--and include these projects that are of national import to make sure we get them done on time and under budget? Mr. Speaker, back-of-the-envelope calculating that folks doing the construction at the port have done tell us that it is about $174 million annually in lost benefits as this project is delayed--lost benefits on the one hand, added costs on the other. I am always skeptical when somebody says: Rob, if you will only spend $1 on this project, I will get you $18 in return. I say: Good news. We have got an $18 trillion Federal debt. Let me give you $1 trillion for your project this year; you can give me back $18 trillion next year. A lot of funny numbers go on in this Washington, D.C., math game that folks play. But, undeniably, if we cannot compete at a local level, if American products begin to cost more to export relative to their foreign competitors because we can't handle the big Panamax ships, American workers will lose; American consumers will lose. These are national priorities that bring people together. I want to set expectations, Mr. Speaker, on how we are going to get this done. Again, I want to go back. 1996 was when we first had this conversation, completed the very first study of getting this done; the very first conditional approval at the Federal level, 1999. In 2012, folks finally made the decision; South Carolina and Georgia sorted out their issues in May of 2013; final project permits came out in July of 2013; State of Georgia, Johnny on the spot, funding it with $266 million. Another round of bond initiatives will go out this summer. Mr. Speaker, 2019 is when this project is expected to be done. A project that could have started in 1997, a project that could have been done by 2003, a project that could have been a nation-leading project so that American goods could get out to the world in a competitive way as the new Panama Canal comes on line for us to be ready to go as a nation, what could have been a story of planning ahead and of success has become a story of decades-long delay and being behind. Mr. Speaker, those are not academic conversations. Those are conversations that are represented with dollars and cents. It is American jobs lost; it is American productivity lost; it is international competitiveness lost. Item after item after item after item. We are in the midst of a surface transportation reauthorization bill and our highway trust fund; we are in the midst of an FAA reauthorization bill and our aviation funding mechanisms. Hopefully, we will be back to a water resources development bill again, as we were last year, dealing with developing our water resources. The question in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, is never will we be involved in generating American productivity or will we not. The question is we will be involved, but on what and how. Let us move these low-priority projects off of the Federal budget, off of the Federal taxpayer, and back into local hands, where they can be accomplished more quickly and more efficiently at a lower dollar cost. Before we decide to raise taxes on the American people, let us ensure that every single dollar that we raise today is giving a dollar's worth of value for a dollar's worth of tax. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. We have big things in store for this year. They will be collaborative things. These are not Republican concerns; these are not Democratic concerns; these are American concerns. These are concerns of America's most deliberative and engaging body, the United States House of Representatives. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to say to my friend from Massachusetts I know he cares deeply about these issues; and, candidly, this House is a better House because of his leadership on these issues. Just this year, we are going to spend four times more on interest on our national debt than feeding families through the Food Stamp program. An unbalanced budget is eroding those opportunities to invest in people. I am certain that we would come together to invest in Americans. I am certain that we care. I will concede the gentleman cares. I won't concede he cares more than I do about lifting folks up and taking them to the next rung of that ladder. Our debt and our deficit are eroding those opportunities to come together.

Mr. WOODALL. I thank the gentlewoman. Candidly, I am certainly on the other side of that issue. I understand that somebody is going to win and somebody is going to lose, but I think the process is always better when we allow everyone's ideas to come to the floor, and that is one of the things this rule does, and I am very grateful that we have been able to do that. I thank my friend. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), a member of the Rules Committee, a member of the Budget Committee, and a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friend from New York that I have no further requests for time, and I would ask my friend if she has further requests for time.

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

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds just to ask the gentlewoman from California, I understand why she objects to the Republican budget. What I don't understand is why she objects to the rule. We have made every single budget that any Member of Congress asked to be made in order, we made that in order. Could the gentlewoman tell me why she opposes the rule? I will be happy to yield to the gentlewoman from California.

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

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Chairman, I thank my chairman for yielding me the time. It has been a great privilege to work with Chairman Tom Price on the Committee on the Budget. I was down here earlier bringing the rule to the floor, but I was trying to defend a rule that was going to allow all the ideas. Now we actually get to talk about which ideas are the good ideas. That is why I wanted to come down here and speak. I heard my friend from Maryland speak with such passion and conviction on Medicaid, and I share his passion, and I know his conviction to be true. But if we do nothing, interest payments alone are going to be larger than the entire Medicaid budget. We have six different budgets that we can consider down here on the House floor. Three of them balance; three of them never, ever do. I was listening to what the chairman said earlier. He said: I do not concede any of the discussion from the other side about whether or not this budget balances or not. But the point is at least we are trying. Even if you are right that the numbers don't work out, even if the economic circumstances change, we have as a goal ending this wasted taxpayer resource, which is interest to our creditors. It dwarfs everything--everything. It is larger than the defense budget. It is larger than the Medicaid budget. It is five times larger than the education budget, five times larger than the transportation budget. Whatever it is you care about, whatever investments in America you want to make, by failing to commit yourself to a balanced budget today, you are trading away those opportunities. Every dollar borrowed today is a tax increase on children and grandchildren or a benefit cut for children and grandchildren. I could not be prouder. When faced with a deteriorating economic situation, where every year the CBO says we are constraining growth more and more and more, it has been the hardest year since I have been here to balance the budget. Our chairman said: If it is a big challenge, I want it in my committee. And he has done it. It is a partnership in that committee. I have great respect for the ranking member from Maryland and his leadership of that committee as well. We are trading it all away. Balance this budget. Let's do it together; let's do it responsibly. But let it not be a question of whether or not we do it; let it be a question of when we do it. We will have that debate together. I thank my chairman.