Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. So, as the gentlelady from New York was talking about some of these important pieces of legislation coming to the floor, you're saying, if the House appoints conferees and if the Senate appoints conferees, we can get together and bring legislation back to the House for every piece of legislation that she has on her agenda?

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words of my colleague from Georgia. He was the president of this freshman class that the American people elected in 2010, about 99 new Members, mostly Republicans, but Democrats as well. It was one of the largest freshman classes we've had in history. I remember when the President spoke those words that my colleague from Georgia just quoted, when he said by the end of his first term he was going to cut the deficit in half. I remember chuckling just a little bit and thinking what a low bar to set, having run such a huge campaign as he ran in 2007 and 2008, just to cut the deficit in half. I thought we could do better. I didn't realize at the time, of course, that we were going to begin, during the Obama administration, running the highest budget deficits in American history. Formerly, the Bush deficits had been the highest deficits in American history. Of course, President Obama took those deficits not just to that level, not to just twice that level, not to just three times that level, but almost four times the level of what were formerly the highest deficits in American history. This campaign, Mr. Speaker, he spent the entire campaign campaigning on raising taxes on the 1 percent. He said he had a mandate to do that because he talked about that for 2 years and folks elected him President, and they did. Candidly, Mr. Speaker, that's not a new idea. I show you here this red line, which represents the tax burden, the bills that the top 1 percent of America pays; this blue line represents the bills that the 80 percent of the rest of us pay. It goes back to 1979 and Jimmy Carter. You will see that every single President in my lifetime has gone with that tried-and-true formula of asking the top 1 percent to pay more. Every President in my lifetime has gone with the tried-and-true formula of telling the American voter that they can have all the government they want, and they won't have to pay for it. In fact, as we sit here today, Mr. Speaker, the last year for which the Congressional Budget Office has numbers, the bottom 80 percent of America, most of us, pays only 6 percent of the income tax burden in America. Eighty percent of us pay 6 percent of the burden. The top 1 percent today are paying 39 percent of the burden. Mr. Speaker, raising taxes on people is easy. In fact, if we give the President every nickel that he wants in tax increases, it doesn't even solve 1 month of deficits in this Congress, not 1 month. In fact, it solves about two-thirds of 1 month, and that's if we don't spend any of it. And as the Minority Leader just so eloquently said, he wants to spend a lot of it on investment in this country. So this whole discussion, this whole business of tax increases that the President spent 2 years building a mandate for, solves less than 1 month of the problem. Mr. Speaker, my challenge today to the White House, to my friends on the left: Make it hard on me as a freshman conservative. Make it hard. Lay out those tax increases right beside solutions to the real problem, which is spending, and make those spending reductions so large and so powerful and so helpful to the American economy that I'll have no choice but to agree to your tax increases so that we can save the country by solving the real problem, which is spending. There is no leadership, Mr. Speaker, in raising taxes on the 1 percent. We've been doing it for a long time. The problem in this town is spending, and we have yet to see the leadership from the White House on that problem. If we give them everything they want, it solves less than 1 month of the deficit. We, Republicans and Democrats, Congress and the White House, owe the American people so much better. Let's not kick the can down the road. Let's do it right now in these discussions.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hour, and I appreciate you being here with us this afternoon. You know, it seems like just yesterday to me that you and I showed up here on Capitol Hill. It was that giant freshman class of 2010, and golly we came to do something. I remember back in freshman orientation, folks hadn't even been sworn in yet and they were already trying to get focused on what the first votes in January 2011 would be about and the constant noise in the room was about how do we make a difference, how do we make it matter. This was a freshman class full of people who didn't come because they wanted a business card that says ``Congressman.'' They didn't come because this was just part of a career path they had been planning since they were kids. They came because they were men and women, moms and dads, small business owners, big business employees, folks from back home who said: golly, the country is in trouble, and if we don't have leadership who's willing to stand up and do the right thing for the right reasons, this country might just go over the edge. There were 99 of us, Mr. Speaker. You remember. It was Republicans and Democrats. Now, there were more of us as Republicans than there were of them, but we came together in those early days to say: What can we do to make a difference? Mr. Speaker, you can't see it here, but I have a chart of our spending as a percent of the share of our economy and tax revenue as a percent of the share of our economy. Now, Mr. Speaker, what you see on the chart with the green line is historical tax revenue. What you see is, going back to World War II, going back to the mid-1940s, that it really has not mattered in the history of this Nation whether the top tax rate was 90 percent as it was before the Kennedy years, or 70 percent as it was at the beginning of the Kennedy years, or 28 percent as it was in the Reagan years. It really has not mattered what the top bracket is. All Americans are willing to give to government is about 18 percent of GDP. It turns out, Mr. Speaker--this will be no surprise to you--it turns out Americans are pretty smart. If what you decide, as the Federal Government, is we're going to tax this behavior, well, Americans start engaging in this other behavior instead. If what you say is, no, I'm going to tax that behavior, they say, well, that's okay, I'll go do this instead. Americans are pretty smart, and they change their behavior to maximize the benefit for themselves and their families, their kids and their grandkids. So, going back--just a historical truth--through modern American history, post-World War II history, no matter what we've done with the Tax Code, Americans have only contributed about 18 percent of GDP. That distinguishes it, Mr. Speaker, from our spending trajectory in this country. Now, on the chart I have our spending in red. Historical spending is represented by this jagged line. Projected future spending is that big smooth line that rises right off the chart. This red line, Mr. Speaker, represents what happens to Federal spending if we do nothing. That's important. What does it mean to do nothing? What I mean is, if we were to close down the White House tomorrow and not sign one new law; if we were to close down the U.S. House of Representatives tomorrow and not pass one new law; if we were to close the United States Senate--and I know what you're thinking, Mr. Speaker, you're thinking we're not going to be able to tell much difference there anyway, that's not true--if we close the United States Senate and pass not one new bill through the United States Senate, this trajectory of spending is what faces America. This trajectory of spending is what happens if we do nothing. Mr. Speaker, there is no set of circumstances, not a historical set of circumstances, not a set of circumstances that we could conjure up where we could possibly raise enough money through the Tax Code to pay for the spending that this Congress, past Congresses, this President, past Presidents have promised the American people. Here's the thing, Mr. Speaker: you and I are lovers of freedom, so we would never propose such a plan; but if we were to go out today and nationalize everything, if we were to put a 100 percent tax on every American worker in this land, if we were to put a 100 percent tax on every business in this land, if we were to take everything from everybody--their house, their business, their stocks, their bonds--if we were to sell every business in America at the auction block, if we took it all, the present value of that wealth would not be enough to pay the future promises that Presidents and Congresses have made. We are in a spending-driven crisis. The question is: How do you tackle that, Mr. Speaker? Candidly, coming up with a clever idea to raise taxes is pretty easy. You just look at what taxes are today, and you say let's make them higher tomorrow. It doesn't take a lot of thoughtfulness to put that together. We can all agree on a plan that has the number that taxes are today and we make that number higher tomorrow. That's not an intellectual challenge. It's the wrong tax policy, and we see it in the President's budget from 2012. I tell every town hall meeting, Mr. Speaker, that I have, every audience that's there that I appreciate this President. I appreciate this President because the law of the land is that every year the President of the United States will submit to the Congress his or her proposed budget, and every year this President has been in office he has done exactly that. That's important, because a budget is a statement of your values, Mr. Speaker. You know that. I mean, when we talk about where we're going to spend the tax dollars that we take in, what those priorities are, that tells us what our values are. When we talk about how much money we're going to take from the American people--who those folks are who are going to have to pay more, who those folks are who are going to have to pay less--we talk about our values. So every single year the President has put his values statement forward. Now, that distinguishes him from a body that has disappointed me so terribly much, Mr. Speaker, in my 2 short years in this Congress, and that's the United States Senate. In the 2 years I've been here, I've never seen a Senate budget. I thought that was odd until I talked to colleagues who had been here longer and they said, actually, Congressman, we haven't seen a budget in almost 4 years from the United States Senate. No budget in 4 years. No statement of values. No statement of solutions. No recognition that there is a problem and then a proposal to make it better. But what I have here, Mr. Speaker, is a chart that represents the President's budget from February. As he has done faithfully for these 4 years in office, he submitted his budget in February that would take us through the 2013 year. In that budget he raised taxes by $2 trillion. Now, that's not a values statement about that. If I were to issue a values statement, I would tell you I don't want taxes to go up by $2 trillion. I think it's a bad plan, I think it's bad for the economy, I think it's bad for the American people. But the President laid that plan out there for the American people to decide. In fact, he ran a campaign on that all spring, all summer and all fall, and the American people sent him back to service for another 4 years. But what you see in his budget, Mr. Speaker, as represented on this chart, is facing $16 trillion in public debt--largest public debt in American history, about $55,000 for every man, woman and child in this country, their burden of the debt, a debt that's threatening to sink our economy. Thank goodness we're the best of all the worst economies in the world, Mr. Speaker, because folks are still investing here. Whenever the rest of the world bounces back, we're going to be in bad, bad shape. You don't know how fast that spiral is going to get started. But the President, looking at that same set of facts that I have just shared and the same set of facts that you and I look at here in this body, Mr. Speaker, he proposed a budget that raised taxes by $2 trillion but increased spending by just as much. Here it is, Mr. Speaker: this white dotted line represents the trajectory of debt accumulation for America. Again, if we do nothing, this is the debt accumulation for America. The red line represents the debt accumulation under the President's budget proposal. And what you see is that in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, under the President's proposed budget, after raising taxes on the American people by $2 trillion, the debt of this Nation actually grows faster than if we had done nothing at all because the President takes all of those tax dollars and spends them on his priorities. Going back to that first chart, Mr. Speaker. The problem that we have in America is not a tax revenue problem; it's a spending problem. And if we refuse to grapple with the spending problem, we'll go nowhere. The President refused to grapple with that spending problem except--and I blew it up on here so that everybody could see it--way out past 2021, kind of between 2021 and 2022, the debt gets just a little bit smaller under the President's plan than it is currently if we do nothing at all. Now my experience in just 2 short years, Mr. Speaker, is that those good things that we promise are going to happen 10 years from now, those tough decisions we promise we are going to make 10 years from now, those never get made. We spend the money in year one, but we never make the cuts in year 10. I don't know if we can count on that at all. But, again, the President is a smart guy. I think he cares about this country. The American people just endorsed him for a second term. His 10-year budget plan does nothing, nothing to improve our deficit trajectory, our debt accumulation over the next 9 years. Which brings us to where we are right now, Mr. Speaker, with this so- called fiscal cliff. It's not really a fiscal cliff. And the truth is, we have a tax decision coming up, and we have a spending decision coming up. And, truthfully, we need to have even more spending decisions coming up. But we're calling it the fiscal cliff. And ``sequester'' is a new word that we brought into the American parlance as a result of that. The sequester, as you recall, Mr. Speaker, was the hammer that we put in place. It was one of the first big votes that you and I took way back in August of 2011. As part of an agreement, the President wanted to raise the debt ceiling. There were bills that needed to be paid. The Speaker of the House, John Boehner, said, We are not going to expand America's credit card until we get serious about curbing spending. And he said to the President, No, Mr. President, I will not raise the limit on America's credit card unless you agree to dollar-for-dollar reductions on the spending side of the ledger so that we're not just making the problem worse; we're creating a pathway to solve the problem altogether. I admire the Speaker for that. And the Speaker and the President agreed on this proposal. It was called the Budget Control Act of 2011. And what it did was it created for the first time ever a little committee here on Capitol Hill, a committee that was going to report language directly to the House floor and the Senate floor--no filibusters, no prevention of it coming by amendments, no monkey business--just directly to the floor for an up- or-down vote. There were six House Members and six Senate Members on this panel. Mr. Speaker, you will recall it was six Republicans and six Democrats, serious men and women on this panel. And they looked at not just the $3.8 trillion annual Federal budget. They looked not just at the more than $50 trillion that would be represented in a 10-year budget. They looked at hundreds of trillions of dollars in Federal spending and commitments over a three-generational window. They worked on it for 3\1/2\ months; and collectively, at the end of the day, they agreed on not $1 in changes. Not $1, not $1. The greatest disappointment of my 2 years here has been the failure of that joint select committee to succeed. Call it politics. I don't know what you want to call it. Again, these were serious men and women. They were tasked with solving our Nation's fiscal crisis, and they failed. So then what? Well, the Speaker had the wisdom back in 2011 to make sure that we were really getting dollar-for-dollar changes on the spending side and on the savings side when we were going to raise the debt limit. And what the Speaker and the President ultimately agreed to was this crazy hammer called the sequester, an across-the-board cut on discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is about one-third of our budget. Mandatory spending--Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest on the national debt, those programs--represents about two-thirds of the spending in the country. But they envisioned this across-the-board cut that would come on discretionary spending--that one-third of our budget--if the joint select committee failed to reach an agreement. And the cuts were designed to be so severe that no self-respecting joint select committee would ever fail to reach an agreement because they needed to prevent these cuts from happening. Well, they didn't reach an agreement, as you know, Mr. Speaker, as history has now told us. And I want to show you where these sequester cuts are coming. As I just talked about, we have discretionary spending. It's broken up into defense and non-defense discretionary spending. And then we have mandatory spending which, again, is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, those mandatory programs where the money goes out the door whether Congress meets or not. Well, look at how we've decided to take control of spending in this agreement, Mr. Speaker. Defense discretionary spending, we all know national security is a constitutional obligation that this Congress has. It is one of the few constitutionally delineated responsibilities this Congress must fulfill. Defense spending represents less than 17 percent of all the spending America does. That means 17 percent of our $3.8 trillion annual budget is defense spending, 17 percent of the spending. But these sequestration cuts, Mr. Speaker, are going to fall 50 percent on the Defense Department. We're asking the Defense Department, our men and women in uniform, to bear the lion's share of that burden. Now, I don't think that's right. I voted in favor of this hammer to take place, this hammer that was going to be so severe and so draconian that no one would ever let it happen. They would sit down at a table and agree, as people who represent America should be able to do. But when they failed and we saw these defense cuts were going to come, we brought out in May of last year--these last-minute negotiations in December drive me crazy, Mr. Speaker. And I want the American people to know--and I know you tell them on a regular basis that it doesn't have to be this way. It was May of 2012--7 months ago-- that this House looked at the size of these defense cuts, looked at the impact it would have on our men and women in uniform and their families, and we said, There's a better way. We didn't kick the can down the road. We didn't say, Oh, let's just put these cuts off altogether; America doesn't really have a spending problem. We don't really need to control that side of the balance sheet. No, we passed a bill in this House in May of this year that didn't just replace the defense spending with smarter cuts on the mandatory side of the ledger but, actually, over time was going to make even bigger reductions in spending, create even larger savings to the American people--savings that we know we have to have if we are to succeed as an economy. And we did that back in May. Now, Mr. Speaker, as you know, the Senate has not passed a proposal to do that very same thing--not in May, not in June, not in July, not this fall. The President hasn't proposed--well, I guess in the proposal he made last week, he said, Well, let's just kick that can down the road for another year. That's not an answer. That's a frequent go-to place that we go to in this body--Republicans and Democrats alike. Let's just kick it down the road for another year. But that's not the answer. You and I know that the time for kicking cans down the road is gone. So in May of this year, we passed this replacement. It has yet to see any action. But I just wanted to be clear. As you know, Mr. Speaker, this body laid a proposal out, detailed line by line by line of how it is that we can both protect our men and women in uniform, continue to serve them and their families, and take our spending responsibilities and our saving responsibilities here seriously. We'll go on here, Mr. Speaker. Non-defense discretionary spending, it represents about 13 percent of that $3.8 trillion annual pot. Where do the spending cuts fall there? This 13.4 percent of the spending is going to have to bear 35.1 percent of the cuts. Golly, that's not going to be easy, Mr. Speaker. I mean, these are programs that folks care about. Take the food stamp program, for example, Mr. Speaker, the SNAP program. That's an important program, and I think we can all agree that there's some waste, there's some fraud, there's some abuse, and there's some things we can fix in that program. We did that in the bill we passed in May. It's an important support program to make sure that the most vulnerable among us are cared for and they can bounce back up. It's one of those programs where we try to reach out, Mr. Speaker, not to prop folks up, but to give them a hand up so that they can succeed. These programs across the board are facing a 35 percent cut. Why is that? In fact, in the 2 years you and I have been here, Mr. Speaker, we've seen discretionary spending start--it started in 2010 at some of the highest levels in American history. You and I, in a bipartisan way, brought it down in 2011, we brought it down again in 2012, and we brought it down again for FY 2013. I open up those newspapers, Mr. Speaker, and folks talk about how there's no agreement here, how it's just folks arguing and fighting with each other. In a bipartisan way, this House, that Senate, and our President have seen discretionary spending drop 3 years in a row. Never before in my lifetime have we seen such a thing. I credit this body with being a driving force in that because we're elected by the American people, who want to see their fiscal books put back in order, but we've succeeded on the discretionary side. Discretionary turns out to be the easier nut to crack because that money doesn't go out the door unless this U.S. House of Representatives acts. That distinguishes it, Mr. Speaker, from mandatory spending. That's the third set of columns on my chart. Mandatory spending, as I said, is two-thirds of our budget, 63.8 percent to be precise. And of all the sequestration cuts, 63.8 percent of the budget is only going to bear 14.4 percent of the pain. The back story there, Mr. Speaker, is that's only 14.4 percent of the pain. As I said, discretionary spending has been on the chopping block in 2011, 2012, and now again in 2013. But mandatory spending we haven't had a single agreement about, and I don't hear the White House talking about it either. The White House put together a group, and it was called the Simpson- Bowles Commission. It was named after Erskine Bowles, who is a former Clinton chief of staff, and Alan Simpson, who is a former Republican senator. They came together in what the President called his deficit- reduction commission to give the President an idea of what we could do to get our fiscal house in order. I just want to show you here on this chart, Mr. Speaker, the chronic deficits that we've had in this country. It goes back to 1970. All of this red ink represents the inflation adjusted--these are all in 2012 dollars. So we're comparing apples to apples all the way across this chart. The deficits that we've had in this country--and you'll see going back to 1970, Mr. Speaker, which happens to be the year of my birth, we've run a deficit every single year through 1998. Do you remember 1998? We had Newt Gingrich leading the first Republican U.S. House of Representatives in modern times. We had Bill Clinton in the White House. They came together to solve some big problems: welfare reform, health insurance reform. Folks forget about health insurance reform for the 1990s. We did away with preexisting conditions, and we did away with all of the impediments in the large group markets, what they call ERISA plans. They had great success back in that area, and they finally got back into some positive territory. To be truthful, this assumes that all the Social Security revenues and the Medicare revenues are getting spent on other projects rather than going in the trust funds and being preserved. We didn't really have a surplus. We were spending Social Security and Medicare revenues to create a surplus, but we did have some better years then. Then we go into the Bush years, and this is important. Of course, 9/ 11 changed the way this country deals with national security. There were a lot of programs going on, much to my surprise, Mr. Speaker. You'll remember we created a brand new Federal department with a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican President. We created a brand new entitlement program in Medicare part D with a Republican House and a Republican President. And we ran during the Bush years--and they're represented right here--we ran at that time what were the largest deficits in American history. The largest deficits in American history were run during the Bush administration with a Republican House, a Republican President, and we began to get a hold of that. Of course, that was after September 11, 2001. Again, we had a dramatic uptick in spending on homeland security concerns, on national security concerns. That's an explanation; it's not an excuse. We reached those massive deficits, the largest deficits in American history, and we began to bring those back down. Enter 2007. From 2007-2008, we had a Republican President in the White House, and we had a Democratic Speaker here in the U.S. House. Spending began to tick back up. And as we entered the Obama years, Mr. Speaker, here is the largest deficit in American history recorded during the Bush administration. This is the annual deficit recorded in the Obama administration. Not twice as large than the largest deficit in American history, not three times as large as the largest deficit in American history, but almost four times larger than the previous largest annual deficit in American history was the first-year deficit recorded in the Obama administration. That was the first time ever that we had run trillion-dollar deficits, and we've continued to run trillion dollar deficits during that time. Tax policy hasn't changed during that time. Tax policy is exactly the same. You hear in the newspaper all the time, Mr. Speaker, about the Bush tax cuts. I don't know that that has meaning anymore. Of course, in 2001 and 2003, we did do some dramatic changes to tax policy. President Obama extended all of those changes in 2010. So that's the law of the land still today. Tax policy has been exactly the same over this continuum. What has changed, Mr. Speaker, is the spending. The reason deficits have grown not one, not two, not three, but almost four times larger than the previous record deficit in American history is not because tax policy has changed--it hasn't. It's because Federal spending policy has changed, and that's what we have to get our arms around here in this body. What I show going forward, Mr. Speaker--I put a little square around the annual budget deficits that have been run during the first 4 years of the Obama administration, but I also project for the Congressional Budget Office--that's the nonpartisan budget planning group we have here on Capitol Hill--what they believe is in store for us in the future if we continue under current policy. That's trillion-dollar deficits going out for years to come. The problem is not tax policy, Mr. Speaker. The problem is spending policy. Can we improve tax policy? You better believe it. Mr. Speaker, you know I'm a cosponsor--in fact, I'm the main sponsor of H.R. 25, The Fair Tax. That's the largest, most popularly cosponsored fundamental tax reform proposal on either the House side or the Senate side. In fact, it's the largest, most popularly cosponsored tax proposal on both sides of the United States Congress. It would fundamentally change the way we tax. We can absolutely improve our tax system. But don't be misled. The problem in America is not bad tax policy. The problem is bad spending policy. We have to move the focus away from taxation, which again has been the same for the last 12 years, and move it towards spending, which has changed dramatically just in the last 4 years. I'm not one just to point the finger of blame, Mr. Speaker. You know, this freshman class came about results. They didn't come about whose fault it was. There is plenty of blame on both sides of the aisle. There is plenty of blame in the Congress and the White House. There is plenty of blame going back decades. But finding a solution is a priority for every man and woman in this body. All 435 men and women in this body are focused on finding a solution. I'm just so proud, Mr. Speaker. I start to grin every time I start to talk about it. When you and I got here in this body, Mr. Speaker, we tackled fundamental spending reform for the first time in my lifetime. And we didn't pass it just once, Mr. Speaker. When we came in in 2011, we passed it twice. This House has passed the only budget to pass anywhere in this town. In the 2 years I've been in Congress, we didn't do it once, we did it twice. We didn't do it one year, we did it both years. And in each, Mr. Speaker, we didn't just complain about those before us who left us a current path of deficit and despair going forward--which is what happens if we fail to tackle our spending concerns--we passed that path to prosperity here in this House of Representatives that provided a solution. Not a solution 10 years from now, not a solution 5 years from now, but a solution that begins to administer tough love because that's the only kind that is left here, in year one. You can't kick the cans down the road. You have to take these challenges head on. But it's not just about the blame. Again, Mr. Speaker, there are solutions. We proposed that solution in the Ryan budget. I say the ``Ryan budget.'' I'm proud of him. He's my chairman. I sit on the Budget Committee. It was actually a very cooperative process. He laid out his ideas. He had this great committee of Democrats and Republicans there who gave input, who made changes. We passed that bill in the Budget Committee. We then brought it to the House floor, and we had a free-for-all in which every Member of the House who wanted to introduce a budget could introduce a budget, and there were several. Hear that. Every man and woman in this body who thought he had a better way to solve America's fiscal crisis could introduce a budget, and many of them did. Only one of those budgets passed this body. That's now the House budget--passed not once but twice--which provided real solutions. Here is our spending represented in a different way because there are so many red herrings in this body. I want to say, Mr. Speaker, if you'd help me spread the word with my colleagues on the left, I say this from the heart. You know, we get down here, I'm on the Rules Committee, and I often handle the Rules debates here on the floor. It gets kind of toxic from time to time. Folks are trying to make their points. Everybody has got his talking points. It turns into an argument instead of a discussion about how to make America better. I do hope in this coming time, whether we use Special Order time to do it or whether we use some time off the floor to do it, that we will find an opportunity to have more of a discussion, because the facts are what the facts are. We ought to be able to agree on what the facts are, and then we ought to be able to disagree about what those solutions are. We ought to be able to question each other's judgment without questioning each other's motivations, and I hope we'll be able to spend some time on that. I heard folks say, Mr. Speaker, Oh, the problem is that global war on terror. It's all those war-fighting efforts. That's what has put us in this deficit circumstance that we're in. This blue represents base spending going back to 2002. I started it right there when the wars began. This yellow line represents the spending that was done on the global war on terror. It's a big number because our commitment to our men and women in uniform is unequivocal. We stand behind the men and women who have been asked by their Commander in Chief to go overseas and defend our freedom and to protect our Nation. We defend them here in this House, unequivocally, with our budget votes, but it's a small number compared to all the other spending that goes on. Clearly, this yellow line is not what has created our trillion-dollar budget deficits--the largest budget deficits in American history by a factor of 4. It's the base spending that does that. Here are the financial bailouts. I would have voted ``no'' on those bailouts had I been here, Mr. Speaker. You and I were not, but it wasn't the financial bailouts. As good or bad as they were, they're just this little green line right here. That is not what created these massive deficits. It's this giant blue line here. Then, finally, there was the 2009 stimulus bill, which is, actually, the largest portion here in the recent history of what we're spending on. We spent more on the stimulus bill than we spent on our men and women fighting two wars overseas. But even that is not responsible for this continuing growing line of Federal spending. We're spending more than we've ever spent before. In fact, in the 10 years from 2012 to 2022--again, if we do nothing, Federal spending is expected to rise by 33 percent. I don't know if your salary is expected to rise by 33 percent, Mr. Speaker, if you're working in middle America. I know my community's salaries are not. This is 33 percent the size and scope of government, and the President is proposing to grow it more, to spend more. The problem isn't tax policy. The problem is spending. We hear a lot about fairness, and I want to talk a little bit about that now. I'm going to switch to tax policy because that's what everybody seems to be obsessed with in the media, and I want to make sure we dispel some of the myths of what's going on there. I went to Dictionary.com, as I'm apt to do, and I printed out what ``fair'' is. They said: ``(1) Free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice'' as their first definition. ``(2) Legitimately sought, pursued, done, given, etc.; proper under the rules.'' Fair. I think we all support fairness--in fact, I'm certain that we do--but I'm absolutely certain that what President Obama believes is ``fairness'' is very different from what the people whom I represent believe is ``fairness.'' What I've brought here, Mr. Speaker, is a chart from the Joint Committee on Taxation. That's the group here on Capitol Hill that is in charge of measuring all the tax policies. It's a nonpartisan group, and they just try to tell you what the facts are about tax policy. This chart represents what the facts were in 2010 about the taxes and tax rates. That was the most recent year for which they had a study. It counts all the tax returns turned in in America. There were 155 million of them. There were 155 million tax returns turned in in America. Adjusted gross income, that's not actually your total income--it's a machination you go through there on your tax returns--but we break it out into different categories. Out of 155 million tax returns turned in, just under 6 million reported an income of $200,000 or above. What's even more interesting, though, is the number of returns below $10,000 because we're going to talk about fairness. As for those folks with tax returns under $10,000, I don't think there is a man or a woman in this body, Mr. Speaker, who believes that if there are families of four trying to get by on $10,000 that they don't need some help, because they're not going to be able to make it. I pinch pennies as tight as anybody can. Everything I get is free with a rebate from Walgreens, from CVS, OfficeMax, and right on down the line. I've not met a sale that I won't travel to. That's tough to do in today's economy, $10,000, so that's why it's so interesting. Look out here. Of the almost 21 million tax returns filed, only 14 of them ended up having a tax associated with them, and 425,000 were itemized. I want you to think about that, Mr. Speaker. Most Americans don't itemize on their taxes. They have what is called the standard exemption, the standard deduction. Most Americans take that, even homeowners. Of course, the mortgage interest deduction is the largest itemized deduction that most American families take, followed by the charitable deduction, but most American families don't itemize at all. So you have to ask yourself, Mr. Speaker: Who are the folks who are reporting under $10,000 a year in income who are doing all this itemizing? Look at that ratio: Taxable returns to itemized returns, it's about 30-1. Even down here among the richest of Americans, Mr. Speaker, it's 1-1. So, 30-1. Folks are gaming this Tax Code to participate not at all in the funding of our government. When we get together here to try to think about how we take care of the poorest among us, when we get together here to think about how to reach out to those less fortunate among us, we look at this category. Sure, folks making under $10,000 a year, don't they need our help? I tell you, if they're itemizing because they're doing such clever, crazy things on the Tax Code that the standard deduction and the standard exemption are not good enough for them, and if they're going to maximize their returns even more so they can get to zero, those folks are not the ones who need our help. We need to consider that in the context of fairness: 155 million returns with 6 million of them over $200,000 a year. We're in a Republic, Mr. Speaker--some folks say ``democracy.'' Obviously, it's a Republic--but the majority can rule here. I'm just doing the math in my head. If there are 155 million people filing tax returns but only 6 million of them are making more than $200,000 a year, I'm pretty sure that I can find 51 percent who say, Let's not tax us, but let's tax them instead. I want you to think about that in the context of fairness. Just in the spirit of full disclosure, Mr. Speaker, I'm not in the 1 percent. I have aspirations one day to make it into the 1 percent, but I'm not in the 1 percent. I never have been in my adult working life. I don't think I'm going to make it in anytime soon, but I aspire to fiscal success. I hope I have those good ideas that folks want to pay for. I hope that, by the sweat of my brow and by the power of my work ethic, I can generate some wealth, but I'm not part of the ``them'' who folks want to tax. I'm part of the ``us'' who folks don't want to tax and who are going to get a free ride in this proposal from the President. I want to talk about that in the context of fairness. Let me tell you something you may not know, Mr. Speaker. Jimmy Carter was the last President from the great State of Georgia, so I'm going to start in the last of the Carter years, 1979. What I have here on this chart is the percentage of all Federal income tax liability paid by citizens of the United States of America, what are we doing as citizens of America to pay for our government. And in the last year of the Carter administration, the bottom 80 percent of American income earners, which is most of us, that's the middle class, that's everybody there, the bottom 80 percent, was paying 35 percent of all the bills in this country. So 80 percent of Americans were paying 35 percent of the bills. That top 1 percent, Mr. Speaker, that top 1 percent of America was paying 18 percent of the bills. Now, again, we talk about fairness. Again, I'm not in the 1 percent; although, again, I might like to be one day. For the 1 percent to be paying 18 percent of all of the burdens of this country, is that fair? Is that fair? For the 1 percent to pay 18 percent, is that fair? Again, we can look at the numbers. We can look at income distribution. We can look at all sorts of things. But think about that in the context of we always talk about people paying their fair share. In the last year of the Carter administration, the top 1 percent were paying 18 percent of the burden of America. But this is what's really interesting and, to me, Mr. Speaker, troubling, as a first-term Member in this United States House of Representatives. Look from 1979 out to today, and what you see, beginning in the 1990s, is that the majority of us, the 80 percent, begin to pay less of our Federal burden than do the 1 percent. In fact--and it's staggering to me, Mr. Speaker, and so I went and pulled the numbers. As we sit here, again, for the last year for which CBO is able to produce numbers--it's 2009. In 2009, the 80 percent of us who are in the middle, the 80 percent of us who form all of our communities back home and all of our clubs, the 80 percent of us who show up to church on Sunday and polls on Tuesday to make sure that we're doing our spiritual and civic duty, the 80 percent of us, we're only shouldering 6 percent of the total income tax burden in this land. Now, I just want to ask you, Mr. Speaker, we're all smart folks. Again, I drive a long way to get something free with rebate at Walgreens. And for folks, Mr. Speaker, listening at Walgreens, I really don't like the new policy they have with those coupons that expire. I want to get back to the gift card program. That's not something we're going to do here on the floor; we're not going to mandate that for them. But 80 percent of us are paying 6 percent of the burden. What do you think that does to elections? You see it in the children in your life, right? When your children have skin in the game, when they have some candy they might have to give up, when they have some chores they might not have to do if they negotiate properly, when you have skin in the game, you make different decisions. You find when you give the children in your life some money in their pocket and you're going through those impulse rows as you're walking out of the supermarket, Mr. Speaker, if they've got a dollar in their pocket, they're looking hard at those prices, seeing what's on two for one today, seeing what the discounts are. If it's their dollar, they're going to really think about what it is they're going to purchase in the candy aisle on the way out of the grocery store. But when they don't have any money in their pocket and they're just asking Mom and Dad to pick up the tab, there's no limit to what it is they're interested in having, right? The Snickers bar looks good. How about some of these sour things? My breath is bad; I need some gum. All across the board, there's no limit to what it is they might want. What's going to happen to our Republic, Mr. Speaker, if we, the 80 percent, allow ourselves to only be burdened with 6 percent of the job of paying for the obligations of this country? Completely inverted there, Mr. Speaker. Today, again, 2009, the last year for which we had numbers, the top 1 percent paid 39 percent of all the bills. But again, if the 80 percent are only paying 6 percent of all the bills, that means the top 20 percent are paying 94 percent of all the bills. Again, what election is it that we're going to have where folks say, You know what, that guy over there shouldn't be picking up the tab for me. What's happening to us as a Republic? Who are we now as a people? Do we want to help the least among us? Absolutely, we do. We always have; we always will. We can argue about whether we should do it from the Federal Government or from the State government or from our communities and from our churches, but of course we're committed to fulfilling those goals. But we cannot, it is not fair, and I would argue it is immoral to face the kind of challenges that we're facing and say, You know what; we, the 80 percent of America, aren't going to help at all. We're already paying 6 percent of all the bills. There are 80 percent of us, we're the primary beneficiaries of it all, but we're paying 6 percent of all the bills; we don't want to pay more. Tax them. That is incredibly dangerous and antithetical to who we are as a Republic. You know, this isn't new, Mr. Speaker. This isn't new. We can go back to Ben Franklin. He is often cited as saying that when the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic. That makes sense; right? It only takes 51 percent to win an election. So if 51 percent of the people can make sure that the other 49 percent have to bear all burdens and pay all the bills and do all the fighting and work out all the problems, then the 51 percent can just take the day off. Now that's not where we are in America, Mr. Speaker, but Ben Franklin worried about that over 200 years ago. Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winning economist passed away, but his words are still with us. I think he said it well. In his ``Free to Choose'' statement, Mr. Speaker, back in 1990, he said this: There is all the difference in the world, however, between two kinds of assistance through government that seem superficially similar: first, 90 percent of us agree to impose taxes on ourselves in order to help the bottom 10 percent; and second, 80 percent voting to impose taxes on the top 10 percent to help the bottom 10 percent. There's all the difference in the world, Milton Friedman says, between when 90 percent of us choose to burden ourselves so that we can help others, and when 80 percent decide they want to burden a different 10 percent so that they can help yet another 10 percent. And it is different. It's morally different. And I've got to tell you, Mr. Speaker, and that's what I love about our freshman class, Republicans and Democrats alike, nobody came here to pass the buck. Nobody came here to say that decisions are easy and somebody should have made them earlier. They came here and said these decisions are really hard, but we're going to make them anyway. What's the morality of deciding that our country is in peril and the people who ought to solve it are them; not us, but them; not me, but someone else; not in my family, but in my neighbor's family. There's a morality there. Now, listen, I'm the first to tell you, Mr. Speaker, we need more revenue in this country. And the reason we don't have much revenue today is because folks don't have jobs. Guess what. If you don't have a job, you don't have any income. If you don't have any income, you can't pay any income taxes. That's not rocket science. That's basic economics, and it's at work every day in this country. We've got to get folks back to work. And more of them, Mr. Speaker. If you're a family of four and you're earning $30,000 a year, you can't afford to pay the bills of this country in the same way that someone making $200,000 a year can. That's okay. We understand that. That's why there are graduated rates in the Income Tax Code. Some people pay 10 percent, some people pay 15 percent, some people pay 25 percent, some people pay in the 30s. The more you have, the more we think you're able to contribute. But here we are in what every American economist would agree is one of the most dire economic circumstances of our time, and what I hear described as leadership from the President is don't change anything for the 80 percent. In fact, spend more on the 80 percent, and go tap that last 1 percent to pay all the bills. The top 1 percent are already paying all the bills. This chart, which again I would say demonstrates a moral imperative that we investigate and grapple with as American citizens, as members of the greatest self-ruling Nation in the history of the world, what we've already seen is just, in my lifetime, born in 1970, just in my lifetime, through self-governance, we have completely turned on its head who pays the bills for America. And more and more and more and more we've said, It doesn't need to be me; it doesn't need to be us; it can be them; they can do it all. That is not who we are. That's not who we teach our children to be, and it's not the legacy that we want to leave behind. Eighty percent of us, including me, in this country are paying only 6 percent of the burden of being an American citizen. This chart, Mr. Speaker, reflects what happens if we roll off this fiscal cliff. They describe it as a cliff. Again, it's a spending decision and a tax decision, but I've listed them both up here. This chart comes from the Congressional Research Service. A couple of interesting things I want to point out here. First and foremost, if we do nothing, there are going to be tax increases of about $400 billion. There are going to be spending reductions of about $102 billion. There are some other changes that would happen at the end of the year that aren't associated with policy decisions. So, at the end of the day, we change the scope of our deficit by about $607 billion if we do nothing. That's what makes this such a hard issue to grapple with, Mr. Speaker. If we do nothing, if we reach no agreement, changes that happen automatically and burden us all in different ways will create $607 billion for the U.S. Treasury that we didn't have before. And that's only half of the annual deficit. You see all the pandemonium that folks are describing, all the frightful words that are used to describe the fiscal cliff. If we roll over that fiscal cliff and all of those bad things come to bear, the tax increases and the spending reductions, collectively, they make $607 billion. And if we apply that to next year's deficit, we still won't reduce next year's annual deficit to the level of what used to be the highest deficit in American history run up under the Bush administration. We can roll right over the fiscal cliff, create $607 billion in taxes and savings that we didn't have before, and we still won't have reduced our annual budget deficit to what was formerly the highest budget deficit in American history before the Obama administration. That's how far out of whack we are. I'm not trying to blame the President for that. I think there is some blame there. There's blame here. There's blame everywhere. I only say the Obama administration so folks understand this is a problem that has existed. As long as I've been alive, we've been running systemic deficits. But in the Bush administration, we were running the highest deficit in American history, and today it's four times larger. And if we roll over the fiscal cliff that everyone says is going to be so awful, we only solve half the problem. Still don't get back to what used to be the most profligate spending days in American history, used to be the largest American deficits in American history, the Bush administration. That's Number 1 that I want to get from this chart. Here's Number 2, Mr. Speaker, going back to the grappling with fairness, who we are as a people, what we're about. I put up that chart earlier that showed how some folks were getting away with paying zero. Even though they had lots of money, they were just itemizing it all away so they didn't have to pay anything on the tax burden; certainly their right as an American citizen to take advantage of those Federal tax laws. But we tried that. Back in the late sixties, early seventies, we created what was called the alternative minimum tax, Mr. Speaker. The alternative minimum tax, and it was designed--and you can go back and read about it in the Congressional Record. It's all right there. It was designed to get them. We've talked a lot about who the ``us'' are and who the ``them'' are. The ``them'' are the people with the money who aren't paying their fair share. Again, we can argue about what fair share is, but that's why we created the alternative minimum tax. The ``them'' weren't making the proper payments. And what it turned out to be was they really were making a lot of money and they really were itemizing a lot of deductions. So, really, they were wealthy folks who were doing all the things the Tax Code encouraged them to do, but they ended up paying zero, and the 80 percent of us didn't like it. We thought, Golly, they have lots of money; they shouldn't be paying zero; we should do better. So we created the alternative minimum tax. Here's the thing. The alternative minimum tax is still on the books today. We did such a crummy job of trying to attack the rich back when we created the alternative minimum tax, it's grown out of control, and it now hits middle-income Americans all across the country, except that the Congress fixes it 1 year at the time. That's one of the crazy things that you learn when you become a Congressman is that you don't actually solve problems long term; you apparently just fix them 1 year at the time so you can come back again next year and fix the same problem in the same way once again. All the taxes in the Bush administration, all these taxes we talk about, the ones that President Bush passed in 2001 and 2003, the ones that President Obama extended in 2010, all of those taxes combined create $104 billion for next year. That's a $104 billion change. Fixing the AMT, fixing the alternative minimum tax, solving this thing that we created in order to tax the rich, to keep it now from impacting the middle class, is going to cost 117. All the Bush tax cuts combined are 104. Fixing this problem that Congress created back in the early 1970s, 117. We don't do that well when we try to attack the ``them'' in order to avoid the burden on the ``us,'' and we're going to see that when we do the AMT patch again this year. I want to close with this, Mr. Speaker. I have a chart here of who benefits from tax loopholes. Again, I'm a Fair Tax guy. H.R. 25, Mr. Speaker, I hope you'll go and pull it out, think about being a cosponsor if you're not already. I want to change the way we do taxes in this country. But just by closing loopholes--and I hear the newspaper asking all the time: Which loopholes? What loopholes? How are you going to do that? This shows who benefits from the loopholes, Mr. Speaker, in the Tax Code. It's not the bottom 20 percent. It's not the second 20 percent or the third or the fourth. It's not really even the top 20 percent. It's the top 1 percent. So I would just encourage you, Mr. Speaker, to ask the President--as we're going through these discussions, he clearly has campaigned on getting more money out of the 1 percent. I showed this chart, Mr. Speaker, that questions the morality of where we end up, questions what it means to our Republic at the end of the day if we continue to give so much of the burden to the few and leave the rest of us with none of the burden at all. But if he is intent on doing that, he doesn't have to raise tax rates. He can do it through abolishing tax loopholes, which makes the Code fairer and more transparent to us all. We have a right to know what we have to pay in a tax code. These loopholes obscure it. Mr. Speaker, I don't know what's going to happen in these final days. I know that the Speaker of this House is committed to doing the things that matter, to making a big difference for our children and for our grandchildren, to not kick the can down the road one more time. I pledge to support that plan, Mr. Speaker. I, too, did not come here to kick the can down the road. I came here to make the tough decisions. And I say to my friends, and there are a lot of them out there who made tough decisions and they paid an electoral price for it. That's not a short list of folks. That's a long list of folks, and it happens every 2 years. You see people who had the courage to do what they thought was right, and they pay a price for that in terms of their political career. But what I love about this institution, Mr. Speaker, these freshmen that I was elected with--you and I were elected with--these new freshmen that are coming in after this past election, I see men and women who care so much less about a political career and care so much more about doing things that matter for this Republic. I'm proud to be associated with them. And I'm convinced if we get past the rhetoric and get back to the discussion, we're going to be able to come up with a solution that the American people will be proud of and that we can be proud to tell our children and our grandchildren that we were a part of. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, before my colleague from Virginia leaves the floor, I plan to spend most of my hour disagreeing with most of what he spent his last hour on, but what he said at the very end is just so accurate and so infrequently said here on Capitol Hill, and that is, there are no good options left. If you have over a $1 trillion budget and you want to balance that budget, you're either raising somebody's taxes or you're cutting somebody's spending. There is no easy solution to that problem. It's not going to go away on its own. We're going to have to find a way to parse that--and by ``we,'' I don't just mean the 435 of us in this room, I mean the 315 million of us across the country. What I have here, Mr. Speaker--you can't see it from where you are-- but it's down to where we're in a spending-driven debt crisis. I think that's important because something has happened in the media. When I open up the newspaper, it's all about the tax component of this fiscal cliff, and there absolutely is a tax component. We talk about taxes as it relates to small businesses and creating jobs. We talk about taxes as they relate to individual families and being able to make ends meet. But what this chart shows, Mr. Speaker, is spending and tax revenue of the Federal Government of the United States of America from 1947 out to 2077. You can't see the intricate detail on here, Mr. Speaker, but what you can see from far, far away is that this green line that represents tax revenue is a relatively flat and constant line. As a general rule, it does not matter whether tax rates were the 90 percent marginal rates, the 70 percent marginal rates that they were when John F. Kennedy was President and he cut taxes, or whether they were the 28 percent marginal rates during the Reagan years; the American people are willing to give you about 18 percent of the size of the economy in tax revenue. Mr. Speaker, it turns out--and this is of no surprise to you--it turns out the American people are pretty smart. If you raise taxes on this behavior, they switch to this behavior. If you raise taxes on that behavior, they switch to this behavior. Because at the end of the day we're more concerned with providing for our family, raising our kids, and taking care of our parents than we are about funding the Federal Government, and so we make changes in our lives to respond to the Tax Code. So whether taxes are at a top marginal rate of 28 percent, Mr. Speaker, as they were during the Reagan years, or whether they're at a top marginal rate of 90 percent as they were before the John F. Kennedy Presidency, America paid the same amount as a percent of GDP in taxes. This chart shows that. Taxes relatively constant going out over that horizon. Mr. Speaker, spending, this red line here--now you can see this red line is higher than the green line for most of the past 50 years. This business of running deficits is not new. We've been running deficits my entire lifetime. With the exception of a couple of years in the Gingrich years here in the House and the Clinton years there in the White House, we've run budget deficits in this country, but they've been relatively small. I grew up in the Reagan years, and I remember lots of talk there about all the money we were spending on defense and those massive deficits that President Reagan was running in order to win the Cold War. Those deficits are minuscule compared to the deficits that we're running today. Mr. Speaker, what you see on this chart, as we go out from here where we are today in 2012 and 2013, what you see is a chart that reflects what happens if you and I do nothing, Mr. Speaker. If you and I were to close down this House, if President Obama were to leave the White House tomorrow and bolt the door, if we passed absolutely no new laws, no new promises, made no new commitments, this red line represents the spending that would happen automatically. This red line represents the spending that happens if we don't change one thing. What you see then, Mr. Speaker, is there is just no way--this green line represents taxes--there's no way that we can raise taxes high enough to cover this red line of spending. If we took everything from everybody, Mr. Speaker--hear that: if we had a 100 percent tax on every dollar you earned, if we took everything you had in your household and sold it all for its value, if we confiscated every asset of every business in America and we sold it at the auction block, and we put all of that money in a bank account to save for a rainy day, we still would not have enough money to pay for the spending that we've promised America in this red line. It's a spending problem we have. Our problem is not that we tax too little; our problem is that we spend too much. That's important when we talk about this fiscal cliff, Mr. Speaker. This is not a tax issue. This is a spending issue. And this isn't an issue that folks don't have an answer to. Mr. Speaker, you and I serve on the Budget Committee. And one of the things that I am most proud of in my 2 short years here in this body is that we looked at these tough challenges, the ones that my colleague from Virginia just described as being tough, tough choices. You are raising taxes. You are cutting spending. Someone is going to be unhappy. It is probably going to have to be a combination of both. We looked at those things we did on the Budget Committee, and we came up with a solution. We didn't just tell America who to blame. We didn't just talk about how hard it was and how tough it was going to be and how lousy that is for America's children and America's grandchildren. We proposed solutions. It's represented here on this chart, Mr. Speaker. What I have here is debt as a percent of GDP, the Federal debt. That's about $16.3 trillion today. I go all the way back to World War II here where debt was 100 percent of GDP. The historical debt is represented by this gray line, Mr. Speaker. This red line, just a different representation of the spending I showed down there. On that chart, I was showing actual spending as a percent of GDP. This is a debt that we are going to run up as a percentage of GDP. And this green line, Mr. Speaker, represents the budget that you and I crafted in the Budget Committee under the leadership of Chairman Paul Ryan. We called it ``The Path to Prosperity'' because for the first time in my lifetime, this Congress got serious about making the tough choices necessary to get us out of these record-setting deficits. And that's so important because I get so tired, Mr. Speaker, as I know you do too, of everybody just pointing the finger to blame--Oh, it's his fault. It's her fault. It's their fault. It's their fault. This budget was not about blame. This budget was about solutions. And we laid it all out. That distinguishes us, particularly in this fiscal cliff debate, from the White House and from the Senate, which continue to talk in broad platitudes, but it failed to lay out the difficult, difficult line-by-line explanation of what their proposal would be to solve these problems. We did that in our budget, and it was hard. There is a reason the United States Senate hasn't passed a budget in almost 4 years, and it's because it's hard. A budget is a statement of your values. It's a statement of your values. We confiscate all of this money in tax revenue from the American people, and then we redistribute it out to those priorities that we have--national security, kids, school lunches and education, our criminal justice system, to make sure families are safe in their homes. We distribute it to those things that are important to us. So when you're running trillion-dollar deficits, as we're running today, and you have to put together a budget, you either have to tell the American people and their children and their grandchildren that you're going to continue running trillion-dollar deficits and bankrupt this Nation, or you have to tell the American people, you know what, we've got to prioritize, and these are my priorities. I'll tell you something, Mr. Speaker. It just drives me to distraction when I read the media accounts. One of the things that gets lost is that when we passed that budget, that budget that passed this House not once but twice, that budget represents the only budget that has passed anywhere in this town--in fact, the only budget that has received a majority of votes anywhere in this town. When we passed that budget, we said revenue in this country has to rise. It has to. Mr. Speaker, we go back to this historical chart that I showed you. We're down here in this green dip right here. Tax revenues are at their lowest level in modern times. Tax rates are plenty high, Mr. Speaker, plenty high. But guess what, if you don't have a job, you can't pay any income taxes. It doesn't matter--a 5 percent income rate on you, a 100 percent income tax rate on you--if you don't have a job, you can't pay taxes. That's why tax revenue is so low. If companies aren't making profits, companies can't pay taxes. If you can't sell your home, you don't have capital gains to pay taxes on. If you can't start a business, you don't have income to pay taxes on. That's why tax revenue is so low. Mr. Speaker, the tax rates are the same rates they've been over the last 10 years. We had a giant spike in tax revenue. The reason for the decline is because of this recession. When folks aren't making money, they can't pay taxes. So what did we do in our budget? We crafted an economic growth plan that would bring in--hear this, Mr. Speaker--it would take us from what was about 14.5 percent of GDP. Today it's 16 percent of GDP. We passed a budget that would bring us up to over 18 percent of GDP and tax revenue. That's more than a 10 percent increase over what we're doing today. Do we do it by punishing little groups of people like the President wants to do? No, of course not. We do it by growing the economy, unleashing the power of the American entrepreneur, and allowing folks to pursue their dreams. That's how we bring more revenue into the coffers of the Federal Government. But hearing that said loudly and proudly, the only budget that has passed anywhere in this town was passed in a bipartisan way by this U.S. House of Representatives, dominantly passed by Republican votes; and it includes a revenue increase of over 10 percent. So just go ahead and dismiss that nonsense about Republicans ignoring the revenue side of this equation. Of course there's a revenue side of the equation. My colleague from Virginia was right when he mentioned it. It continues to be true, and we've dealt with it responsibly. What about the spending side, Mr. Speaker? Before I take this chart down, I want folks to see that spending side back in their offices. This green line represents the budget that we passed. This red line is the path of debt if we do nothing. This green line is the path of debt if we pass the House-passed budget plan and make it the law of the land. There are opportunities to make this difference. This House, in a bipartisan way, has stood up to those challenges. I encourage the President and the Senate to follow that strong lead. But let's take on the thing that we hear the most often, Mr. Speaker, and that is that the President is committed to taxing, raising taxes, exacerbating the tax burden on all of these family-owned businesses that you and I know are the keys to job creation. Now, I don't want folks to think that these businesses aren't already paying their fair share. We talk so much about ``fair share,'' Mr. Speaker. I think of fairness as being a society that rewards hard work and merit. I think that's what fairness is. It's that opportunity society that we all came to America for, that our parents or our grandparents or our great grandparents came to America for. We didn't come here for guaranteed success. We came here for the opportunity to work hard and to make our tomorrow better than our today. That's fairness: maintaining that opportunity, ensuring that other generations of Americans have that opportunity. I am going to quote Milton Friedman, Mr. Speaker. The country is the poorer for not having Milton Friedman with us any longer. But he said, There's a distinct difference between raising taxes, where the 90 percent of America votes to raise taxes on themselves to help the bottom 10 percent because that's what we do as Americans. We're generous, generous people. We care deeply about our neighborhoods and our communities. It's one thing for the 90 percent to raise taxes on themselves to help the 10 percent. But it's an entirely different thing when the 80 percent raise taxes on the top 10 percent to help the bottom 10 percent. Think about that, Mr. Speaker. When we talk about the tough choices that my colleague from Virginia just brought up, how tough is it to decide you're going to raise taxes on them to solve the problem? Whoever the ``them'' is, raise taxes on them. ``They'' should pay more to solve the problem. That's pretty easy. The power to tax is the power to destroy. And we, through this House and the power of taxation, can choose to destroy any element of American society that we choose. I will tell you, it's our constitutional obligation to protect the minority, that an opportunity society means we do not let the majority run roughshod over the minority. Even in this House of Representatives, with our proud tradition, the minority has rights. The minority is protected from the will of the majority. That's always been true in our American tradition. How tough is it to decide that ``they'' are going to foot the bill so that ``we'' don't have to? Those aren't tough choices. Those are easy choices. We call that class warfare, and it's going on entirely too much in this country. But even in class warfare, Mr. Speaker--and you see it here on this chart I have presented of who benefits from tax loopholes--you can make choices that either help the economy grow or bring the economy to its knees. This chart shows the bottom quintile of income earners, the second quintile, the middle quintile, the fourth quintile. Here is the top 20 percent. And there on the end is actually the top 1 percent, Mr. Speaker. Who benefits from loopholes in the Tax Code? I'm a flat tax guy. And by flat tax, I mean the national retail sales tax. It's called the Fair Tax, the special retail sales tax that deals with the payroll tax inequities, and on and on. It absolutely turns our Tax Code on its head and puts our economy on hyperdrive. It's an amazing plan. It's a popularly cosponsored tax reform plan in this United States House of Representatives. I hope we're going to get a vote on it next year. But what it does is it eliminates all the deductions and exemptions, all the loopholes, all the carve-outs, all the special lobbyist-included benefits, all those special benefits for whoever is favored by a particular administration. It eliminates them all in order to create one flat and fair system for the country. Now, if you make more money, of course you're paying more in taxes; if you have less money, you're paying less in taxes. It's progressive in that way. That's always been true in America and always will be. But the President is committed--and we heard it again today--to raising tax rates on family-owned businesses. Not ensuring that they pay more taxes, mind you--this is an important distinction-- but raising the tax rates. Look here, Mr. Speaker, if we go through and we eliminate all of these tax loopholes--and the top 1 percent is the crowd that benefits disproportionately from all these tax loopholes--we can still ask the top 1 percent to contribute more to the funding of our economy, but we can do it in an economically responsible way. Flattening the Tax Code asks more of those who benefit from the special deductions, exemptions, exceptions, and credits. This chart tells you who those folks are. Of course it's true that the top 1 percent benefit the most. They pay all the taxes. Oh, that's an exaggeration. Well, they make about 20 percent of the income, and they pay 40 percent of the taxes. That's right, Mr. Speaker. The top 1 percent--and I'm glad we have them because they're footing the bill for all the rest of us. The top 1 percent of income earners are paying 40 percent of the burden for our entire United States Federal Government. One percent is paying 40 percent of the burden. If we eliminate the exceptions, the exemptions, the tax credits, and the loopholes, those folks will pay more. But the President is insisting not on cleaning up the Code and making it more economically viable; instead, he just wants to raise rates and punish folks more. Let me go, Mr. Speaker, to President Barack Obama, August 2009. He says this in an interview: The last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole. That was President Barack Obama, August 2009. He was absolutely right then. Those facts hold true today. And it's not just that those facts hold true over a small period of time, Mr. Speaker; those facts hold true over a decade. I want to take you back to President John F. Kennedy, Mr. Speaker. It's not as if these are new ideas that we're talking about. This isn't some rocket science problem that has suddenly been thrust upon the United States of America in 2012. These are basic economics. Adam Smith talked about these economics hundreds of years ago. Let me tell you what John F. Kennedy said. This is in one of his news conferences, November 20, 1962, as he was providing the largest tax cut in modern American history. He said this: It's a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low. That's where we are today, Mr. Speaker. Tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low. It's a paradoxical truth that that can be true. He goes on and talks about raising revenues, and that's exactly what we're trying to do when we talk about a balanced approach. We need to cut spending, and we need to increase revenue. President Kennedy says this: The soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous expanding economy which can bring us a budget surplus. That was brought to you by a raging conservative economist, President John F. Kennedy. No, he's not a raging conservative economist, Mr. Speaker. He was a proud liberal of the Democratic party, but he knew economic truths, economic truths that were as sound then as they are today, and that apparently so many in this Chamber have forgotten. Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus. I'll go on with what was in his annual budget message to Congress, Mr. Speaker. Again, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the annual budget message to the Congress. He says this: Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield, within a few years, an increased, not a reduced, flow of revenues to the Federal Government. This is not a conservative idea, Mr. Speaker. This is not a liberal idea. This is not a Reagan idea. This is not a Clinton idea. This is an economic truth. John F. Kennedy: Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield, within a few years, an increased, not a reduced, flow of revenues to the Federal Government. President Barack Obama: The last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole. These are truths that have gotten lost in this election season, Mr. Speaker. I'll be honest with you. I'm not excited about the way the election turned out. It pleased the American people with a wide margin, returned a Republican majority to this U.S. House of Representatives, this the people's House, this the House that is the closest to the American voter. It was a huge Republican majority that was returned by the American people. I thought when we got past that election, Mr. Speaker, that politics would be done. I thought when we got past that election, we would get on about the serious business of correcting this avalanche of debt that threatens to crush generations of hopes and dreams of Americans, extinguishes the freedoms that we hold so dear. We know what the right answers are. John F. Kennedy knew in 1962 and 1963; Barack Obama knew in 2009 and 2010, and we still know today, but politics still seems to control. Mr. Speaker, to make my point about where we are in terms of spending being the problem, again, as you and I serve here on the floor of the House, we have so many folks pointing to different demons that are the problem, so I just went ahead and put all the demons that folks talk about up here on the board. What I have here, Mr. Speaker, represented by this blue line--this is about 20 years of spending. I go from 2002 out to 2022, and I look at spending of the Federal Government. This giant blue line that consumes the entire chart is just base, normal, everyday Federal Government spending, which is increasing 33 percent if we don't change it over the next 10 years. Hear that: Normal spending, not bailouts, not special war taxes, not any of that, but basic Federal spending is set to increase 33 percent over the next 10 years if we don't move to change it. This little yellow line, Mr. Speaker, that you can just barely see, this little yellow line is the cost of the global war on terror. Is that real money? You better believe it. When we choose to send American young men and women around the globe to protect our freedoms, you better believe we give them every single advantage that we can, and we take care of them when they return home. Absolutely, there is a cost to the global war on terror. There is a cost to protecting the homeland. But, Mr. Speaker, in comparison to all other spending that is going on, it's minuscule. Here are the financial bailouts in green, Mr. Speaker. You probably can't see those. Was that a lot of money? You better believe it. Do I think a lot of it went down a rat hole? I absolutely do. Those bailouts are over now. That money is out the door now. But as a percent of what's going on here, it's not that. Here's the 2009 stimulus bill. That's actually the highest order of magnitude here. That was a lot of money. There was over $800 billion that went out the door that I would again argue to questionable purposes that we cannot measure the success of here years later. But that's not the cause of the problem. The problem is systemic. The problem is baked into the way that we operate our Federal Government today. It's baked into program after program that we continue to create even in deficit times. It's baked into new promise after new promise after new promise that we continue to make even though we don't know how to afford the ones that we've already made. Mr. Speaker, I just want to go through a few of those accounts that have been increasing. Folks won't be able to see this back in their offices, so I'll just read a couple of them to them. The chart is entitled, ``Where the Money Goes.'' It's inflation-adjusted dollars, so we can compare apples to apples. It compares 2002 to 2012. Let's just look at a few. I've put them in the order of how much money we're spending on them today: Social Security spending, for example, from 2002 to 2012, has increased 35 percent over the last 10 years. It's the largest pot of money that we spend in the government, these Social Security checks. Folks have paid into it their entire lives. They've earned them and they deserve them. I'm glad they're getting them. It has gone up 35 percent in the last 10 years; With national defense, of course, between 2002 and 2012, there has been a lot going on in the world. The world has become less safe. We've been involved in two wars, and that spending has been going up between 2002 and 2012. Again, in inflation-adjusted dollars, the spending on national defense has gone up 50 percent. Now, it's still dramatically below where it was in the eighties and nineties when we were trying to win the Cold War. We've been fighting two wars over this past decade. It's dramatically lower than it was when we were fighting the Cold War, but it's up 50 percent; Medicare spending over last 10 years--2002 to 2012--is up 70 percent. You hear so much talk that the Medicare trust fund is going bankrupt. Over the last 10 years, Medicare spending is up 70 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars--constant dollars. It's up 70 percent, and that climb continues; but, in fact, Mr. Speaker, those numbers are low compared to some other categories: Food stamps from 2002 to 2012 are up 136 percent. We're in some tough economic times. We all know that, in tough economic times, support program prices--costs--increase, but this is 136 percent over the last 10 years. K through 12 education is up 144 percent. Energy spending-- sadly, this is going to include all of the Solyndras of the world, all of those stimulus dollars that went out to support dubious enterprises--is up 1,751 percent. So, when we talk about budget cuts--and this is important--it's always described as we're going to gore someone's ox, as we're going to destroy someone's program. Energy spending is up 1,700 percent. What if we reduced it so it was just up 1,600 percent, Mr. Speaker? Would that destroy President Obama's green energy plans? I don't think so. What if food stamps, instead of going up 136 percent, just went up 130 percent? Can you really say that that is an attack on folks who are recipients of food stamps; or can you say that when the American people increase food nutrition spending by 130 percent that we're actually making a pretty good faith effort to make sure folks are taken care of? We see it time and time again--30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent, 59 percent, 46 percent, 62 percent. We're not talking about destroying Federal Government programs. We're talking about curbing double-digit increases that have gone on over the past 10 years--triple-digit increases in so many cases. That brings us to this balanced approach we keep hearing about, Mr. Speaker. I hear the President say ``balanced approach'' over and over again. I just have not seen him yet do a balanced approach. I mean, we saw his proposal that came out yesterday where he wanted to raise taxes by $1.6 trillion and where he wanted to increase spending on a variety of programs, and he thought he could find $400 billion in reductions. Not today, of course. Somewhere down the road, he thought that we could get together and maybe find $400 billion. So bring taxes up $1.6 trillion and then find $400 billion in spending reductions. It's not a tax revenue problem, Mr. Speaker. It's a spending problem. We've got to focus on this red line. We've got to focus on spending. Look at where we are with the sequester, for example. We're talking about balanced approaches. I have defense spending cuts in the sequester, I have non-defense spending cuts in the sequester, and I have mandatory cuts in the sequester. As you know, Mr. Speaker, about a third of all of the dollars we spend in this country we call ``discretionary spending.'' Half of those are defense and half of those are non-defense. Everything else--two-thirds of the pie--is what we call ``mandatory spending.'' So the two-thirds of the pie over here represent 63.8 percent of all Federal spending. The sequestration is going to ask that big piece of the pie--63.8 percent--to bear 14 percent of the cuts. We're going to ask non-defense discretionary spending, which is about 13 percent of the pie, to bear 35 percent of the cuts. It doesn't quite seem balanced, does it, Mr. Speaker? Then we're going to ask the Defense Department, which represents 16.8 percent of all spending, to bear 49.5 percent of all the cuts. Now, I'm not a math major. I didn't study statistics, but I'm pretty sure, if we were implementing a balanced approach, these lines would be roughly equal; they'd be balanced. What we have instead is a dramatic attack on our national security concerns while the driving piece of the pie, that piece of the pie that's growing larger and larger each year-- it's already the largest, and it's growing at the fastest rate--which alone threatens to undermine the economic security of the Nation is asked to do next to nothing. Now, as you know, Mr. Speaker, the only serious proposal in town--the only one that has received a majority of the votes to deal with that mandatory spending issue--came out of this U.S. House of Representatives. It came out of our Budget Committee. It passed the floor of the House in a bipartisan way to deal seriously with those; but as the President asks time and time again, ``Can we have a balanced approach?'' my answer is, ``Yes, we can. Let me see your balance.'' He hasn't been shy at all about talking about all the taxes he wants to increase. I just haven't seen any of the spending cuts he wants to implement. It's because we don't have a tax problem. We have a spending problem in this country. If you haven't looked at what the spending problem is, Mr. Speaker-- and I know you have because you serve on the Budget Committee, and you're one of the finest members we have on the Budget Committee. You've taken difficult and tough stands in order to support your constituency and to make sure the children of tomorrow have a better future than the children of today, and you continue to pass on that American Dream. Yet this chart represents the chronic deficits that we have at the Federal level. These are actual dollars, and these numbers come both from the Office of Management and Budget--that's the President's budget team--and from the Congressional Budget Office, which is the nonpartisan budget team here on Capitol Hill. We go back to 1970--through the Carter years, through the Reagan years, the Bush years, the Clinton years. You'll see there were systemic deficits through all of those years. It was only under the partnership of Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton and, I might also add, with some of the most aggressive spending reductions that we've seen in my lifetime that we were able to create budget surpluses if you include the Social Security trust fund; although, there is still a little sleight of hand going on there as we look at this chart because we're looking at cash flow, not at what's going into the trust fund baskets, but there was absolutely a cash flow surplus here for 4 years. Then the tech bubble bursts and 9/11 happens, and we get into these Bush years where you see some of the largest deficits in American history. In response to 9/11, in response to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were some of the largest budget deficits in American history. This was on a Republican President's watch and on a Republican Congress' watch in response to some tremendous crises, but they were the largest deficits in history--frightening deficits. Mr. Speaker, those deficits are barely noticeable compared to where we are today. These were the largest budget deficits in American history during the Bush years, deficits so large they were threatening our economy. President Bush began to bring them down over the last 4 years of his tenure, and they're dwarfed by the size of the deficits created by this U.S. House of Representatives under Democratic control, by the United States Senate under Democratic control, and by President Barack Obama and the White House. Mr. Speaker, those numbers have begun to come down. You can see here, over the past 4 years, we had a $1.5 trillion deficit in 2009, a 1.34 in 2010, a 1.32 in 2011, a 1.1 in 2012. They start to go down, but look out over this 10-year horizon. Again, these numbers come from the Congressional Budget Office, which is a nonpartisan group here on Capitol Hill. They come from the Office of Management and Budget, which is the President's budget team down at the White House. If we do nothing to curtail spending, the largest deficits ever known to this land occur not once, occur not twice, occur not 3 years in a row, but occur forever in looking forward through the budget window. Now, the truth is they don't actually occur forever because America would collapse under the weight of that debt. Our economy would cease to function. Our Nation would cease to exist. It absolutely does not go on forever, but it never gets solved. Not 1 year, Mr. Speaker, not 1 year. We begin to bring deficits down, and we bring them down to almost $600 billion. Again, the best year in the next 10 is worse than the worst year in the last 50. As you look at the proposal of what folks believe is going to happen in the economy over the next 10 years, the best year we have over the next 10 is worse than the worst year we've had over the last 50 when it comes to raising the debt and deficit here in the United States of America. Continuing talking about the balance, Mr. Speaker, the President is a smart man and I have always respected him, Mr. Speaker, for the fact that he has released a budget to the American people, made a proposal, in every one of his 4 years in office. Every one. The law requires him to do it, but he has always done it. That distinguishes him from the United States Senate, which the law also requires them to do it, and they haven't done it. So every year the President goes through the very difficult work of producing his own budget, sharing with the American people his vision for what the Federal budget should look like. I happen to have a graphical representation of that vision. This is the one he gave us last. It was February of 2012. There was an election coming up, and he wanted to do his very best. This was actually the most serious of all of the budgets that he's submitted. And what I show here, Mr. Speaker, with this white dotted line is the debt that America would have to pay if we change not one law on the books. If we change not one law on the books, the debt of America would rise along this white dotted line. This red line that runs right above the white dotted line is the debt that we would accumulate if we passed the President's budget. I'm not misspeaking, Mr. Speaker. I'm talking about that budget he introduced in February of 2012. I'm talking about that budget that raised taxes by almost $2 trillion on the American people; he raised taxes by $2 trillion on the American people and still ran up higher debt because he spent even more than that. Now, to give the President his due, he actually only ran up higher debt in his budget for the 2013 year, the 2014 year, the 2015 year and '16 year and '17 year and '18 year and '19 year and '20 year and '21 year. It was really only the first 9 years of his 10-year budget that he continued to run up higher debt. By the 10th year of his 10-year budget, and I blew it up so folks could see it, there's a little bit of a betterment there. We did a little bit better in that final year in terms of trying to bring the debt below what it would have been if we'd done nothing. And all the while, the budget raised taxes by $2 trillion and raised spending even more. Mr. Speaker, that's not balanced. I try to explain that to my constituents back home, the ones who come and say, Rob, why can't you all just come together and build consensus? Why can't you find that middle ground? It's because in my mind, Mr. Speaker, there's no question but that we have to raise revenue through smart tax policy and we have to cut spending, which is the driver of our debt. But when my President looks at this very same set of numbers, looks at this very same rising debt across the country, looks at the very same economic destruction that this debt is causing across the Nation, he raises taxes by $2 trillion and raises spending by even more. Mr. Speaker, he says balance, but the only proposal he's brought to Congress in the last 12 months is about as unbalanced as they come. We can, Mr. Speaker, we can come together in the middle. We can find consensus. As I said earlier, my Democratic colleague from Virginia accurately identified the challenges. None of them are easy. None of the solutions are easy. But don't be fooled, Mr. Speaker, into believing that either, A, this House isn't serious about bringing revenues back to historical norms. We are, and we've passed language to do it. And don't think, too, that the President is serious about cutting spending because we've yet to see one single proposal to suggest that he is. In fact, Mr. Speaker, in the proposal he rolled out yesterday, the one budget-cutting exercise that we've done, this across-the-board sequester that's coming, the sequester that's coming as a result of those 12 men and women--the 6 Republicans, 6 Democrats; 6 House Members, 6 Senate Members--who got together on the Joint Select Committee to try to craft a proposal, as a result of that failure, we now have these across-the-board cuts. The President's proposal supports kicking that can down the road for another year. Mr. Speaker, we can't kick the can down the road. Is it going to be a challenge to get over this economic hump? You better believe it. It has been for the past 4 years. Americans have been challenged for the past 4 years. This recession has been debilitating across the board. There's still no easy solutions out on the horizon. But we know this: we know when we raise taxes, the economy suffers. We know when we lower taxes, the economy grows. I'm looking at a National Bureau of Economic Research report, Mr. Speaker. They say this: Tax changes have very large effects. An exogenous tax increase of 1 percent of GDP lowers real GDP by roughly 2-3 percent. We can raise taxes if we want to. It's going to lower economic output; it's going to harm American families. It's going to diminish job creation; but we can do it. That's the debate we're having here on Capitol Hill. Mr. Speaker, this chart represents the plan that the President has proposed for cutting spending. It's not that the camera is not adjusting to it properly, Mr. Speaker. It's that this is a giant blank sheet of paper. It's absent of any information whatsoever because so, too, is the President's proposal for tackling the real economic challenge we have here, the real driver of budget deficits, the real threat to American economic superiority in this world, out-of-control Federal spending. The President of the United States, he's been President for 4 years, no credible plan for tackling that spending. I want to go back, Mr. Speaker. This United States House of Representatives, in a bipartisan way, passed a plan not just to change the trajectory of Federal spending, but to actually pay down the debt to zero over time. That shouldn't sound so crazy, Mr. Speaker. Folks have to pay their debts, but we haven't seen that out of this administration in even one of those budgets. Not one of those budgets put us on a path to being debt free. In the time I have left, Mr. Speaker, I just want to do a little math here on the board. I brought my big marker with me. I want you to know I got this free with rebate. We squeeze every penny we can in the office. I think everybody ought to do that. I think you ought to lead by example. But I've been struggling with the idea of fairness, Mr. Speaker, and I brought with me the tax rate chart from the IRS. This is a 2012 tax rate chart. If you earn between $35,000 and $85,000, you're in the 25 percent tax bracket. If you earn between $35,000 and $85,000 in America in 2012, you're in the 25 percent tax bracket. I'm calling that middle class, Mr. Speaker. Depending on how large your family is, it's tough to make a go of it at $30,000. And depending on how large your family is, $85,000 puts you right there in the middle. But that ball park--30, 40, $50,000--I think we can call that secure middle class America. You pay a 25 percent income tax rate. Payroll tax. Your payroll tax is 15.3 percent, Mr. Speaker. Every wage earner in this land, 15.3 percent they pay each and every month in payroll taxes. Those FICA taxes you see on your paycheck. Let me do some quick math, Mr. Speaker. Bear with me. 40.3 percent in Federal taxes. That's the tax rate for every middle class American in the land. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, are tax rates too low? Do you think you ought to work for the first 5 months out of the year just to pay your Federal tax burden before you begin to pay your State tax burden, before you begin to pay your local tax burden, before you begin to actually earn money to pay for your food and shelter and clothing for your family? Forty percent is the marginal tax rate for middle class America. Thirty-five percent, Mr. Speaker, is the rate that that 1 percent are paying today. Thirty-five cents out of every dollar earned by that top 1 percent today, that's the marginal tax rate for those folks. Now, a lot of folks don't realize, taxes are already going up next year. You know, the President's health care bill, that bill that I was not here to oppose. Though I've tried it repeal it, I haven't been able to get that through the Senate. But the President's health care bill raises taxes come January 1. So on this top income bracket that the President wants to raise taxes even further on, they have a tax rate increase coming, and it's coming on January 1; 3.8 percent, Mr. Speaker. Every dollar of unearned income these top 1 percent earn is going to have a new 3.8 percent Medicare tax added to it, 3.8 percent. 0.9 percent, Mr. Speaker. That's an increase in the Medicare tax on all the earned income of these folks, 3.8 percent increase on the unearned income. Another 0.9 percent increase on the earned income. 2.7 percent, Mr. Speaker. That's the Medicare tax that that top 1 percent is already paying on all of their earned income today. It's going to go up another 0.9 percent. They're already paying 2.7. The President says that's not enough. Let me do some quick math here. Since they're only going to have to pay one, Mr. Speaker, either the unearned income tax or the earned income tax, it's going to be 3.8 percent either way. They're paying 39.8, plus this 15.3, of course, on all those dollars that are subject to Medicare and Social Security under the cap today, plus another 6 percent is the average rate for State income tax today. So let me add those to both of these charts. Six percent is the rate in my home State of Georgia. So I'm just going to come back over here to these middle class taxpayers that appear to be paying 46.3 percent as a marginal rate on every dollar they earn. Let me come back over here to the high-income folks. Before they pay their payroll taxes, we have 44.8. And of course, on that money that they earn up to $100,000, they're paying an additional, where are we, about 11.5 percent on that. 11.5 added to 44.8. That's an over 56 percent tax rate. Mr. Speaker, how much is enough? When does freedom in this country cease to have meaning? At what level of confiscation of the work product of the American people does freedom cease to have meaning? We've got to be getting close to it, Mr. Speaker. But more importantly, when we talk about paying their fair share, when is America as a whole paying its fair share, Mr. Speaker? When is America paying its fair share, but the Federal Government is spending too much anyway? Middle class America, 46.3 percent. That's middle class America. That's $35,000 a year you're earning, and your Federal Government and your State government hit you for a combination of 46 percent of every dime. What incentive is that to go out and work longer and harder? Forty-six percent. Fifty-seven over here. Fifty-seven. We all know that small businesses create all the jobs in this country. That's why we're so worried about this tax proposal, because, while this is already 57 percent over here, Mr. Speaker, the President wants to raise it another three, to almost 60 percent. 60 percent of every dime earned by family-owned businesses the President wants to take back for Washington, D.C. I'm in favor of a balanced approach. I'm committed to fairness in American society. But, Mr. Speaker, I ask you, is the problem that taxes are too low, or is the problem that spending is too high? We're better than class warfare, Mr. Speaker. We're better than saying we're going to ask them to bear the burden while we benefit. Three hundred twenty million of us have to come together, Mr. Speaker, on tough, tough challenges, challenges that this House has crafted solutions to. These solutions are not easy. These solutions are not pain-free. These solutions involve shared commitment from every single American because as freedom is eroded in this country, ever single American suffers. And as economic opportunity and economic liberty is expanded in this country, absolutely every American benefits. We can do better, Mr. Speaker, as a Nation. We have done better as the United States House of Representatives. And I come here today just to remind my President and the White House that the election is over. The time for clever soundbites that register on the public opinion polls is far behind us. What's in front of us are hard, hard decisions that this House has led on, and that we are waiting patiently for partnership to work on and to pass. I want to leave you with three numbers, Mr. Speaker: H.R. 5652, it was passed in May, called the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act. It was the House-passed idea to avoid the debilitating sequester cuts that we see coming, to deal with the mandatory spending side of the equation, passed in a bipartisan way here in the House. It is the only proposal in all of Washington, D.C., to have been passed by a body. H.R. 5652 passed in May. I'll leave you with H.R. 8, Mr. Speaker, the Job Protection and Recession Prevention Act. That's our plan, House-passed plan for how to deal with these tax increases that threaten America's family-owned businesses, threaten our economy, how to deal with them in a responsible way to get us past this fiscal cliff, passed in August, only plan in Washington, D.C., to prevent these debilitating tax increases from hitting across all of our family-owned small businesses. And finally, Mr. Speaker, H.R. 6365. It's the National Security and Job Protection Act. We passed that in September. That's the bill that looks specifically at these coming defense cuts, these cuts that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has called devastating in their impact. If you don't know--and I know you do, Mr. Speaker--Leon Panetta, the former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, former chairman of the Democratic-led Budget Committee here in the U.S. House of Representatives, current Secretary of Defense, calls these defense cuts devastating. This U.S. House has passed a proposal to prevent that second round of cuts from taking place. It's the only proposal anywhere in this town to have passed. We did it in August. We took care of our business. And we have yet to have partnership from either the White House or the Senate on that proposal. We took care of the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act in May, Mr. Speaker. We took care of the Job Protection Recession Prevention Act in August, Mr. Speaker. We took care of the National Security and Job Protection Act in September, Mr. Speaker. The work of this House has been done month after month after month. We've passed two budgets in a row, Mr. Speaker, that take on the tough challenges of entitlement reform, that take on the tough challenges of increasing revenue, that take on the challenges that no Congress in my lifetime has ever taken on, Mr. Speaker. We did it not once but we did it twice. And the silence from the Senate and the White House has been deafening. We can do it, Mr. Speaker. We must do it. This House has done it. And as we did in May, as we did in August, and as we did in September, I reach out my hand again, Mr. Speaker, to the Senate and to the White House to join us in tackling these tough solutions, tackling these challenges, providing these solutions not for Republicans, not for Democrats, not for politics whatsoever, but for America. Because it's the right thing to do. And without it we all know where this country is headed. Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize one of my constituents, Ms. Arpana Satyu. She is the owner of Dutch Monkey Doughnuts, a small business in Cumming, Georgia, that specializes in making fresh, hand-rolled gourmet doughnuts. Dutch Monkey Doughnuts was recently named by American Express as one of the top five small businesses, among a group of nearly 12,000 businesses, in the country. This is a tremendous honor, and one that is well-deserved. There is no doubt that times are tough economically everywhere we look, and yet Dutch Monkey Doughnuts stands as a ray of hope and achievement. When she set out to create Dutch Monkey Doughnuts, Ms. Satyu not only wanted to make the best doughnuts in the country, she wanted to create a business that would bring people together. She wanted to make a difference in her community, and she succeeded in doing that. I am proud to share her story with the nation. I am especially impressed with Ms. Satyu's response to being named as a winner of the American Express small business competition. When American Express awarded Dutch Monkey Doughnuts a cash prize for its fifth place finish, Ms. Satyu expressed that she is very grateful for receiving the monetary award, but that she is most excited about the community events that are being organized by American Express in Cumming, Georgia, in honor of Dutch Monkey Doughnuts' success. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing Ms. Arpana Satyu for her service to the Seventh District of Georgia and for her achievement with her small business. I am very proud of her efforts and accomplishments.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you coming in tonight and allowing me to have the time. I'm going to get a little outside of my comfort zone tonight, Mr. Speaker. You talk about the 20 months you and I have been on the job here in this body. We've talked a lot about tax policy. And I feel like we're going to have a conversation. I think, as we stand in this Chamber a year from today, we will have signed fundamental tax reform into law. I'm excited about seeing this body do that. I think about health care reform. As we stand here today, I feel like this time next year, we will have much more freedom in our health care system. I feel like we'll have skin in the game in our health care system. That's a conversation that America has had and will continue to have. But a conversation America has not been having, Mr. Speaker, is one about the Federal Reserve and what the Federal Reserve is doing to help with jobs and the economy. We talk about that here on the floor of the House on a regular basis: What are we doing to help jobs and the economy? As you know, Mr. Speaker, we have about 30 bills sitting over in the Senate that we've passed here in the House that would stimulate the economy, that would help American workers get back to work, but the Senate has failed to act. And in the absence of action by the Senate and in the absence of being able to move legislation to the President's desk, the economy continues to flounder. The President has orchestrated about $800 billion worth of stimulus programs, but that has not gotten the economy back on track. Not only did we not get unemployment down, it continued to rise under that stimulus program. And so what we have, and so if you folks in America talk about it, we have an independent Federal Reserve that engages in monetary policy, and these days, in economic stimulation. I want to point, Mr. Speaker, to an article by--well, I'll call him Dr. Phil Gramm. I mean, in fact, he's Senator Phil Gramm, from the great State of Texas, but he was born in the great State of Georgia and got his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia, his Ph.D. in economics. And he had an article in The Wall Street Journal just this past week, and I want to tell you what it said. Phil Gramm writes this, Senator Gramm writes this, Dr. Gramm writes this: Since mid-September of 2008, the Federal Reserve balance sheet has grown to $2.8 trillion, from $924 billion, as it purchased massive amounts of U.S. Treasury's and mortgage- backed securities. To finance these purchases, the Fed increased currency and bank reserves, base money. That kind of monetary expansion would normally be a harbinger of inflation. However, the bank's holding the excess reserves, rather than lending them out, and with velocity, the rate with which money turns over, generating national income at a 50-year low and falling, the inflation rate has stayed close to the Fed's 2 percent target. Now, Mr. Speaker, I work hard. I study hard. I get through paragraph one of Dr. Gramm's editorial, I'm already getting confused because we don't spend enough time talking about velocity of the money supply. We don't spend enough time talking about what the Federal Reserve's doing in terms of purchasing the bonds. And we don't spend enough time talking about monetary expansion. But let me get into some terms that we do talk about more, Mr. Speaker. The second paragraph of the editorial. While the Fed considered its previous rounds of easing, QE1, QE2 and Operation Twist, the argument was consistently made that the cost of such actions was low because inflation was nowhere on the horizon. That same argument is now being made as the central bank contemplates QE3 during the Federal open market committee meetings on Wednesday and Thursday. Inflation is not, however, the only cost of these unconventional monetary interventions. As investors try to predict the timing and effect of Fed policy on financial markets and on the economy, monetary policy adds to the climate of economic uncertainty and status already caused by current fiscal policy. There will be even greater costs when the economy begins to grow, and the Fed, to prevent inflation, has to reverse course and sell bonds and securities to the public. Now, I'm not going to say that's still perfectly clear, Mr. Speaker. But I am going to say, we're starting to talk about QE1, QE2, now QE3 because that open market committee met and decided to proceed with QE3, and Operation Twist. Now what are these terms, and why don't we talk about them more often? Let me just go briefly, Mr. Speaker, to the Federal Reserve Act. Just to be clear, section 2(a), monetary policy objectives, this is what, we, the Congress, Mr. Speaker, have charged the Federal Reserve with. And I'll quote from the statute: The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee, shall maintain long-run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy's long-run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. Now, when folks want to know what it is the Federal Reserve does, this is the congressional mandate: increase production so as to promote efficiently--effectively, pardon me--the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. Now, Mr. Speaker, I'm not a Ph.D. economist, but I've taken a few economics classes over the years. And what I would tell you is I have always imagined that full employment and stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates are often in conflict with one another. You know, when you want to stimulate the economy, you try to lower interest rates so folks borrow more money, so folks create more jobs. You want to put more money in the hands of our small business owners, our job creators, want to create jobs with other people's money when interest rates are low so that we can bring unemployment low. When interest rates go higher, folks borrow less money. When they borrow less money, perhaps unemployment goes up. These are conflicting goals, but we've tasked the Federal Reserve with both of those. And I want you to see, Mr. Speaker, what that brings us to today. I've got a chart here, and you're not going to be able to see it from where you stand, but it's the last 5 years of the Federal Reserve balance sheet. And I'd be interested to take a poll here, Mr. Speaker, folks back in their office watching on TV: how many folks have taken a look at the Federal Reserve's balance sheet? I don't mean take a look in the last 10 days, I mean who's taken a look in the last quarter? Maybe in calendar year 2012, Mr. Speaker. How many folks have taken a look at the balance sheet in 2012? Maybe not even 2012. What about this session of Congress? What about this new decade? How many folks have taken a look at the Federal Reserve balance sheet? Because what you see at the Federal Reserve balance sheet, Mr. Speaker, is a dramatic change. You're not going to be able to see these numbers here, but they run from zero on the balance sheet up to $1 trillion, up to $2 trillion, up to $3 trillion. You know, we throw trillions around in this town, Mr. Speaker, like they're nothing. A trillion's a big number. It's a million millions. And historically, if you go back, and you see it here on the chart, 2007, 2008, going back into 2006, in general, the Federal Reserve, in order to keep liquidity in the economic system, in order to make sure that our financial system doesn't have fits and starts, kind of lubricates that system, makes sure everything's moving at the proper pace, keeps just under about $1 trillion on its balance sheet, the debt that it buys, money that it's lending. It will buy Treasurys to keep that market fluid. It has a window that it will lend to banks to keep that market fluid. And what we see here, represented by this beige line here, is that going back into 2007 and 2008, most of that balance sheet was comprised of this traditional activity, with a little bit of lending to financial institutions. Now, you remember, Mr. Speaker, when folks got so scared back in 2008 and we started to talk about TARP and the bank bailouts, we were going into the fall of that year and wondering if fiscal calamity was on the horizon. And this Congress passed, before you and I got here, measures to expand our aid to financial institutions, to increase that lubrication to make sure that dollars continued to flow. And so you see it represented here on this gray line, Mr. Speaker, as the Federal Reserve's balance sheet expanded with loans to banking institutions. Now, I don't mean expanded a little. Traditionally we're here, just about $800 billion. Within the period of one quarter, we more than doubled that to $2.2 trillion, almost tripled it. Now, hear that again. This is an institution that exists to keep markets fluid, to prevent hiccups in our financial process, to make sure, again, full employment, long-term interest rates are stable, price stability. Tripled its balance sheet almost overnight in the name of protecting us from an economic collapse. And the balance sheet has not just stayed there since the fall of 2008, it's grown even larger. But the components have begun to change, and that's why it's important to begin this conversation, Mr. Speaker. Again, I'm not a Ph.D. economist. I don't claim to have all the answers. But what I do claim to know is, we're not spending enough time, as a Nation, talking about the role of the Federal Reserve. You know, the Federal Reserve's an independent agency. It's supposed to make decisions on its own. Whenever someone complains to me, Mr. Speaker, about what's going on with the Federal Reserve, I say, I understand that you have some concerns with the Federal Reserve, but the only thing worse than an independent Fed Chairman making these decisions would be a Republican Party chairman and a Democratic Party chairman making these decisions. I mean, we've made it outside of Congress to keep partisanship out of it, to try to do the best economic thing instead of the best political thing. But this is what's happened on our watch. The Fed has tripled the size of its balance sheet. First it was loans to bank, represented here by gray. Then it turned to liquidity in other credit markets, demonstrated by this blue, and then it turned to mortgage-backed securities and long-term American debt. Now what does that mean? That means that the Fed decided that no one wanted to buy mortgage- backed securities in this country and that, in the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, uncertainty took over in the marketplace, and it began to slow and, in fact, began to bind up as those mortgage-backed securities either began to fail or ceased to move, and so they began to buy them in record numbers represented here. It started out as just a little. Now it's over $1 trillion in mortgage-backed securities going through 2010. Couple that then with long-term bond purchases--American debt. Here we have an American banking institution, the Federal Reserve, buying American debt. Now, don't think too hard about that. Don't think too hard about what it means when the folks who control your money supply begin to buy your debt so that you begin to pay your interest to the Federal Reserve, which then returns all of its profits back to the government. You begin to see you're taking it out of your left pocket and you're putting it into your right pocket--taxing the one hand and paying the other hand. It gets circular in a hurry, and it puts us, as a Nation, on the hook for these actions. Again, in 5 years--2007 to 2012--and really, the fall of 2008 to 2012--4 years, 48 months--we tripled the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet and changed its composition from what has historically been traditional security holdings and loans to banking institutions to making those the two smallest parts of the chart and making long-term debt and mortgage-backed securities the largest part of the chart. That's what we've heard from the Federal Open Market Committee, Mr. Speaker, is that we're going to continue that program to the tune of about $40 billion a month. These aren't actions that have no consequences. I'm looking here at yesterday's Wall Street Journal, and the headline is this: ``Governments Brace for Currency Onslaught Ahead of QE3.'' Again, ``QE'' stands for ``quantitative easing.'' It's talking about pumping more liquidity into the marketplace--trying to keep the lubrication going in the American economy--and it's the expansion of the balance sheet. We have some charts that show what happened after QE1 and what happened after QE2 and Operation Twist. This was in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. It was not an editorial, but it was from their reporting pages. The Wall Street Journal says this: In the previous round of Fed quantitative easing, which was dubbed QE2, the dollar weakened significantly. In the 13 months from June 2010--when expectations of more Fed stimulus first began to rise--until the $600 billion bond-buying program wound up the following summer, the Wall Street Journal Dollar Index--a measure of the dollar's value against a basket of major currencies--lost 18 percent of its value. I just want you to think about that for a moment. We're here arguing about what's going to happen with the fiscal cliff, and, of course, the House has acted to prevent taxes from rising on all American families come January. The Senate has not yet acted. We're trying to push that bill through the Senate, and we're trying to get the President on board. We're trying to prevent tax increases--a major part of what we do in this body and a major focus of the American taxpayer. All you have to do is to go back to December 2010, which was when Speaker Nancy Pelosi was running this U.S. House, when Majority Leader Harry Reid was running the United States Senate, when President Obama was sitting in the White House, and when a big election had just been held in November of 2010. That election brought 99 new freshmen to this body. It turned over a tremendous number of Members, which was the largest number we'd seen in decades, and America said, I don't have any more money to give Washington. I'm voting ``no'' on new taxes. So what happened? In the lame duck session--November and December of 2010--Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Harry Reid, and President Barack Obama came together and extended the Bush tax rates for an additional 2 years. They refused to raise taxes on the American people because the American people had just had a giant referendum in the November election, and Washington responded. Folks who hated the Bush tax rates--who demonized the Bush tax rates, from whom I've never heard a nice thing said about the Bush tax rates--came together to extend those tax rates for 2 additional years. Why? Because the American people demanded it. In reading from yesterday's Wall Street Journal--call it causative, call it correlated, call it coincidental--in 13 months of QE2, $600 billion of bond-buying, the value of the American dollar against world currencies fell by 18 percent, which is, in effect, an 18 percent instant tax on every single dollar in every single American pocket in this country. If you're not thinking through that, I mean, here is the story. You're going to Walmart to buy those Chinese tennis shoes for your kids. Now, when the American dollar--the value of what a dollar buys on the world marketplace--falls 18 percent, that means the cost of those Chinese sneakers rises by that same amount because the dollar is worth less and foreign currencies are worth more. It helps U.S. exports, because what we've produced here becomes worth less and it makes it easier for foreign companies and corporations and nations to buy it, but it makes all of our savings, all of the dollars in our pockets, worth less, too. This is 18 percent, Mr. Speaker, in 13 months. You and I were not in Congress at that time, but I wonder: How many letters do you think folks got, Mr. Speaker? How many phone calls do you think came in to say, ``I'm watching the activities of the Federal Reserve. I've been studying their balance sheet. I'm deeply engaged in the actions of the $600 billion bond-buying program and QE2, and I see that the value of the dollar against a market basket of world currencies is falling by 18 percent, and I want Congress to fix it''? Now, Mr. Speaker, you and I were not here, but if this House of Representatives had raised taxes by 18 percent on every American family, there would have been a riot. Phones would have lit up. Mailboxes would have been jammed packed. Email accounts would have been pumped full as American consumers would have said this is not the right direction for America. But who is talking about it when the Federal Reserve creates exactly that same impact through monetary policy? Again, I'm not saying it's right or wrong. We have to make these decisions as a Nation. What I'm saying is there hasn't been enough debate on that topic. Let me go on. Again, this is from yesterday's Wall Street Journal: The dollar followed a similar but slower path leading to the QE3 announcement last week. The Wall Street Journal Dollar Index hit a 22-month high in July. That means that our dollar was valued high against a market basket of world currencies, which meant spending a dollar bought more goods than it historically buys. It's a 22-month high. It bought more goods in July than it bought in any other month over 22 months. The Wall Street Journal goes on: It then started to slide gradually before dropping sharply once Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled the Central Bank's plan at his speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on August 31. The index is now 6 percent off its July high. From July to September, every dollar in every American pocket and in every community across this land is worth 6 percent less than it was just 3 months ago. How many letters have you gotten, Mr. Speaker? How many letters have you received from your constituents to say that every single dollar they're earning in their paychecks, that every single penny in their children's piggybanks, that every single bank account, that every single stock purchase--that every single dollar of wealth we have in this country--now buys 6 percent less? Again, Ben Bernanke is a bright guy. Alan Greenspan before him was a bright guy. We have this independent Federal Reserve so that we can have really smart people who are studied, schooled--decade upon decade--in the economics of our land and of our world make these decisions. But they impact us, and we're not having that national discussion about what that impact is. This is 6 percent in just the past 3 months. We talk a lot about Social Security and Medicare, and certainly there's an impact on our seniors, Mr. Speaker, with both of those major programs that we've all paid into out of our paychecks all of our lives. But what about folks on a fixed income? Because, again, part of this Federal Reserve policy, there is the expansion of the balance sheet side, and there's also the controlling of the interest rate side. Of course, we've pushed interest rates low. What I have here, Mr. Speaker, is a chart of interest rates in this country that is kind of a 10-year bond yield. It is a number that is looked at around the globe. This chart goes from January of 2009 up to September 2012. What you see in green is the beginning of quantitative easing, QE1 in green. You see the end of QE1 in red. As we begin to put more and more and more money into the marketplace, lubricate that marketplace more and more and more, the cost of borrowing money went higher and higher and higher until QE1 ends and interest rates collapse. Then we announce QE2. Here in green you see where QE2 begins. You see in red where QE2 ends. As soon as QE2 ends, interest rates collapse. Operation Twist begins. Here we are with average 10-year yields, Mr. Speaker, going back over the last 3 years. This is what we're usually paying for money. This is what we're paying for money right now. These are the lowest interest rates we've seen--well, not just in a generation, Mr. Speaker--in decades. Let me go on. This is that dollar index that I talked about, that market basket of world currencies. How much is a dollar worth? Again, let's look. QE1 begins, the value of a dollar spikes briefly. Throughout QE1, the value of a dollar collapses and rises towards the end of QE1. As soon as QE1 ends, the value of a dollar spikes again--QE2. Again QE2 begins. By the time QE2 ends, we see the dollar valued substantially less. What's the discussion around the family dinner table, Mr. Speaker? You can't find a household in this Nation that hasn't had a discussion about their tax bill. I daresay you wouldn't find many households in this Nation that haven't had a discussion about the regulatory burden that is being placed on them by the Federal Government today, the challenges of going out and creating a business or building a new job because of the regulatory burden. But how many folks are sitting around the dinner table talking about this small group of men and women, the Federal Open Market Committee, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and what they're doing that both obligates Americans and impacts our fiscal and economic future, and what they're doing to try to create those jobs and keep interest rates low for America today? This is the chart that concerns me the most, Mr. Speaker, because we're borrowing at record low interest rates. The Federal Reserve is doing a lot of buying of American debt too. Again, I talked about the left hand and the right hand, and we're paying ourselves because we're borrowing from ourselves and lending to ourselves. These are all just clicks of the mouse these days. It's not dollars that are changing hands. We're just clicking the mouse. What happens borrowing a trillion dollars a year, Mr. Speaker? You and I are working hard to curtail that. Of course, discretionary spending in the 20 months you and I have been here, we reduced 2010. When we went into 2011, we came lower than 2011. When we went into 2012, we now sent a continuing resolution to the Senate that brings us even lower in 2013. We're in 2012. We're absolutely saving those dollars one dollar at a time, but we're still borrowing a trillion tax dollars a year. Whose buying that debt, Mr. Speaker? In the early 1970s, it would have been us. That's been the history of this country. We, the American people, buy our debt. Thrift was valued, and we take our hard-earned dollars, we take those dollars we've accumulated as families through our thrift, and we buy American bonds with them. We reinvest in America. And when America pays interest on those bonds, that interest comes back to us as American families. But over the past four decades, that's begun to change dramatically. The mix of who's buying those bonds has moved from American families and American institutional investors and is drifting aggressively towards foreign purchasers. That's just the way it is. We don't have any thrift in this country anymore. No one is saving money in this country anymore. American has debt it has to sell. It can't sell it to American families because American families don't have jobs and don't have money, so they've got to sell it to foreigners: China, Germany, Japan. That's the way the economy is today, Mr. Speaker. I've represented those lines here. This is a percent of GDP. That's what this chart is. This is a baseline here, zero percent of GDP. It goes back to the year 2000. We're just looking at the last decade. It comes out to 2012. The question is: Year over year, who's buying Treasury securities? Is it the private sector, individuals, and institutional investors? That's the green line. Is it foreign investors? That's the blue line. Or is it the Federal Reserve? Again, I don't know who is following those things day to day, Mr. Speaker. It's not coming up at town hall meetings. It's not coming up around family dinner tables. But the Federal Reserve, if you follow this black line here, the net change in what they were buying in terms of Federal Treasurys, it's pretty close to zero here. This black line representing the Federal Reserve is zero in 2001, 2002, and 2003. The foreign nations begin to buy more here, American consumers begin to buy a little more here, they sold more here, the foreigners bought more there. But here's that black line, the baseline, the Federal Reserve going right on out. Look at what happens in 2009, 2010, and 2011. That black line spikes. As we go into 2011, I want you to see, Mr. Speaker, that black line crosses the green and the red line. Why are these lines getting so tall? Because America is selling so much debt. You've got to remember that. When President Bush was in the White House when debts were considered then massive at that time, we were under $400 billion a year. We were trying to sell $400 billion a year in government-backed securities on the world market. Beginning late in 2008 and going into 2009 and into 2010 and into 2011, we began to sell over a trillion dollars a year. The number of debt instruments that we had to sell in the world marketplace tripled, if not quadrupled. So you see that spike, and everyone has to buy more of our debt. Individuals are buying more in the green line, foreign nations and foreign investors are buying more with the blue line, and the Federal Reserve begins to buy more, as you see, in the black line. Starting in late 2010 and going into 2011, you see the black line come out on top, that the net change in the ownership of Treasurys has shifted away from all private and governmental investors combined around the globe, and now the biggest shift in each month is our Federal Reserve buying our own debt, us taking the money out of one pocket, putting it in the other, taking the debt instrument out of your pocket, putting it back in the other. What's the impact of that, Mr. Speaker, on the long-term American economy when we can't find enough dollars on the planet, we can't find enough buyers on the planet to invest in American debt? So we the American Federal Reserve have to buy that American debt--again, just a click of the mouse--because no one else is. What if the Federal Reserve closed the doors tomorrow, Mr. Speaker? Could we even sell it? I understand the Federal Reserve competing in that marketplace. It helps to keep interest rates low, right? When demand is high for debt, interest rates are lower. The Federal Reserve would have stopped that demand. What's the real cost of borrowing in this country? We don't know. We have four times higher debt today than we did in the late 1990s, by 1997. Four times more debt today than we did in 1997, and yet we pay less in interest on the national debt as a percent of GDP today than we did then. Why? Because of record low interest rates. Why do we have record low interest rates? Because we are exerting every fiber of energy that the Federal Reserve can muster to keep those interest rates low. I'll show you a chart of those interest rates later. But they are the largest purchaser of our debt. There is some good news in that, and I want to shift just a moment from the Federal Reserve to the Treasury Department. Again, the Federal Reserve, Mr. Speaker, is an independent doing its own thing. The Treasury Department is completely funded by this Congress, completely involved in oversight under this Congress and direction by the administration. We are experiencing record low interest rates today. There is so much uncertainty in our future and, again, I'm trying to highlight how some of that has been created by the Federal Reserve just so that America begins to have that conversation. The good news is the folks over at Treasury, the public folks over at Treasury, the Bureau of Public Debt and Treasury have begun to extend the maturity, average maturity rate, of our debt. Now, what does that mean? Well, you remember reading about all the folks in the mortgage market who got caught by those teaser rate loans. The rates were low on year one, but they went up in year two and folks couldn't afford the payments on year two and the interest rate jumped-- teaser rates. Well, right now we're financing America's debt at teaser rates. We're borrowing at the lowest rates in history. When we go out and we start selling debt instruments, we're not selling everything as a 30-year bond, where nobody is going to come looking for the principal for another 30 years. We sell that in 28-day instruments, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months. Short-term instruments finance the plurality of our debt. Now, what does that mean? That means we have tremendous interest rate risk. Whatever the debts are in our families at home, Mr. Speaker, if we have those amortized over a long period of time, then we know exactly what our payments are going to be. If we're involved in short- term teaser rates, then we could have the rug pulled out from under us tomorrow. To the Treasury's credit, go back to 1980 here, average maturity of debt, when interest rates have gotten lower, Treasury has begun to lock American debt in for longer and longer maturities. Back in October of 2008, when we were just dumping debt on the marketplace as fast as we could because we were spending at the highest deficit levels in American history--again, four times the previous levels, as George Bush was leaving office--we had to sell it to anybody who was willing to buy it. The maturity rate, just the average maturity rate just collapsed, collapsed. We've been battling back from that time, 48 months in October of 2008. Again, that's average, 2008. What were we talking about then, Mr. Speaker? About $13.5 trillion in public debt that, on average, was due in 4 years or less. There is a thing about that, because there's no surplus here. We're still borrowing more, but every 4 years the entire amount of debt comes due, that's the average. The entire debt turns over every 4 years. We're not only borrowing a trillion more each year; we've got to pay back the $13 trillion we already borrowed that we're then refinancing by selling additional debt. To the Treasury's credit, we're extending that timeline one month at a time, one day at a time. Here in May of 2012, we've already pushed out the average maturity date 32 percent. It's up to 64 months there over the summer to try to lock in these low interest rates to give America some interest rate protection, to reduce our interest rate exposure. You can't throw money around the way this Nation is throwing money around and think inflation isn't going to get you. It's not a question for economists, Is inflation coming? The question is when is it coming and how bad is it going to be. It's coming. The laws of economics are sound. It's coming. When is it coming? How bad's it going to be? Our Federal Reserve tries to manage that for us with our Treasury Department locking in those longer-term rates now. Let me just say that we've begun that discussion in Congress. I think we need to begin that discussion, Mr. Speaker, in living rooms around the country. It's not just a congressional discussion, of course. It's a discussion that the American people need to have. Who are we as a Nation? What are we mortgaging away in our tomorrow to try to help our today? Is what we're doing making today easier? Perhaps it is. But giving the risk of what it does to tomorrow, is it worth that risk? We're not having that conversation. We're leaving those decisions to the independent Federal Reserve. We're leaving those decisions to the Federal Market Committee. That was a different choice that we made when the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve was $800 billion, still a big number, but $800 billion. Now it's four times larger. We're working on that here in Congress, Mr. Speaker. It began with the Federal Reserve Transparency Act; and that's a bill, a bipartisan bill, 274 cosponsors in the House. When we finally brought it to the House floor, it passed 327-98. That's big. You talk about all the things we don't agree on here in Congress, you talk about party-line votes that divide us right down the middle--3-1 Congress voted to pass the Federal Reserve Transparency Act. Now, does that say the Federal Reserve is doing a bad job? No, that's not what this bill says. What this bill says is the Federal Reserve is doing a lot. It's doing a lot that we never anticipated when we created the Federal Reserve. There comes a time the American people need to be involved in that process and we, as their Representatives, need to be involved in that process. This is Dr. Ron Paul from Texas who has been pushing this idea for years and years and years. In this Congress, as he prepares to retire at the end of this year, the House finally had a vote and passed it by a large margin. There is another bill in the House that has 48 cosponsors right now. It has not moved out of committee, and it's called the Sound Dollar Act. It's H.R. 4180. Again, it's looking at some of these questions going back to be that Wall Street Journal article I showed in the beginning, 6 percent devaluation of our currency in the last 3 months. As the Federal Reserve began to act on QE2, an 18 percent devaluation in our currency. Golly, you work hard all your life, you think, God the stock market is too risky for me. I have seen it collapse, more than once: tech bubble collapse; builders, real estate collapse; September 11, 2001 collapse. Too risky, I just can't do it. I'm going to take my dollar, and I'm going to put it in a federally insured banking institution so that I know when I go to take that dollar out, it's going to be there. Well, that's true. But is it still going to be worth a dollar when you take it out? The answer turns out to be no. If this government wants your money, we can come and we can tax you, Mr. Speaker. We can take 20 percent of everything you own, brand-new tax, 20 percent of all the wealth anyone has in America. Yes, $10, we're going to take $2 of it. That's not going to pass this body, and it shouldn't. It's crazy. Through monetary policy, we can achieve that very same effect and nary a voter said a word. I'm not telling you it's bad for America. I'm not telling you the folks of the Federal Reserve are out to get America. I'm not saying that at all. These are conscientious men and women who love this country and who are trying to make sure, in line with their Federal mandates, that they are keeping an eye on inflation, that they are keeping an eye on interest rates, that they are keeping an eye on full employment. These are contradictory goals, and they have got to keep them all in the same basket and try to succeed on all fronts. But the beneficiary, if they succeed, is the American taxpayer. The one who bears the burden if they fail is the American taxpayer. The one that's not involved in the discussion right now about whether it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do is the American taxpayer. I believe this November, Mr. Speaker, we are going to have the largest voter turnout in American history, and I'm thrilled about it because I still believe in America. I still believe in Americans. When more Americans turn out to have their voice heard, we're going to end up with the right answer. I don't have any idea what the American people are going to decide because at the polls they're still trying to make up their mind in some cases. But when more of us are involved, we're going to end up with a better decision for America at the end of the day. We need to get those voices involved in Federal Reserve policy. This chart, Mr. Speaker, is one of my favorites. It goes back to 1962. We go deep, deep, deep into history. I say deep, deep, deep because I'm in my forties; this is before I was born. So I call that deep, deep, deep into history. If you were born before 1962, it might not seem like that far to you, but it's 50 years, Mr. Speaker, of American interest rate policy. We see here the end of the Carter years and the beginning of the Reagan years before the Reagan tax cuts had a chance to take effect and get the economy back on track. We're talking about sky-high interest rates, but over 50 years of American history, 50 years of American history through Vietnam, through the oil embargoes, through Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. You look way out to the end of this chart, Mr. Speaker, 2012. You see a collapse in the average 10-year interest rate to the lowest levels that most of us have ever seen in our lifetimes. These are the interest rates that America ordinarily pays. But we're manipulating the system to pay the lowest interest rates in history. At the same time, we're borrowing the most money in history. The laws of economics tell you that's not what goes on with supply and demand. If there's more demand for debt and less supply and folks to buy, interest rates are supposed to go up. We have more demand than ever before. We have less supply of buyers than ever before in the world marketplace. And yet interest rates are at their lowest level in history. There's going to come a time, Mr. Speaker, that we're going to have to pay the piper. This is normalcy. This is historical normalcy. What we're experiencing today is temporary, and, by definition, has to be. The same thing is true on 30-year interest rates. In fact, it's even more dramatic. This goes back to 1977, Mr. Speaker, out to 30-year interest rates today. The 30-year U.S. Government interest rate down around 3 percent, Mr. Speaker. Who is it, Mr. Speaker, who wants to trade away $1 today with the agreement that they'll get $1.03 back next year. And that same deal over the next 30 years. Who thinks that dollar is only going to devalue 3 cents a year going out over time? As I close, I want to make it clear there's a lot of shin-kicking that goes on in this town. I'm not trying to kick the shins of the Federal Reserve. I've got a lot of constituents who think I should. I've got a couple of constituents who think I shouldn't. But what I don't have enough of are voices across the Nation demanding that we take a look at it. I recommend this article to you. September 11, 2012, again, written by Senator Phil Gramm. That's Phil Gramm of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act. Do you remember that? That was our last serious effort at deficit reduction. This is a gentleman who has been concerned about free markets and American job creation and American debt for a generation. He served here in the House, served in the United States Senate. He crafted, again, some of the biggest budget bills, most progressive, most opportune when it came to seizing the moments to try to change the fiscal direction of the country for the better. He's writing on September 11 about our fiscal future and what's happening at the Federal Reserve. I'll close with the same way that he closed. He said: Some day, hopefully next year, the American economy will come back to life. Banks will begin to lend, the money supply will expand, and the velocity of money will rise. Unless the Fed responds by reducing its balance sheet, inflationary pressure will build rapidly. At that point, the cost of our current monetary policy will be all too clear. Like Mr. Obama's stimulus policy, Mr. Bernanke's monetary policy expansion will ultimately have to be paid for. The Fed softened the recession by its decisive actions during the panic of 2008. But the marginal benefits of its subsequent policy have almost certainly been small. We may find the policies that had little positive impact on the recovery today will have high costs, indeed, when they must be reversed in a full- blown expansion. There's not a man or woman in this country, Mr. Speaker, who's registered to vote who's not thinking about their tax bill, who's not thinking about the economy, who's not thinking about job creation, and who's not going to go to the polls and vote accordingly. Mr. Speaker, I encourage you to encourage your constituents, as I'm going to encourage mine, don't just think about tax policy. Think about monetary policy. What we're doing here in Washington to cut budgets, that's what we'll call fiscal policy. What the Federal Reserve is doing with its balance sheet and with interest rate, that's going to be monetary policy. And it makes a difference. The decisions we make today have to be paid for tomorrow. Perhaps it's the right thing to do today, but if it happens in secret, if it happens unbeknownst to the American taxpayer, the American job creator, the American jobholder, who will ultimately have to foot that bill, then it's not the right course of action for America. Let's have this debate. Let's talk about it in the light of day. And let's make that decision, Mr. Speaker. Balance those costs and those benefits and do what we know will be best for the American family for another generation to come. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the time. You know, you and I, Madam Speaker, are freshmen in this House. And I've a learned a few things about coming down to the floor from watching my colleagues, about how to make a good impression. You know, everybody's back in their offices watching the proceedings on TV, or folks back in the district watching it on TV. And I see our colleagues come, and they'll take the podium down to the very lowest level so that when they walk up to the podium they'll be able to drag it all the way up to the top and look big and strong and powerful. You know, in the 18 months that you and I have served here, Madam Speaker, we've gotten a lot of advice about how to look good. We've gotten a lot of advice about how to tell the good story, how to spin the good tale. And as I listened to my friend from Virginia make his presentation earlier, I thought, you know what? He and I are looking at exactly the same set of facts and we are drawing exactly the opposite set of conclusions. And that makes it so hard to legislate here, Madam Speaker, because you and I, as part of this freshman class, we don't care two hoots about what looks good. What we care about is what is good. We don't care about trying to make people believe it's the truth, we care about actually finding the truth, and that's been the challenge up here in the 18 months that you and I have had a voting card. I have beside me, Madam Speaker, a chart that has been down on this floor a number of times. It's called A Choice of Two Futures, and you've seen it, Madam Speaker. It's the one that shows the red line of current spending promises. It's the one that goes all the way back to 1940, Madam Speaker. It shows debt as a percent of GDP. It shows back at the end of World War II when we were fighting the Nazis, we were fighting the Japanese, we were fighting to defend freedom and democracy around the global. In the name of ending that world war, we borrowed 100 percent of our economy. Our national debt grew to 100 percent the size of our economy. And that was an investment well made, Madam Speaker, having defended the liberty of citizens around the world. But we're right back in that same place today, Madam Speaker. This chart goes from 1940 all the way out to 2080. It's 140 years of past policy and projected policy. And what it shows is that today, America is on the verge of carrying that same debt burden. We're not in the middle of a world war to defend freedom and liberty. We're not in the middle of fighting the Nazis and trying to prevent a hostile takeover of the world. But we've borrowed 100 percent the size of our economy. But that's not even the most damning part of this chart, Madam Speaker. What we see is, represented by this red line, if we do nothing, Madam Speaker, if our freshman class had never come to this town, if we closed the Congress, if we closed the White House, if we never passed a new law and never made a new promise, this red line represents the promises already made. And what we see is debt rising to 200 percent, 300 percent, 400 percent, 500 percent the size of our economy, levels that economists tell us will never be sustainable. And that's if we don't make one new promise on the floor of this House. My colleague from Virginia spoke passionately about the need for child care in this country; spoke eloquently about families at home struggling to balance the demands of work and the demands of child care. You see it in your district, Madam Speaker, I see it in my district. He's absolutely right about the struggles that every single American family faces and, from his words, believes in his heart that the right way to address those challenges in my small town of Peachtree Corners, Georgia, is with a Federal program, a program that comes right down the street here, maybe from the Department of Health and Human Services, maybe from the Department of Education, but that somehow we can create a program here in Washington, D.C., that will be the absolute best and most efficient way to deal with my family's challenges and my neighbors' challenges back in Peachtree Corners, Georgia. Madam Speaker, what I've learned, I serve on the Budget Committee and the Rules Committee and, listening to my colleagues talk, I somehow thought that perhaps there were some dollars here in Washington, D.C., that came from somewhere other than my constituents' pockets. But I've learned that's not the case, that every single dollar that this institution spends, every single commitment that the administration makes, every single project that the Senate wants to fund, every single dollar comes out of the pockets of my constituents back home, and your constituents back home, Madam Speaker. So when we talk about--I think the phrase my friend from Virginia used was the anti-government forces on Capitol Hill. I don't know who those forces are. I feel like he was talking about me and this freshman class. I don't know of any anti-government forces. What I know about are folks who talk about what's the right level of government to get the American taxpayer the absolute best value for their tax dollar. And who are those folks who honestly believe that the best value for their tax dollar, back in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, is to take that dollar out of the back pocket of a hardworking taxpayer in Peachtree Corners, move it through the Gwinnett County government, move it through the State of Georgia government, bring it up here to the Federal Government, then send it back down to Federal agency that's going to send it back down to a State agency that's going to send it back over to a county government in order to provide child care. Who believes that's the absolute best and most efficient way to spend an American tax dollar? And that's the battle that we have here in this House. It's not about government and anti-government. It's about good government and bad government. You know, we're here in the Federal Government, Madam Speaker, the Federal Government, and there are responsibilities that we have, making war, one of our responsibilities, defending our border, one of our responsibilities, maintaining the postal roads, one of our responsibilities. But there are so many other levels of government--State government, county government, local government--that can fulfill some of these needs that my colleagues seem to believe only the Federal Government is right to fulfill. I want to go back to this chart, Madam Speaker. This is the chart of promises already made. So often I pick up the newspaper, and it sounds like everybody is just complaining up here in Washington, D.C.--that it's all about pointing fingers and that it's not about solving problems. What I am so proud of in the 18 months you and I have been here under the leadership of some senior members, like the gentleman from Indiana, is that we have not only identified the problem, which is a crushing debt burden that threatens the economic security, not just of our children and of our grandchildren, but of our very Republic, but that we've promulgated a solution. It's represented here on the chart by this green line that's labeled ``the path to prosperity.'' I'm just so proud I serve on the Budget Committee. My chairman is Paul Ryan. This House came together--and you don't hear that a lot on the front pages of newspapers. This House came together in a bipartisan way to pass a budget not just once--we passed it for the first time in 2011--but again in this year, 2012, and we've been waiting on the Senate to act. It's our constitutional obligation to pass that budget each and every year. The President has offered one each and every year, the House has passed one each and every year, but the Senate has failed to act. We laid out line item by line item as to how we would prevent this most certain destruction of economic liberty and security in our land. It's represented by this green line. It stretches out from 2012 all the way out to 2051. You don't run up trillion-dollar debts like we're running up and solve it overnight. You just can't. You can't run up 100 percent of your GDP in debt and solve it overnight. We don't have that kind of money. We can't levy that kind of tax burden on the American people, but we can solve it over time. We can keep it from getting worse today, and we can make it better tomorrow. That's what our plan is. I think that's so important, Madam Speaker. Again, when I listen to it and when I read about it in the newspaper, it's finger-pointing. It's who's to blame and whose fault is it and why didn't they do better. I don't care whose fault it was. I don't care who got us here. My knowledge of history tells me there is a lot of blame to go around. I care about who is going to get us out of here, about who is going to solve these problems, about who is going to move us from the precipice of economic disaster back to the robust American economy for which we are known around the globe. This House has passed that plan, Madam Speaker, not once but twice. What I show here is the budget that the President has introduced. I want to give this President his due. I come down here--and we saw it with the rule that I managed yesterday, and we see it in some of the presentations on the other side of the aisle. You come down here, and it's as if the other side is just evil and that's why nothing works. That's just not true at all. There are honest, hardworking men and women on both sides of this aisle who represent constituents back home who just have very different understandings of who we are as a people, some of whom have different hopes and dreams about where we will go as a people, some of whom have different needs that they're asking the government to meet. This President got more done in the first 2 years of his term than most Presidents get done in eight. He was incredibly effective. Now, I would argue that he was incredibly effective in doing things that are destroying the very fabric of freedom in this country, but he was incredibly effective. Of course, he won with a majority of the vote here in this Nation, Madam Speaker, and he is campaigning to win again this fall--a smart guy, an effective guy, with a completely different understanding of who we are as a people and where we should go as a Nation than the one that I have, but he is a talented politician nonetheless. He has honored his legal requirement to submit a budget to this Congress each and every year that he has been in office, and that's important because that distinguishes him from the United States Senate, which also has a legal obligation to submit a budget and has refused to do so for the last 3 years. You wonder why it is we can't come together on funding priorities, Madam Speaker. For 3 years, the Senate has said, We're not going to tell you what we're interested in doing. We're not going to provide you with any ideas, and because we won't move it, the House product can't move, and the President doesn't have anything to work with. So you see the kind of economic turmoil that we're in today, but the President, to his credit, has submitted a budget each and every year with his priorities. This is the budget that he submitted for 2012. This was just last February. The law required it and he complied with it, but he's running for reelection. He has got his fingers on the pulse of the American people for what they need and what they desire and what they want from the United States Government--again, all attuned towards the election in November--but the budget that he submitted raises taxes, as the gentleman from Virginia advocated, by $2 trillion on the American people. Now, if you want to know how much a trillion is, Madam Speaker, I speak to a lot of school groups back home, and we try to break those zeros into things that matter. If you began on the day that Jesus Christ was born and if you wasted $1 million a day, 7 days a week from the day Jesus Christ was born through today, you would have to throw away $1 million a day every day, 7 days a week for another 734 years to throw away your first $1 trillion--your first. The President proposes to raise taxes on the American people by $2 trillion. Folks say, Rob, we have debts. We have bills to pay. We may have to raise taxes to do it, they say. He raises taxes by $2 trillion, but raises spending by even more. That's what we're talking about here, Madam Speaker. Here is the chart of the promises we've already made, the unsustainable path of spending that we have already committed to as a Nation. It is spending that has to be reduced. It is spending that has to be cut. They are priorities that have to be reset and reorganized. The President in his budget this year said, not only are we going to spend all of that, but we're going to spend $2 trillion more such that we're going to tax the American people an additional $2 trillion, but we're going to raise the debt faster than if we hadn't passed a budget at all. There are 2 trillion new dollars coming into the Treasury but so much more new spending going out the door that the debt actually rises faster under the President's plan for 2013 and '14 and '15 and '16. It rises faster under the President's plan in 2017 and '18 and '19 and '20. You have to go all the way out to 2021. I blew it up here on the chart because I know folks won't be able to see it back in their offices. Here is 2021, which is represented by this sliver of green way out there at the end of this chart. It says, if we agree to the President's budget and if we raise taxes by $2 trillion on the American people--with all of this new spending that he would like to do as well way out in 2021--we'll borrow just a little bit less money than if we'd done nothing at all. I say that, Madam Speaker, because folks aren't here bickering over nothing. Folks are up here advocating at the top of their lungs for their vision of America. It's the greatest experiment in the history of the world, where people would govern themselves, a Republic as never before seen in world history. We started that Republic here. We are maintaining that Republic here. I would tell you we are dutybound to pass that Republic on, not just to our children and to our grandchildren, but for generations to come; but we have come to a nexus in our history where we disagree on who we are as a people. The President--incredibly effective, incredibly talented in running for reelection, in trying to enunciate those hopes and dreams that the American people will respond to and endorse and reelect him based on-- believes and advocates, even with this crushing burden of debt which every single economist agrees is unsustainable going into the future, that over the next 10 years we do not one thing about it. In fact, we raise taxes by $2 trillion. We exacerbate it and we make it worse. That's not who this House is, Madam Speaker. That's not why you and I ran for Congress. That's not why folks left their families. That's not why folks got off the sidelines and said, I've got to stay at home and complain about it or I can run for Congress and do something about it. We elected 99 new Members in this House last fall--99 new Members, Republicans and Democrats, coming from all walks of life--to say that we can do better, that we can be a part of the solution. We don't have to point the finger of blame. We can actually put forward solutions-- and we have. Again, you don't read that in the newspaper, Madam Speaker. It's no wonder folks are so disgusted with what happens in this town because, when you read about what's happening in this town, it's pretty disgusting. I want to talk about some of the good news. I have four bars here, Madam Speaker. Fiscal year 2010, Federal Government discretionary spending, fiscal year 2011, fiscal year 2012, and fiscal year 2013. This fiscal year 2010, Madam Speaker, that was money that was spent before you and I came to Congress. That was money that was spent while my Republican colleagues were in the minority, while we had Democrats running the White House and the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. There was one-party control. We had one-party Republican control from 2000 to 2006. We had one-party Democratic control from 2008 to 2010. Spending levels, discretionary spending--folks say, ``Rob, doesn't all spending begin in the House?'' No, it does not. For the most part, two-thirds of the budget is comprised of mandatory spending, spending that does not come through the House each and every year, but discretionary spending comes through the House. This $1.27 trillion comes through the House for us to make a decision on each and every year. Mr. Speaker, you know the story, the decisions we've been making. When you and I arrived, we joined our senior Republican colleagues here, we created a new Republican majority here in this House. For FY 2011, the first year in which you and I served, we reduced spending. I'm not talking about Washington, D.C., funny math. I'm not talking about where you raise spending by $10 and call it a cut. I'm talking about actual U.S. dollars going out the door in discretionary spending. When we came into this Congress and we took on FY 2011 appropriations, we reduced it from $1.27 trillion to $1.21 trillion, $64 billion less--not inflation adjusted, actual dollars--$64 billion less in 2011 than in 2012. You say, ``Rob, that's not enough.'' You're absolutely right, it's not enough. We only have a small amount of control over the budget here. We're going to do what we can, when we can. We went on to 2012, reduced it again down to $1.18 trillion. That's another $31 billion reduction, and $31 billion is not enough. No, of course it's not enough. Is the history in the country that we raise it and raise it and raise it? Yes, it is. Have we changed that history for the first time since World War II, Madam Speaker? You better believe it. It has not happened in this land since the end of World War II that a Congress year after year after year, and now after year, reduces the discretionary spending going out the door because it wasn't just that we spent less in 2011 than we spent in 2010, we spent less in 2012 than we spent in 2011, and with the bill that we passed on the floor of this House yesterday, we are now on track to spend less in 2013 than we spent in 2012. Just to be clear, Madam Speaker, we talked so much about what goes on here on the House floor. When I show you the path of fiscal despair that is ahead of us with this redline, the current path if we do nothing, and I show you the green line, the solution that we proposed in this House, it's important to note that the green line is just what we've proposed. We've passed it in a bipartisan way. We've passed it twice in a bipartisan way, but the Senate has never taken it up. The President has promised he would never implement it. It is something that we see as a vision of prosperity for this country, but we cannot get agreement from the Senate or the White House to implement. That idea is distinguished from what we've done with discretionary spending, where these bills have passed the House, have passed sometimes a kicking and screaming Senate, and have been signed into law by the President of the United States. This is not an aspirational goal that I have here, Madam Speaker. This is the law of the land. Madam Speaker, all the easy choices are gone. They were gone before you and I got here. They may well have been gone before my colleague from Indiana got here. The easy choices have all been made already. The only thing that is left are the hard choices. Madam Speaker, you know as well as I do when we talk about cutting spending, when we talk about reducing the size and scope of the Federal Government, every dollar we spend comes from back home. Every dollar we spend comes out of the wallets of our constituents back home. We get to choose where we want to spend that money. As a voter back home, I can choose to send it to my city government, I can send it to my county government, I can send it to my State government, I can send it to my Federal Government. But who back home around the water cooler or the coffee pot says, Golly, what we need in this country is efficiency and thrift? We want it done really well and really fast, and we want it done for the lowest possible price. Let's see. Let's send it to Washington, D.C., let them do it, and I bet they'll get it right. Who says that? Nobody says that. Here we are trying to nationalize the entire health care system in this country in the name of efficiency and lower costs. No, we're not going to get it right. I say let's keep it in the hands of the private sector. Some folks may say give it to our city government, some folks may say give it to our county government. Nobody says let's send it to Washington, D.C. So when we're making these reductions, when we're trying to be thrifty with the dollars that we have seized from American taxpayers out of their paychecks each and every month, there's not one anti- government advocate in this town, but there are good government advocates in this town. Whether you sit on the Republican side of the aisle or the Democratic side of the aisle, one thing on which we can all agree is that the Federal Government has let us down. The gentleman from Virginia made a passionate case for why it is we need to fund green energy. I happen to have the largest manufacturer of high-efficiency solar panels in America in my district, and I believe in green energy. What I don't believe in is crony capitalism. That's what we saw in Solyndra, crony capitalism where the political contributors get the taxpayer dollars, where hundreds of millions of dollars can be wasted with no accountability whatsoever. That's not good for anyone. That's not good for the left, that's not good for the right, and that is not good for a single American taxpayer. We're talking about good government here. Madam Speaker, I daresay as I look at this chart to my left of decreasing Federal spending, actual dollars going down, not just for 1 year, not just for 2 years, but now for 3 years in a row, that that would not have happened but for the American people speaking out in the 2010 election and sending 99 new Members to this Congress. We had lots of Members here who believe in thrift, who believe in efficiency, who believe in making sure the taxpayer gets their maximum value out of every tax dollar, but there were not enough. There were not enough. I can't tell you how many times from back home I watched the gentleman from Indiana alone as he advocated for good government, alone on the floor of the House trying to make a difference. The American people sent 99 new faces here, new minds, new ideas, and it's made this difference. Madam Speaker, I don't have any idea how the next election is going to turn out, but I'm absolutely certain with every fiber of my being that we're going to have the largest voter turnout in American history come November 6. I know this: If there's one thing I trust in this country beyond the United States Constitution and the King James Bible, it's the American people. When more Americans turn out in November than ever before to make a decision about who we are as a Nation, where we're going as a Nation, and who shall lead this Nation, we're going to get it right. I don't have any idea which direction that's going to go, but I trust the American people. Madam Speaker, Newt Gingrich said it best when he was down in Georgia speaking during the presidential campaign. He said: This year, we do not need a presidential candidate we can believe in. We need candidates who believe in us. It's one of the distinguishing features on the floor of this House, Madam Speaker. Do you believe in the American people? Do you trust the American people? Do you know in your heart that the American people left to their own devices will get it right every time? Or do you believe they just can't handle it, and it's up to Washington, D.C., to solve those issues for them? We're going to find out on November 6 where the hearts and minds of the American people are, Madam Speaker. But you see on these charts behind us the kind of success that we can have as a Nation, as a people in turning the good ship America when the American people turn out to the polls and send back to Washington those folks who care more about the future of this country than they care about themselves. With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my good friend 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, I yield myself such time as I may consume, before I yield to my freshman colleague from Pennsylvania, to say to my friend from Florida, I don't think you heard the word ``Democrat'' come out of my mouth during my presentation except to talk about those things on which we cooperated together. There are absolutely challenges in this Chamber, but the challenges I'm talking about are challenges with the United States Senate. Democrats and Republicans in this body came together to pass 7 of the 12 appropriations bills this cycle. We began back in April. Far from being an 11th-hour solution, we began, as the Constitution requires us to begin, one piece of legislation at a time in the most open process this body can implement, Mr. Speaker, where every Member of this body gets to offer any amendment that they desire. Seven appropriations bills we've moved through this body, Mr. Speaker. And then it became apparent, as the Senate has moved not one of 12 bills, that that process was going to be fruitless--fruitless. Again, is that what the American people want from us? Absolutely not. Are we doing what the American people deserve in this body? Absolutely we are. In my 18 months, I have not found it to be a Republican- Democratic problem. I've found it to be a problem of ideas. I said to my friend from Florida, I know that he believes in his heart every single word that he has just enunciated. He speaks for inspiration, Mr. Speaker. I have the great pleasure of sitting behind him on the dais in the Rules Committee, so it's always his words that inspire me before it's my turn to take the microphone. My constituents back home, they say, Rob, what have you learned in 18 months with a voting card? I said, What I have learned is it's not theater on the other side of the aisle. Folks aren't taking to the microphone for their 15 seconds of fame on television. They're taking to the microphone with heartfelt beliefs that they know in their heart to be a reflection of their constituents back home. And so as we hear two different presentations about what it is we're doing today--a presentation that suggests it's an 11th-hour, last- minute process versus that presentation that says we've done it all right in the openness of day, and here, 4 weeks before the deadline approaches us, we are going to take action to make sure that uncertainty does not further slow this economy. I'm told, Mr. Speaker, that the fewer days Congress is in session, the higher the stock market goes because at least nothing bad happens here. We're the problem, Mr. Speaker. Government is not the solution. Government is too often the problem. The last Congress that passed as few bills as this Congress has passed, it was the 104th Congress, when Republicans took control of this House for the first time in over 60 years, because they were elected then not to expand the size and scope of government but to improve the size and scope of government, to reform those processes. What my friend from Florida says about 2005, 2006, unfunded priority after unfunded priority, I'd love to tell him he's wrong, but he's absolutely right. He's absolutely right. The American taxpayer knew it, and Republicans in this Chamber paid the price for it in the very next election. That's the ace in the hole for America, Mr. Speaker, the American taxpayer. They're paying attention to what happens here. My colleague may believe that we're on the wrong track. I'll tell you, in 18 months, I've never been more proud for what this institution has done. We're going to find out when the American taxpayer speaks out in that referendum November 6. With that, Mr. Speaker, there are 87 new freshmen in this freshman class and two more added. I yield 2 minutes to a freshman colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino).

Mr. WOODALL. House Resolution 778 is a closed rule for the consideration of two bills, H.R. 6365, which is the National Security and Job Protection Act, and H.J. Res. 117, which is the Continuing Appropriations Resolution for FY13. Mr. Speaker, I'm a freshman on the Rules Committee. It's a good committee to be on. I enjoy it. I get to work with learned Members like my friend from Florida, who is across the aisle, but it falls to me to handle continuing resolution bills. As you'll remember, when we showed up at the beginning of 2011, there was a lot of unfinished business from 2010, and we went right into continuing resolution act to continuing resolution act to continuing resolution act--sometimes 2 and 3 weeks at a time. That's no way to run a government. It's no way to have a Congress. My friend from Florida and I disagree on a great deal of policy, but we believe that a deliberative process yields better results than the ``right here, right now, hurry up and wait'' kind of mentality that this body so often adopts. So what we've done here today with this bill, with this H.J. Res. 117, is to say we understand that the appropriations responsibilities of this Congress have not yet been completed. The Constitution gives this Congress--not just this body, but this Congress--the responsibility of providing appropriations for this Nation. Now, as the Speaker knows full well, this House has set about getting its business done. We divided those appropriations bills up across a number of bills. The Commerce-Justice-Science bill passed this House with a bipartisan majority. It went to the Senate, and the Senate had no floor action whatsoever. Mr. Speaker, you know that the Energy and Water bill passed this House with a bipartisan majority. It went to the Senate, and the Senate did nothing with it whatsoever. You know that the Homeland Security bill passed this body--again, with a bipartisan majority. It went to the Senate, and the Senate took no action. I can go on and on and on. There is the leg branch bill, the military construction bill, the defense bill, on and on and on. So here we are. We don't have control over the Senate. We only have control over what goes on here in this body, and I've got to tell you that I'm proud as a freshman that we've set about getting our business done. With one deliberative bill at a time and one open rule on appropriations bills at a time, we allowed every Member of this body to come to the floor to offer their amendments and to have their voices heard in order to produce the very best work product that we could produce. I might add, Mr. Speaker, that we did that at a funding level even lower than what the American taxpayer asked of us in the Budget Control Act. I'm very proud of that work. But in the absence of the Senate taking action, Mr. Speaker, we have to move on. The American people are going to have a referendum in this country. They're going to have a referendum on what fiscal responsibility means. We're going to have an election in November, and new House Members are going to come and new Senate Members are going to come. The administration may change. We're going to have that opportunity for all of us as citizens to speak out in November and choose a path for 2013. But our business today, Mr. Speaker, is making sure the doors stay open moving into 2013. As my colleagues know, in the absence of action, Mr. Speaker, government offices begin to close on October 1 of this year, one by one--national parks, veterans services, Social Security services, Medicare services. That's not the kind of governing responsibility that we all swore an oath to uphold. So I'm pleased to be here today, Mr. Speaker, to bring this rule to the floor to say, yes, we have gotten our work done in this House, but we've been stymied by the leadership in the Senate that has not scheduled votes on these bills, but we will not allow the American taxpayer and American citizens to pay the price of inaction by the United States Senate. We will make sure that government services continue with this great referendum that this great Republic will have in November. It's a 6-month continuing resolution, Mr. Speaker, and it will solve that need. This rule also, Mr. Speaker, provides for consideration of H.R. 6365. It's called the National Security and Job Protection Act, but what it is is a sequester replacement bill. Mr. Speaker, I don't know that I've ever been more disgusted in my 18 months in this body. We came together here in this House in a bipartisan fashion. We passed the Budget Control Act, which gave six House Members and six Senate Members--six Republicans, six Democrats--12 Members of this Congress, esteemed Members of this Congress, talented, bright, conscientious, American-loving Members of this Congress, an opportunity to look at our entire budget. They didn't just look at the $3.8 trillion that we'd spend this year, Mr. Speaker, not just that $3.8 trillion, but next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, well into the three-generational window. It was hundreds of trillions of dollars these 12 men and women had an opportunity to look at to find bipartisan agreement. About 4 months they worked on that project, Mr. Speaker, and you know how that story turns out. After 4 months of labor by 12 of the brightest, most conscientious Members of this body--six Republicans, six Democrats, six House Members, six Senate Members--looking at hundreds of trillions of dollars in tax expenditures in social programs, in taxes and tax cuts, they agreed on absolutely nothing. Not one dollar out of hundreds of trillions did they come together on. That was a tremendous disappointment. As you know, Mr. Speaker, in order to try to bring agreement to that body, we passed legislation that implemented what they called the sequester, to say, if against all odds this joint select committee were to fail--candidly, it was not on my radar screen that they would. This was a solemn responsibility. These were talented Members who were assigned to it. But if they were to fail, we would implement automatic spending cuts that would achieve the kind of budget reductions that every American knows that we need. The problem in this town is spending, and the sequester said we will not fail on this opportunity to address it. Well, that sequester goes into effect in January of next year, and hardest hit will be the United States military. Again, this was a device that was put into place not because folks thought it was the best policy in the room, but to be there as the hammer to say surely this 12-member committee, this joint select committee will come to the agreement that will bring us back from this fiscal cliff. They didn't. Now this sequester hangs over the head of not just the United States military, but over Medicare, over social programs. Again, Mr. Speaker, I'm just so proud to be a freshman Member of this House. This House said back in the spring that is an unacceptable outcome. It was never intended to be the outcome. No one ever desired that it be the outcome, and we can change that outcome. So we passed a sequester replacement right here in this House that went into mandatory spending programs, which is where the real problem is in the budget, as we all know, and said let's replace the sequester that may harm defense--cuts that are going to deal with our military, that are going to put our national security at risk, and let's replace those with spending reductions that make sense. Again, we passed that in the House. The Senate has taken no action whatsoever. I don't mean to suggest, Mr. Speaker, that they've taken no action on our bill. They most certainly have not. They're under no obligation to. It's the right thing to do, but they're under no obligation. They are under an obligation to do something about it. They are under an obligation to stand up and listen to the same constituents that my colleague from Florida and I listen to to say there must be action. We must prevent this tremendous threat to our readiness, to our troops, and to our troops' families. This bill, introduced in this body by Colonel Allen West of Florida, gives us an opportunity to do just that in the bipartisan, open-minded way that I think has characterized the 18 months that I've served in this House because of the leadership of folks like you, Mr. Speaker. It doesn't say you have to use the House-passed bill already. Was it a good bill? Absolutely. Was it the right answer? I believe that it is. But what it says is use the House-passed bill or use something like it. If you can find a better plan, if the Senate, in its wisdom, can find a better plan, that's going to work, too. It's not our way or the highway. It's that we know that there's a right way and a wrong way to deal with our budget challenges, and we want to do it the right way. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this rule. I rise in strong support of the two underlying provisions, as well. I look forward to the debate on that this afternoon. We're going to be able to debate these individually, which I believe is the right way to handle questions of this magnitude and this importance. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I'd say to my friend from Florida that I have no further speakers remaining.

Mr. WOODALL. I would be happy to yield to my friend.

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

Mr. WOODALL. Reclaiming my time, I have had no prouder moment than our debate on H.R. 1--no prouder moment. Though I will say to the gentleman, as the gentleman knows quite well, it is frustrating that we can't do the business today. We tried. As the gentleman from Florida knows, we tried all of these appropriation bills. They weren't 6-month bills. They weren't 2-week bills. They were entire FY13 bills, and we did them right. We did them the way they were supposed to be done. Some people won, some people lost, but, in the end, a bipartisan majority came together and passed every single one. That's what we should be doing here, Mr. Speaker, and we have. The American people are going to decide in November: Is the problem the House? Is the problem the Senate? Is the problem the executive branch? I have my own suspicions, but I trust the American people more than I trust any other vote that we make in this House, Mr. Speaker. Again, I rise in strong support of this rule. I rise in strong support of the two underlying bills, the continuing resolution bill and our opportunity job protection sequester replacement bill. I urge my colleagues to support the rule. I urge my colleagues to support the two underlying bills.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate my colleague for his words. A lot of folks, Mr. Speaker, have the burden of working with folks whose motives they question. I have the great benefit of working on the Rules Committee with a team of folks whose motives I absolutely never question because I know folks are operating from their heart and from their constituents' best interest. Let me say, because we talk so much about productivity down here on this floor, Mr. Speaker, The Washington Times did an article earlier this year on productivity in the House and the Senate. They called it ``the futility index''--the futility of all the efforts in the body. They said the Senate ranked number one of all the years that they've been keeping records; less activity going on in the Senate by a large margin than ever before. Then they came to the House and they said, you know what, it's true the House hasn't passed a lot of bills. As you know, Mr. Speaker, we outlawed all of those silly commemorative bills that were not about the people's business but were about folks and their campaigns. Those no longer come to the floor. We eliminated a whole portion of that that was not about the people's business. What The Washington Times said was this: that we had more time in this House in session than all but 10 Congresses since they began keeping records and that we had more debate in this House, Mr. Speaker, than all but two Congresses on record; more debate, more discussion about those ideas and those priorities that are important to the American people. Now, I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, there's not a man or woman in my district that defines success by how many bills the President of the United States will sign; or if they do, they find those things to be inversely proportional. They don't want us to take over any new industries; they don't want us to regulate any new industries; they don't want us to pick any more winners and losers. They want us to stop. And even better than stopping, they want us to roll those things back. We're having that debate in America, Mr. Speaker: Who are we? Who are we as Americans? Who are we as a people? And what is so wonderful about this country, despite all of our differences there has always been more that unites Americans than that divides us, always. You can't pick up a newspaper today, Mr. Speaker, without them talking about the ideological divide in this country being as stark as it has ever been, but there is still more that unites us than divides us. I believe, when we come into this election in November, Mr. Speaker, we're going to have the largest voter turnout in American history. I have no idea what they're going to conclude. But I believe in this country, and I believe that if more of us are at the ballot box participating in this Republic--as we are required, duty bound to do-- we're going to end up with a better result. I look at the young faces in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker. I like to think of myself as young, but I'm in my forties. The gentleman from Florida expressed his age, despite his youthful vigor. It's about the young people, Mr. Speaker. And when the gentleman says America is strong enough that we can handle all of these growing debt challenges, I say to the gentleman, I admire his optimism but I disagree with his conclusion. The numbers I look at tell me, if I take everything from everybody, if I take everyone's house, everyone's car, everyone's bank account, if I nationalize every single company in this country, if I take it at all and put it in a bank account today, I still can't pay the hundreds of trillions of dollars in promises that this Federal Government has made to generations to come. We don't have a problem in this country, Mr. Speaker, that we're not taxing people enough. Our problem is that we're spending too much. I serve on the Budget Committee as well as the Rules Committee, and we took that challenge on head-on, head-on, Mr. Speaker. They call some things the third rail of politics. We said, in this House, in a bipartisan way, the third rail of politics is failing to deal with these challenges. Failing to deal with these challenges is the problem; dealing with them is the solution. This wasn't a solution that everyone agreed with. It was a solution that got the only bipartisan majority in this entire town. And we did it not once, but twice, Mr. Speaker. This is not a happy day. I usually come to the floor; I talk about how excited I am to be here because we're going to do an open rule and we're going to have the Republic at its best. That's not today. That day was May 10 on the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill, where we had every voice heard. That day was July 19 on the Defense Department bill, where we had every voice heard passing those bills in huge bipartisan fashion. That day was June 6, when we did it with the Energy and Water bill, huge bipartisan majority; and again on June 7 with the Homeland Security bill, and the Legislative Branch bill on June 8; May 31 on Military Construction, on and on and on, Transportation, HUD, June 29. We've done those things, and the silence on the Senate side is deafening. We could do all those bills again, but this House has already spoken. The people have already spoken. And this continuing resolution gives this body and the American people 6 months for that referendum in November, for every voting-age man and woman in this country to come out and have their voice heard. We've done all we can do in this body, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. WOODALL. I'd say that I regret I'm not high enough up the chain to know all the strategic decisions, but I will tell you that the bill that came out of the Senate is a sad 2-year bill that provides absolutely no certainty to any of the farmers in my district. It spends more and provides less certainty. The farmers in my district say, Rob, we need a farm bill, but why can't you do it right? And I know my colleague would agree with me.

Mr. WOODALL. If the gentleman will yield?

Mr. WOODALL. I'm grateful to my friend for yielding. I'd say to the gentleman, I think we would be here until 5 a.m. yet again. But our experience, as was our experience on H.R. 1, is time and time again we do the people's work here and the Senate says, no. I have had no indication from the Senate that they will accept anything in that body except this continuing resolution.

Mr. WOODALL. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I'd just like to remind my colleague from Massachusetts how we ended up here; and, again, we ended up in a way I think that we can all be proud of. Take ourselves back to April of this year. Again, this is the 2013 funding bill we're talking about. We sit here in September of 2012, we're talking about funding 2013 spending. We began this process back in April on the floor of this House, bill after bill after bill passing in a bipartisan way. The Military Construction, Veterans' Affairs bill, Mr. Speaker. What could be more important and what could be more bipartisan? Passed this House 407-12. We went through that bill, Mr. Speaker. We went to every single Member of this Chamber. Not just 435, Mr. Speaker. We went to every delegate as well and said do you have a voice that needs to be heard on this floor on this issue and gave every Member that opportunity. At the end of that, Mr. Speaker, which was just a free-for-all of democracy right here--it was our Republic at its best--this House came together, 407-12, to pass that bill. Mr. Speaker, 226 Republicans, most of our number, 181 Democrats, most of their number, passed that bill-- 407-12 for our military and our veterans. That bill didn't see the light of day on the Senate side, Mr. Speaker. Our failure to pass this continuing resolution today sees those dollars go to zero. Far from being an abdication of responsibility, this is the height of taking responsibility. Abdication of responsibility has already happened. I can't fix it. I can't change it. We did our business here in this House. But we are being held hostage. And by ``we,'' I mean we, the citizens of this country. I mean ``we,'' the voters of this country. Those with the priorities of this land, we are being held hostage by a Senate that is finding other priorities, priorities other than military construction and our veterans. Mr. Speaker, it doesn't end there with Military Construction. It goes on. It goes through Leg Branch appropriations, Homeland Security appropriations, Energy and Water appropriations, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development appropriations. How about Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, Mr. Speaker? I mean, when you listen to some of the voices on this floor, there's a reason, there's a benefit to being a Southerner and talking slow. It gives your blood pressure time to come down just a little bit before the words begin to come out of your mouth, because Transportation, including mass transit, Housing and Urban Development, those programs for the neediest among us, passed this House 261-163 in a huge bipartisan majority; 182 Republicans, 79 Democrats came together to say let's focus on the priorities of our constituents back home. Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. Let's move that bill through this body. Again, Mr. Speaker, in the most open process this institution can imagine where every single Member has a chance to be heard, where every single Member can offer their amendments right here in the well. There are no voices that are being quieted here. We all represent American citizens back home. It's their voices that get shut out. Do we have a closed rule today on this continuing resolution? We do. I think back, Mr. Speaker, I know you do, too, to H.R. 1, back in the spring of 2011. It's the only continuing resolution I've ever known of that came under an open rule, and boy did we have a show of democracy here. It began on a Tuesday, Mr. Speaker. Congress was supposed to adjourn by Thursday afternoon; but by early in the morning on Thursday, it was clear we were nowhere near done. As a freshman, I was a little cynical about this process. I had a suspicion the leadership was going to close that process down because Members had planes to catch and events to go to, and after all, all it was was a continuing appropriations bill. You know what this leadership said, Mr. Speaker? They said not on our watch. We're going to go into Thursday night. And I don't mean Thursday night at 9. I mean Thursday night past midnight. We're going to go all night long. We're going to go all night long into Friday. We're going to go Friday to noon and Friday through dinner and all night long on Friday night. We finished at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning. Mr. Speaker, I jumped on the first flight out of National. Flew home. Did a town hall meeting no later than 3 hours after we adjourned that Saturday morning. I was on fire because this House gave every single Member a chance to offer every single amendment that their constituents would have them do. That was extraordinary. We can't do that every day. We can't go marathon sessions 5 days, day and night. I'm young and vigorous, Mr. Speaker, but I've got to tell you, some folks may not be able to handle it. I'm with you, Mr. Hastings, if you're ready to go those days and nights. I'll do them with you. But we did that, those 12 appropriations bills. We did that in this body. Not all in one package, but one at the time, at the time, and the Senate said no. Our choice here today is do we close the doors at these agencies? Do we close the doors on these social services? Do we go through another one of those government shutdown scenarios that benefit absolutely no one, or do we do the right thing which is observe our budget caps, continue to reduce spending? That's right, Mr. Speaker, you know as well as I do on these appropriations bills, on this discretionary spending we spent less in 2011 than they spent in 2010. We spent less in 2012 than we spent in 2011. And if we pass this bill, we'll spend less in 2013 than we spent in 2012. It hasn't happened since before World War II. Three years in a row, Mr. Speaker, of this body coming together and telling the American people we can do better with less. That's what this bill is about today, Mr. Speaker. Again, strong supporter of this rule. Strong supporter of the two underlying measures. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 778 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. I thank the chairman. And I know that in the Ways and Means Committee you will always have a robust debate. As you know, I'm a big fan of the Fair Tax proposal. I thank my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle for mentioning it earlier. I hope it made it out across the airwaves. But even if we can't all win in terms of our different ideas, America will win in the end if fundamental tax reform is passed. But lots of those competing ideas, even as only one idea, can be certified within this framework to begin in your committee, you view even after that introduction, that certification by the Joint Tax Committee, a full and robust discussion that would include ideas like consumption taxes in your committee.

Mr. WOODALL. I thank the chairman. I appreciated my colleagues' chart down there of that path of two futures. There is no question that our future is in good hands with our chairman on the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 6233.