Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to my good friend from Virginia. Remembering the Fallen of the Chinook Helicopter Crash

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you being with us this afternoon and giving me the opportunity to come down here and talk about where we have been this week on Capitol Hill trying to find a pathway forward. Now, as with every decision we make, Mr. Speaker, as you know, you and I have been here for 18 months with a voting card in hand, trying to make those decisions for our constituents back home, trying to bring their voice to be heard on Capitol Hill, and we're facing one of those choices right here today. Which lane will we choose, Mr. Speaker? We proposed, passed today here in the House in a bipartisan way a proposal that will create 1 million new jobs. Now, I'm going to go on and bring out some other studies and where those jobs are coming from. But one of the folks we're going to hear from that's going to confirm the job-creation opportunities that exist in this proposal is going to be President Barack Obama because he will have stood about 10 feet behind me in a State of the Union address just 18 short months ago and advocated in favor of this job-creation proposal. I don't know what has changed in 18 months, Mr. Speaker, but what we saw here on the floor of the House today is our Democratic colleagues advocating for a different choice. A choice that Ernst & Young in an independent analysis of legislative proposals said will destroy 710,000 jobs. It will lose the opportunity to employ 710,000 Americans. As we are hearing what is unquestionably the worst recession in my lifetime, and when presented with a choice between creating a million new jobs or losing 710,000 others, we are faced with a choice. The House made the right choice today, Mr. Speaker. The House chose to create 1 million new jobs. But just in the last 7 days, the Senate made the wrong choice. The Senate chose a path that study after study after study shows us results in failure. Why is that, Mr. Speaker? Why is that? What I have here, Mr. Speaker, is a chart you'll remember from our budget debate. I'm just so proud, I serve on the Budget Committee here in the House, Mr. Speaker. And, you know, we've brought two budgets to the floor. In the short 18 months that I've served here in Congress, we've brought two budgets to the floor that made tough decisions. Tough decisions. When you're running $1.4 trillion deficits, Mr. Speaker, and when you're trying to create jobs for a Nation that's hurting, when you're trying to prevent job-killing tax hikes from being imposed on American job creators, there're no easy decisions. They're tough decisions, and they have consequences. But this is what I learned in our budget debate. What I have here is a chart that shows tax revenue from 1947, just after World War II, all of the way out to 2077, about 130 years of tax revenue. And what we'll see, Mr. Speaker, is tax revenue that's actually come in represented by this green line, and then the tax revenue that's projected to come in. You'll see that's a flat line. It's taxes as a percent of GDP, and what we see is whether we operated America with some of the highest tax rates in history, and we've had 90 percent income tax rates in this country--90 percent income tax rates--or whether we operate America with the lowest income tax rates in this Nation's history, we bring in about the same amount of money either way. I know that's not intuitive. I could bring up chart after chart after chart that shows how it's true. I can show what happened in the Kennedy years when he cut those top marginal rates and more revenue came in. We can look at what happened in the Reagan years when we cut those top marginal rates and more revenue came in. And we can look at what happened in the Bush years when we cut those marginal rates and more revenue came in, over and over and over again. But rather than dwell on those charts, Mr. Speaker, I just want you to see that over time, revenue is relatively constant. Americans are willing to give the Federal Government about 18 percent of the size of the economy. And if the government asks for more than that, Americans change their behavior so they don't have to give it. But the red line, Mr. Speaker, represents spending in this country, spending going back to just after World War II, going out to where we are here today and a projection forward based on current law. Based on current law, Mr. Speaker. Folks look at this chart and they see this giant red line, government spending as a percent of GDP as it threatens to consume all of American GDP, and they think: Golly, what in the world. Who are the crazy people proposing that we do that? Who are they? Mr. Speaker, that's what happens if we do nothing. If we fail to proactively offer a solution, if we fail to confront the challenges that are facing this country with respect to spending, if we do not act, this is what we get. No President need sign a law to create this dangerous circumstance; the laws have already been signed. The question is: What are we going to do about it, Mr. Speaker? We don't have a taxation problem in this country in terms of needing to tax Americans more; we have a spending problem in this country in terms of the Federal Government needing to spend less. And just to put that in sharp relief, Mr. Speaker, I've reflected here in this green the path to prosperity. This is debt as a share of the economy. This is America's debt as a share of the economy. You remember when we had all hands on deck in World War II, when we were literally fighting for the future of the world, debt crested 100 percent of GDP. We borrowed an amount equal to the entire size of the United States economy. Well, we're right back there today, Mr. Speaker, we will be over the next decade. And if we do nothing again, that spending will create a debt pattern that will completely consume not just all of the revenue, it will consume all of the wealth of this country. If we took everything from everybody, Mr. Speaker, if we confiscated every stock and every bond, if we confiscated every small business and every large business, if we took everybody's bank account and took everything out from under their mattress, if we sold everyone's car, everyone's home, we still wouldn't have enough money to pay for the promises that previous Congresses have made to America. It's a spending problem; it's not a revenue problem. But this green line, Mr. Speaker, represents the budget that you and I and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle came together to pass. It's not about blaming folks. Did all of this red line come from previous Congresses before I got here? You better believe it. But it's not about finding out who was to blame in those previous 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years; it's about finding out who's going to offer the solution to get us out of this mess. And you know who it is, Mr. Speaker? It's this freshman class that you and I have the great fortune of being a part of. It's the conservatives who have served in this Congess, calling out in the wilderness time and time again, the senior leaders of this conference, and this Congress who are going to come together and provide solutions. This green line represents not just a proposal that one man wrote, not just an idea that maybe 10 or 15 people agree on. This green line, this solution represents the budget that passed this United States House of Representatives in a bipartisan fashion. Don't let folks tell you it's hopeless, Mr. Speaker. Is it dire? Yes, it is. But we have proffered solutions, we have debated solutions, and we have passed, on the floor of this House, solutions. The problem is not that taxes are too low in this country; the problem is that spending is too high in this country, and we have offered solutions to that. That's been the debate on the floor of the House this week. Before I get into the debate that we've actually had this week, Mr. Speaker, I've brought a chart of who benefits from tax loopholes. Who benefits from tax loopholes? We talk a lot about tax loopholes. I'm a cosponsor of the Fair Tax, Mr. Speaker. I'm a big believer in the Fair Tax, the fundamental tax reform proposal. It has more sponsors than any other fundamental tax proposal in the House or in the Senate. It's H.R. 25 here in the House. It proposes that we turn our tax system on its head, to stop punishing people for what they've earned and begin to tax people based on what they spend. If you're going out and you're buying a brand new Mercedes, I don't care what kind of job you have, you can afford to pay the tax. If you're driving a used Ford Festiva, I don't care how much money you earn, you're plowing that money back into the economy instead of taking it out. This is what we see. Who benefits from tax loopholes? The bottom 20 percent, Mr. Speaker, get next to nothing from tax loopholes. The bottom 40 percent, Mr. Speaker, you see, get nothing from tax loopholes. The bottom 60 percent, the bottom 80 percent get next to nothing in terms of tax loopholes. The top 20 percent, Mr. Speaker, that finally starts to show up on the chart. But it's the top 1 percent of all income earners who benefit the most from all the tax loopholes. In this case, it's just over $250,000 each. Now, why is that? I'm not picking on our top 1 percent. The top 1 percent pays about 40 percent of all the income taxes in this country. The top 1 percent pays 40 percent of all the income taxes. The bottom 50 percent pays zero. If the bottom 50 percent is paying zero, that means the top 50 percent has to pick up the whole tab. We pay more on the top 1 percent. So it only makes sense that if you have a complicated Tax Code that allows for lots of loopholes, exemptions, deductions, and carve-outs, those loopholes, exemptions, deductions, and carve-outs are going to benefit the people who are paying all the tax--top 1 percent paying all the tax, and so top 1 percent benefiting from all the loopholes. Why am I talking about those folks in the top 1 percent? Because I'm not picking on them. I admire them. I just want to make that clear. I admire them. I'm not one of them, but I aspire to be. I hope I come up with that next great idea like Bill Gates, like Steve Jobs. I hope that I do something that makes a difference for America. I hope that I'm one of those folks who owns a business back home that provides jobs for families, jobs for my neighbors, income that supports people's families. I want to be one of those guys. I don't demonize the 1 percent. I admire folks who have gone from nothing but the power of their ideas and the sweat of their brow and created something. Golly, that's what America is to me. That's what it is. But there are some in this Congress, there are some down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Mr. Speaker, who are intent on demonizing that 1 percent. And what they have now today, this week on the floor of the House, has been a proposal to raise taxes on all of those job creators there in that category. Fully 50 percent of all of the income generated by small businesses is what my colleagues in the Senate, my colleagues here on the Democratic side of the House have proposed to raise taxes on. Those 50 percent of small business owners who are providing all the jobs, that's where my colleagues believe a major tax increase should be levied. Mr. Speaker, we have put forth a proposal--I'm just so proud--that says, rather than raising taxes on job creators, killing jobs--I showed my choice of two futures--why not introduce fundamental tax reform that eliminates those deductions and loopholes, those carve-outs and exemptions that all of America knows are in the Tax Code, that all of America would like to see eliminated. And if we know that eliminating those has the greatest impact on the highest of our income earners, why do we need a class warfare that's going on down here on the floor of the House? I say to my colleagues who want to demonize the top 1 percent, join me in eliminating deductions and carve-outs and loopholes and exemptions and you will raise taxes on that community, because those are the folks who benefit because those are the folks who pay the taxes. There's a better way. Mr. Speaker, that's not just some hardcore freshman Republican who is the sponsor of a fundamental tax reform bill talking. The President of the United States, this President of the United States, stood not 10 feet behind me at this podium at that microphone right behind me, and he said these words in January of 2011: Over the years, a parade of lobbyists has rigged the Tax Code to benefit particular companies and industries. Those with accountants and lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all, but the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. President Obama said that, and he followed it with this: It makes no sense, and it has to change. Hitting job creators in America with the highest tax rate in the world ``makes no sense, and it has to change.'' This was January of 2011, 1 month after December, 2010, when the President signed the tax package for 2 years that the House passed today. I ask the Speaker, where is the contention today? This is the same proposal that was passed 2 years ago when the President acknowledged the challenges facing our job creators and said ``it has to change.'' We have a bigger plan for fundamental reform that changes the debate in Washington forever, but right now, we are about the business of stopping the largest tax increase in American history from destroying jobs in this country beginning in January of next year. The President acknowledges it and said it had to change. Right here behind me in January, 2011, he says this: So tonight, I'm asking Democrats and Republicans to simplify the system, get rid of the loopholes, level the playing field, and use the savings to lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years without adding to our deficit. It can be done. It can be done, says President Obama--and he's right. Our Ways and Means Committee has held more hearings on fundamental tax reform than any other Ways and Means Committee in my lifetime. We are talking about those fundamental reforms that the President has asked to talk about. And this week, this week, Mr. Speaker, we passed a framework that gives expedited procedures. We all know how things get slowed down in Washington, D.C. We all know how easy it is for somebody to latch on to something and stop it from passing because they want to stand in the way of progress. We passed expedited procedures to do exactly what the President has asked us to do. This is not Republican politics. This is not partisan politics. This is folks coming together to try to save what is a fragile economy today. Is it the strongest economy in the world? You'd better believe it. Is tomorrow going to be brighter than today in America? You'd better believe it. But not by holding our tongues, not by sitting on our hands, and not by fighting amongst ourselves about who gets the credit. Mr. Speaker, I don't care. I've got a fundamental tax reform bill that I believe solves this problem. You can call it anything you want to. Call it the Democratic plan to save America. It doesn't matter to me. We don't care who gets the credit. We care about solving the problem. And that's what our President charged us to do. He goes on, January, 2011, 10 feet behind me: We measure progress by the success of our people, by the jobs they can find and the quality of those jobs, by the prospects of a small businessowner who dreams of turning a good idea into a thriving enterprise. My colleagues here are trying to raise taxes on 50 percent of all the income those small businessowners make. The job creators in this country are faced with the largest tax increase in American history. Our President has asked us not to do that. He goes on to say this: By the opportunities for a better life that we pass on to our children, that's the project the American people want us to get to work on together. And we did. We passed our plan for fundamental tax reform together in a bipartisan way this week. Talking about the agreement that the President passed and signed in December of 2010, the very same agreement that we're trying to pass today, he said this: We did that in December. Thanks to the tax cuts we passed, Americans' paychecks are bigger, and these steps taken by Republicans and Democrats will grow the economy and add to more than 1 million private sector jobs this year. Did you remember my saying the President was going to back up, that this proposal was going to create 1 million private sector jobs? He said it in January, add to more than 1 million private sector jobs created last year. I'll close with this, Mr. Speaker. That was 10 feet behind me January 2011. Ten feet behind me January 20, 2012, the President said this: We have a huge opportunity at this moment to bring manufacturing back to America, but we have to seize it. We have to seize it. I bolded this so everybody could see it, Mr. Speaker. We should start with our Tax Code. Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas, meanwhile companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It makes no sense. Everyone knows it. So let's change it. Mr. Speaker, that's the bill the House passed this week. The bill the Senate passed this week continues to punish those small businessowners and continues to reward those companies that do their businesses overseas. Don't let an election year get in the way of doing what's right. The President called for it, the Ways and Means Committee delivered it, the House has passed it, and we can do it. I call on my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to believe as I believe, that tomorrow can be better than today. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. I thank the chairman for yielding. I want to say to you, as I said to you in the Rules Committee yesterday, how much I appreciate your leadership on fundamental tax reform. I've been watching this body for 20 years, and I think some of the criticisms of my friends on the Democratic side were right on target. A lot of lip service has been paid to doing it, but the action has not happened. But what you have been able to accomplish in your committee in 18 months truly makes me believe that fundamental tax reform is now right around the corner for all Americans, and I'm grateful to you for your work there. I had two questions about the bill that's before us today, this expedited procedures bill. It does lay out a framework, but it seems to me to lay out a framework that is broad enough that we will have a robust discussion about how to bring and what to bring in terms of fundamental tax reform to the floor. Do you view this framework as one that is broad enough to have a full discussion on fundamental tax reform?

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. I thank my colleague from South Carolina for yielding me the time. I don't actually have the words for this debate, so I had to bring something with me, Madam Speaker. What I brought are the very words that President Obama spoke from right here behind me in his State of the Union address in 2011. As you'll remember, we had just done this thing that we had all agreed on. I say ``we.'' My colleague from South Carolina and I were not in Congress at the time. ``You.'' This thing that you agreed on with the President and with the Senate to not raise taxes on job creators, why did you agree on that? Let's look and see what the President said. He said: We measure progress by the success of our people--by the jobs they can find and the quality of the jobs they can find. Opportunities for a better life that we pass on to our children, that's a project the American people want us to work on together. We did that in December. He was talking about when we came together to prevent the largest tax increase in American history from impacting Americans and the jobs they were seeking. Here is what he said: We did that in December. Thanks to the tax cuts that we passed, Americans' paychecks are bigger today. Businesses can write off the full cost of investments, and these steps taken by Democrats and Republicans will grow the economy and add more than 1 million private sector jobs. That's why Ernst & Young says doing what the Democrats propose to do is going to kill 700,000 jobs. It's because, as the President said, doing what we all agreed on--doing what we are proposing to do here today--added 1 million jobs. That was from the President's address in 2011. He went on. He talked about the parade of lobbyists who have rigged the Tax Code to benefit particular companies and industries. He says: Those with accountants and lawyers can work the system and pay no taxes at all, but the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change. He's right, but the proposal that my friends on the Democratic side are bringing to the floor raises taxes on these small businesses that create jobs. The President knows that's not fair. He goes on. He says, ``Tonight, I'm asking Democrats and Republicans to simplify the system. Get rid of the loopholes,'' he says, ``level the playing field,'' he says, ``and use the savings to lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years without adding to the deficit.'' That's what the President called on us all to do. That's what this rule that my friend from South Carolina allows us to do. That's what, if we're willing to put politics aside in this election year, we can do together as you did in 2010. Madam Speaker, I will close with this. That was his 2011 address, and maybe you think that was just the enthusiasm of our cooperation there at the end of 2010, but it wasn't.

Mr. WOODALL. Standing right here in this Chamber 10 feet behind me this year, the President said this: We have an opportunity at this moment to bring manufacturing back, but we have to seize it. We should start with our Tax Code. Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas; meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It makes no sense and everyone knows it. So let's change it. What you do does not change it. What you do dooms our small business owners to continue to operate at one of the highest tax rates in the world. We can do better. We have the bill to do better. Together we will do better. With that, I thank my friend from South Carolina.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOODALL. I thank the chairman for yielding. I am pleased to come to the floor after my colleague from Georgia. He and I share a common border and we share a lot of common ground, but I have to tell you, Mr. Chairman, he could not be more wrong today. Because this bill does one thing, and it does one thing only, and that is to say that whatever it is that the people's House decides, whatever it is that the people's Congress decides and sends to the executive branch for implementation, that it come right back here at the end, if it's that big. If it's over $100 million, if it's that big, it come right back here so that we confirm that they got it right. Now, as I listened to my friend's words, Mr. Chairman, I might believe this is something a Republican Congress was doing to a Democratic administration. But I daresay, what is so important about the work the chairman is doing is this isn't about a Republican House and a Democratic administration. This is about good oversight for a Republican House and a Republican administration, and this is about good oversight for a Democratic House and a Democratic administration. I will say to my friend, Mr. Chairman, he is absolutely right about all the work we have left to get done this year, but the oversight that we do, the oversight is so important. And I would say, Mr. Chairman, I believe my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle fell short in that respect over a Democratic administration, and I am certain that my friends on the Republican side of the aisle fell short on that during a Republican administration. The chairman is giving us an opportunity to change that, and change that in statute, and I hope that my friend from Georgia is going to join me in that effort. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. WOODALL. I say to my friend that the children we share across our common border, there is not one regulation that this Congress would send to the executive branch that you and I would not come together and pass for the benefit of those children.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I appreciate the Speaker for being down here with us, and I appreciate the comments of my friend from Texas. He says, you know, if you want to, you can just go and read the law. Wouldn't that be neat? Wouldn't that be neat? If you wonder what some of those reforms are that the freshman class brought to this body, you can now go and read the law. There is time to make that happen, and that is what is so frustrating to me about this debate. I appreciate the way that you all have highlighted each and every one of these things, because when I go to the folks back home, they say, Rob, the President told me he's going to bring down health care costs. Wouldn't that be good? I say, Yes, that would be good. They say, The President tells me he's going to ensure that I can keep the policy that my family knows and loves today. Wouldn't that be good? I say, Yes, that would be good. Then the people say, Well, Rob, he tells me he's going to make sure that children who don't have access to health care today will have access to health care tomorrow. Wouldn't that be good? I say, Yes, that would be good. They say, So why do you oppose the bill? I say, Because it doesn't do any of those things. Take a look. Now, the CBO tells us it's 800,000 jobs that this bill destroys. Let's say it's only 700,000. That's 700,000 too many. Study after study tells us this is raising costs with all the mandates--mandate after mandate after mandate--from the Federal level. Let's say there are only a dozen mandates instead of the 30 or 40 that I believe there are. Isn't that a dozen too many? In my great State of Georgia, a family went out to buy insurance for their child shortly after the President's health care bill passed. Do you know what the insurance commissioner told them? He said, You know, you could have purchased a policy for your child before the President's health care bill passed--but, after the President's health care bill passed, every single insurer of children left the State of Georgia because they could not do business under the President's model. Read the law, my colleague from Texas says. Look at the chart, my colleague from New York says. When you get to the facts, if only it did what the President promised America it would do, but it doesn't. But we can. The first vote we took as freshmen was to repeal the President's health care bill. About 189 of our colleagues voted against it. They wanted to keep it. Today, only 185 of our colleagues voted against it and wanted to keep it. The folks asked back home, Rob, what happens now that the Supreme Court has said it's okay? I said, They didn't say it was okay. They said they weren't able to look at the policy to see if the policy was any good. They said it's not their job to protect the American people from their political decisions. They said, yes, the power to tax is just this dangerous but that it's up to Congress to decide. Congress decided today. I am grateful to my friend from New York for using this opportunity to highlight that decision. The final say on this bill was not the last Thursday in June with the Supreme Court. It is the first Tuesday in November with the American people. You and I know what the American people are going to say. We are their Representatives. This is not the 29th time, and it is not the 30th time. It is the 31st time the American people's Representatives have spoken in this House, and they've said we can do better. This bill is bad for America. It's bad for health care reform. We can do better. I thank my friend from New York.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Florida for yielding. It's not often that I find agreement with both of my friends from Florida at the same time. When I listened to my friend from Florida, my Democratic colleague on the Rules Committee, in his opening statement, he's absolutely right. We're bringing five completely unrelated provisions to the floor in this conference report today, and we're bringing it in a rushed fashion so folks can get out of here and go home for the 4th of July week. I agree with my friend from the Republican side of the aisle, my freshman colleague, who says this is just a standard conference report rule. That's absolutely right. All of these things that the gentleman from Florida, my Democratic colleague, finds troubling are just part of the standard conference report process. I've been watching this process for a long time. I may be a freshman, but I've been watching it for a long time. And it's just the way things go around here. We've done better. To be fair to this House leadership, over the 18 months that I've been here in Congress, we've done better. We've made a commitment to bring one idea to the floor at a time, and 99 percent of the bills I've voted on have been 10 pages or less, and I could read them. I didn't have to staff it out. I could do it myself. But something happens when we get to this conference report time. Mr. Speaker, the question goes to our colleagues. I suspect if we put the question to our colleagues--my friend from Florida knows it's true: Would you rather rush these five unrelated bills to the floor today and get home for all the commitments you've made over the weekend, or would you rather stretch this thing out and do it right?

Mr. WOODALL. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. WOODALL. Reclaiming my time, I absolutely do not believe it should be standard procedure, but it is. It has been the entire time my friend from Florida has been serving here in this House. Again, we've done better. To the credit of my freshmen colleagues, we've done better over these last 18 months, and we will continue to do better. But Chief Justice Roberts had it right yesterday: elections have consequences. The American people are responsible for what goes on here. Mr. Speaker, we keep this calendar for a reason. We do it out of a need for service. You and I both have commitments to constituents starting at dawn tomorrow morning. We have commitments to constituents to keep transportation bills going, to work with student loans, to reauthorize flood insurance, on and on and on. We have competing commitments to our constituents. I would just hope, Mr. Speaker, that if you were asking your constituents, that they would say, You know what; I would rather you cancel on me this weekend and stay up there and get it right than rush it through. Now, with that said, it has not been partisan politics that's kept us from getting it here until this point. We've been working hard on this. To the credit of the folks on the transportation conferee committee, they have been working hard. And this was just the best they could do, getting it done today, for whatever reason. This town only operates in crisis. I say to my friend, if we can work towards regular order, I would love to see regular order come to this institution. We have done better. Eighteen months on the job since I have been here, you and I. We have done better. My colleague from Florida and I. We have done better. But we can still do better. But we're only going to do better if the constituents demand it. The Supreme Court had it right. You can throw out the folks who aren't doing it right. Mr. Speaker, I encourage you to encourage all voters to look at what we do, see when we're getting it right and tell us, and see when we're getting it wrong and ask us to do better. We can do better. We will do better.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time, and I appreciate you giving me a moment to set up. I have got to tell you, Mr. Speaker, I love coming to the floor after my good friend from Minnesota. I enjoy it every single time it works out in that way because he is an able representative of the Progressive Caucus which, I would argue, sits way over on the left-hand side of the political continuum. And I would hope today, Mr. Speaker, I will be an able representative for the Conservative Caucus, which sits over on the right-hand side of the political continuum. And we absolutely disagree about what this Federal Government ought to look like. I want to talk primarily about the President's health care bill in the Supreme Court, a decision that's coming down next week. But I want to start with where the gentleman from Minnesota ended, Mr. Speaker, and that is to say that conservatives believe that government is not the solution to every problem. That's certainly true. It's absolutely true. But more importantly, there are different levels of government in this country, and we seem to forget that. Something happens, and my colleagues know this. You know, Mr. Speaker, you and I were part of the largest freshman class in modern times, and 99 of us came to this institution together and said it's not about how it has been run, but it's about how it can be run, and we can do better. But something happens to people when they drive across the Beltway. That's that little interstate that goes around Washington, D.C. When they come inside the Beltway, something happens to them and they suddenly think they're the smartest person in the room. They suddenly think that if only all Americans would live their life the way they want other Americans to live their life, then everyone would be happier; and that's just not true. I don't care how well-meaning anyone in this institution is, Mr. Speaker. There is not a man or a woman here that knows more about how my family should pursue happiness than my family does. There is no Member here from outside the State of Georgia who knows better about how Georgians should pursue happiness than those of us in Georgia do. And I would say, as my friend from Minnesota finished talking about the student loan program, you may not know, Mr. Speaker--I know you all have a proud tradition of education in your home State and some very fine institutions of higher learning there. In Georgia we have what's called the Hope Scholarship. And for years and years, it allowed every single college student, college-bound student from the great State of Georgia, college graduates, B averages and above, every single one to go to State schools in Georgia for free. You know how much Federal money we used for that program, Mr. Speaker? Zero. Zero. Time and time again my colleagues come to the floor of this House, and they talk about what we need to do in Washington to help college students across America. Let me tell you something. You all came from your own State back home that has the power today to do those things. It does not have to happen in Washington. It can happen back home. It can happen at the city level, it can happen at the county commission level, it can happen at the State legislature level. Dadgummit, Mr. Speaker, it can happen at the family level, all of these decisions that we talk about in Washington, D.C. And that takes us right into the health care bill, Mr. Speaker, because here's the secret. And I don't know if everybody in the House, Mr. Speaker, knows the secret and, that is, that as patently unconstitutional as the President's health care bill is, had the State of Georgia passed it for Georgians, it would have been perfectly fine. Hear that. There are different powers that the United States Constitution allows State governments to exercise than it allows the Federal Government to exercise. The States have the power to mandate behavior. We see it regularly. We see requirements for what must be included in insurance policies, for who has insurance policies, that regulation of the individual market. But not the Federal Government. So I want my friends in the Progressive Caucus to hear me clearly. I'm not anti-government. I want each role the government plays, I want it to play it as well as it possibly can. I want every government dollar to be spent as efficiently as it possible can. I want every government mandate to be as limited and efficacious as it can possibly be. With that, Mr. Speaker, I take you back to President Bill Clinton, August 21, 1996. Why is that important, Mr. Speaker? You and I weren't even thinking about being in Congress in 1996. Why in the world is that important? It's important because it was August 21, 1996, when President Bill Clinton signed into law Federal health care reform that passed this United States House, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican from the great State of Georgia, 1996. Folks talk like health care reform hasn't ever come down the pike in this country, Mr. Speaker, in 1996, the House and the Senate and the President--Republicans, Democrats--all came together to pass health care reform. Let me tell you what they passed in 1996. Here we go. It's from President Clinton's signing statement: This Act will ensure the portability of health benefits when workers change or lose their jobs, and it will protect workers against discrimination by health plans based on their health status. Mr. Speaker, does that sound familiar? Does it sound like the very same words that would have come from one of President Obama's speeches when he was pushing his health care bill? Why is that? Why is President Clinton speaking these same words 15 years ago, and yet there are still health care solutions that Americans are searching for? I'll tell you why. Because, in 1996, with Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich and with Democratic President Bill Clinton, folks came together, and they solved health care problems for every single health care plan that the Federal Government had the right to regulate. Hear that: every single plan that the Federal Government had the right to regulate. In the State of Georgia, we have an office. It's a constitutional office. It's in the Georgia Constitution. It's called Commissioner of Insurance. We all vote on it. It's a statewide-elected office. We vote on it every 4 years. That individual has the right to control State- originated insurance policies, primarily the individual market and some of the small business market. There are those policies that are regulated by the States, and every single State can solve that problem. Then there are those policies regulated by the Federal Government, and only the Federal Government can solve that problem. That's what we did. Mr. Speaker, in 1996, Republicans and Democrats came together, and that's what we did. Hear the words of President Bill Clinton: This legislation will set into motion several key reforms. First, it will eliminate the possibility that individuals can be denied coverage because they have a preexisting medical condition. Did you know that? Do you hear that, Mr. Speaker? Because I read it in newspapers all the time as if this is the first time we've ever talked about preexisting conditions. No. On August 21, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law: It will eliminate the possibility that individuals can be denied coverage because they have a preexisting medical condition. That's true. It's the law of the land today. It was the law of the land yesterday. It was the law of the land 10 years ago for every single insurance policy legitimately regulated by the Federal Government. Bill Clinton goes on: Second, it will require insurance companies to sell coverage to small employer groups and to individuals who lose group coverage without regard to their health risk status. Again, Mr. Speaker, we talk about that as if no one has ever considered this idea. Not only has it been considered, but it is the law of the land. It was the law of the land yesterday. It was the law of the land 10 years ago. It was the law of the land when President Clinton signed it into law on August 21, 1996. Finally, Bill Clinton says: Finally, it will require insurers to renew the policies they sell to groups and individuals. This is from the President's signing statement in 1996. In 1996, Mr. Speaker, we understood as a Nation there are two kinds of insurance policies in this country: those that the Federal Government regulates and those that the State regulates. Why is that important? It's important because we solved the problems that Americans asked Congress to solve in 1996 relating to those federally regulated plans. The problems that remain that Americans are crying out for solutions to are problems that can be solved any day of the week by any State legislature in the country for every single individual who lives in that State. Mr. Speaker, that's what separates the Conservative Caucus from the Progressive Caucus. My friends in the Progressive Caucus ask sincerely, Can we come up with a solution here in Washington, D.C., that will apply to everyone in the country and put everyone under the same set of rules? And my friends in the Conservative Caucus say, No. The Constitution recognizes there are 50 different States, and each of those States is allowed to construct its own set of rules. Why is that important? It's important because, when it comes to the Federal law of the land as it pertains to university students today, we are arguing about whether they should have a 3.4 percent subsidized interest rate on their loans or a 6.8 percent subsidized interest rate on their loans. That's the Federal Government solution. Do you want to burden people with debt at 3.4 percent or do you want to burden them with debt at 6.8 percent? That's Washington's answer. But, Mr. Speaker, Georgia's answer is: Let's let everybody go for free. Let's find the money elsewhere. Let's make sure everybody who wants to go to college has a pathway to college. Mr. Speaker, when the Congress nationalizes any section of the law, they kill the innovative spirit of every single State out there. That's why in 1996 we didn't reregulate the entire market--the Constitution did not give us that authority--but we reregulated the Federal side of the market and allowed States to continue to innovate and find their own solutions in their areas. Unless you think I'm making this up, Mr. Speaker, I've brought a little bit of the Constitution down here with me today. Here we go with article I, section 8, clause 3 of the United States Constitution: The Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes. You know that phrase, Mr. Speaker. It's thrown around cavalierly all the time. It's the Commerce Clause: The Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes. Absolutely. Unquestionably. What's more, the 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people. Mr. Speaker, this is important. If you haven't gone back and if you haven't looked at your history books recently, I would encourage my colleagues to go back and do that because the only reason the Constitution was ratified in this country was because of the promise that the Bill of Rights would be ratified right behind it. Know that. If you dispute that, Mr. Speaker, you've got my email address. It's Woodall@mail.house.gov. My Web address is Woodall.house.gov. Let me know where you think I'm wrong, because I've gone through it over and over and over again. The United States Constitution would not have been ratified by the States without the addition, the commitment, that the Bill of Rights would be ratified right behind it. That's where the 10th Amendment comes from. No one was worried about State governments getting out of control in 1787. They were worried about a tyrannical Federal Government in 1787. I would say rightly so. That was their experience in Europe. Candidly, that's becoming our experience today, and I want to talk a little bit about that. The 10th Amendment of the Constitution: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people. That brings us, Mr. Speaker, right into this health care case. I want to take you, Mr. Speaker, back to the origins of this legal decision. It came out of Florida. It's called the ``Vinson decision'' because Judge Vinson was the lead judge, the chief judge, down in the Florida case that led to this case coming to the Supreme Court. Yet there was a dissenting opinion. It was a 2-1 decision there in Florida, and the dissenting opinion came from Judge Stanley Marcus. This is what he said: Because the 10th Amendment reserves only those powers not already delegated to the Federal Government, the 10th Amendment has been violated only if the Federal law at issue goes beyond the limits of Congress' power under the Commerce Clause. Now, we just looked at the Commerce Clause: The Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes. The dissenting judge says that the key issue is: Does the President's health care bill go beyond the limits of Congress' power under the Commerce Clause? He goes on. This is from Judge Vinson, the chief judge on that case, writing for the majority: The existing problems in our national health care system are recognized by everyone in this case. There is widespread sentiment for positive improvements. This is obviously a very difficult task. Regardless of how laudable its attempts may have been to accomplish these goals in passing the act, Congress must operate within the bounds established by the Constitution. Again, this case is not about whether the act is wise or unwise. It is about the constitutional role of the Federal Government. That's exactly what my colleague from Minnesota was talking about earlier. There are a lot of levers of power that I found out as a freshman when I showed up here, Mr. Speaker. You know what I'm talking about. There are lots of levers of power that we can pull here. And the question is: Who do you want in a United States Representative? Do you want someone who's thrilled about pulling every single one of those levers of power, or do you want someone who is reluctant to pull those levers of power? And that's the funny thing about a legislature, Mr. Speaker. It rarely attracts people who want to send power away, the folks who want to send power back to the States. That's rare. The legislatures attract people who want to amass power and use all of those levers for what they would call the power of good. That's not what our Founding Fathers intended in the Constitution. Going back to the majority opinion in the Florida case, the Vinson case. Judge Vinson says this: In closing, I will simply observe, once again, that my conclusion in this case is based on an application of the Commerce Clause law as it exists pursuant to the Supreme Court's current interpretation and definition. Only the Supreme Court can expand that. Well, that's actually where Judge Vinson and I begin to disagree. I would tell you the Supreme Court doesn't have any business expanding the Commerce Clause. The folks who put together our Constitution didn't do it lightly. They did it deliberately. The Commerce Clause was drafted narrowly deliberately, and the 10th Amendment was drafted broadly deliberately. The danger that we face as a Nation is that there are well-meaning men and women in this Chamber who absolutely believe they have the answer to every problem that plagues every single American, and the temptation is to use their power as a Member of Congress to solve it. That's the temptation. I tell folks when I'm back home in town hall meetings, I say, Don't ask me to go to Washington and legislate with my heart. Ask me to go to Washington and legislate with my head. When I'm back at home digging into my own personal wallet, ask me to give out of my wallet with my heart. Because when I give out of the Washington, D.C., wallet, Mr. Speaker, I'm not giving out of my wallet; I'm giving out of everybody else's wallet. I'm giving out of every single wallet of every single American in this country. That is not what our Framers intended the Federal Government to do. But we're at risk. I take you back to the dissenting opinion written by Judge Stanley Marcus. What he's talking about here is how he disagrees with Judge Vinson's conclusion that the President's health care bill is unconstitutional. In disagreeing he says this: In the process of striking down the mandate, the majority has ignored many years of Commerce Clause doctrine developed by the Supreme Court. Not by Congress. By the Supreme Court. It has ignored the undeniable fact that Congress's commerce power has grown exponentially over the past two centuries and is now generally accepted as having afforded Congress the authority to create rules regulating large areas of our national economy. It has ignored the Supreme Court's expansive reading of the Commerce Clause that has provided the very foundation on which Congress already extensively regulates both health insurance and health care services. What does that mean? It's a United States judge, an appellate court judge, in Florida. He's a thoughtful guy. By all estimations his opinions are thoughtful opinions. And when he looks at the current state of the law in America today, he sees that over the past two centuries, Congress and the Supreme Court have so expanded what that one line in the Constitution says about regulating commerce amongst the States, they have expanded that definition to allow Congress to regulate virtually any aspect of the United States economy. Mr. Speaker, that's frightening to me. Not because I don't enjoy the company of the good men and women who serve in this Chamber, but because, as I said when I began, these folks know nothing about happiness for my family. They know nothing about my pursuit as a Georgian of happiness, of success. And every time we pass a one-size- fits-all solution in this Congress, it kills everything else. Here's the difference. Again, Georgia embarked on a massive project to fund free college education for all of its graduating students. It was a huge project. It cost millions upon millions upon millions of dollars, and it could have failed. Had it failed, the only people who would have been punished by its failure are the 9 million of us who live in Georgia. And then we could have looked to the other 49 States for a better solution. But, Mr. Speaker, when the United States of America's Congress fails, when it passes a one-size-fits-all solution for everybody, 315 million Americans pay the price for that, and there's no place to look then for the next innovation. When I was growing up, Mr. Speaker, there was a saying. When something was really hard to do, folks would say, golly, that's going to take an act of Congress to get that done. I don't know if that was a saying in your part of the world, Mr. Speaker, but that's what it would be. If something was really hard to do, they would say, oh, golly, that's going to take an act of Congress to make that happen. That was an expression, because getting an act of Congress passed is hard. So when it's really hard to get a very bad act of Congress passed, it's really hard to get that same bad act repealed, and again we've killed innovation across the country when we do it. This dissenting opinion from this very thoughtful judge suggests that Congress's power now is plenary, unlimited, to control every single aspect of economic life in this country. I challenge you, Mr. Speaker: What aspect of your life isn't economic? What aspect of your life isn't economic? And I don't mean that doesn't have money involved, because as you know in the President's health care bill, Mr. Speaker, there is no money involved. It says, I don't care if you don't have a health care insurance policy today, you must go out and buy one. Now, I'd say there's no economic involvement there. I wasn't going to go out and buy one. It forces me to go and do something I would not have done. That's the expanded version of the Commerce Clause as seen by supporters of the President's health care bill. Going on again from this dissenting opinion: Both the Supreme Court and this circuit have said in determining whether the Necessary and Proper Clause grants the legislative authority to Congress to enact a particular Federal statute, we look to see whether the statute constitutes a means that is rationally related to the implementation of a constitutionally enumerated power. That's a lot of legalese there, Mr. Speaker, but what it means is this: They've just said the Commerce Clause allows Congress to regulate anything that has to do with money and economic activity in America. And now they're saying the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution gives Congress the power to pass legislation to implement anything that's then related to any of those things. I asked you a second ago, Mr. Speaker, what in your life doesn't have to do with money? I don't think you were able to come up with many things that didn't have some sort of economic relationship at all. But now my question, as posed by the dissenting opinion here, is what in your life has nothing to do with economic activity or money and is in no way related to anything that has something to do with economic activity or money? Because the Necessary and Proper Clause, as they say in the dissenting opinion, gives Congress the power to legislate that. I don't want that authority here in this Congress, Mr. Speaker. I don't want that authority here. These are good men and women in this body who legislate in a thoughtful way, but they do not know what is best for 315 million Americans. The Constitution gives us limited responsibilities for which we must speak for a nation. War, for example. Trees, for example. But I want you to read the Constitution thoroughly, Mr. Speaker, and I know you have, over and over and over again. You know as well as I do, there's not one word in there about mandating that every American citizen pay a fine if they refuse to purchase a health insurance policy. I want to talk about those laws of unintended consequences a little further, Madam Speaker, because, as I said, I'm not antigovernment. Government has a role. In fact, that's where we are in America every single day, Madam Speaker. We're on that continuum between liberty and security. Liberty and security--yet you can't have both at the same time. We're always moving up and down that continuum. If you go out here on the interstate, Madam Speaker, you can't drive 150 miles an hour. Well, you can, but you'll be punished. Why can't you do that? It's a free country. I hear people that say that all the time. Dadgummit, Rob. It's a free country. Well, it is a free country. But we have decided to trade away, through government, our liberty of driving 150 miles an hour for the security of knowing that our children and grandchildren aren't going to die every time they get on the road. That's where we are. Every single decision of government bridges that continuum between complete liberty and complete security. Kentucky, in 1993, began to try to provide for its citizens' security in the health care field. Again, as I told you, in 1996, the President signed into law that bill that regulates all Federal policies, but it left to the States all of those policies that are State-regulated. Well, Kentucky tried to take some steps. They passed a health care law in 1994 that aimed to lower health care costs for all folks in Kentucky and to encourage uninsured individuals to purchase health insurance. There were some mandatory issue provisions. There were some rate regulation provisions. This is what happened: They did the very best they could in the great State of Kentucky. But they had 43 insurance carriers in 1993. And after passing this law, they ran 41 of those out of the State. They had 43 choices that their citizens could choose from. Then they all got together and said, We want to help make it better for our citizens. And 41 of those companies said, We're not going to put it up with it. This is no way to run a business. We're leaving. From 43 insurance companies to two, this Kentucky health care law destroyed. Well, what do you think happened? All those voters who said they wanted changes to the health care law, they weren't all that excited about the one that cost them 41 different choices. So Kentucky repealed that law, started over from scratch, and they are now growing the number of insurance companies back in that system. That's awful for the men and women in Kentucky who had to struggle through that. But it didn't burden the other 49 States at the same time. And the men and women of Kentucky could then look to those reforms in the other 49 States to see how to improve on their health care model. It's the law of unintended consequences, Madam Speaker. That's why it's bad to consolidate all of this authority here in the United States Congress. It's not that these men and women who work here aren't conscientious. It's not that they don't love their country. It's not that they don't love their constituents, and they do try to serve them well. It's that you cannot possibly predict every single outcome. I'll give you one, Madam Speaker. You know, some of the President's health care law has already gone into effect. One of those provisions that's already gone into effect is mandatory issue of policies for children. But why? Because we all love children. There's not a man or a woman in this Chamber who doesn't love children, Madam Speaker. So the President, in his health care bill, said, Well, let's make sure then that every insurance company must issue an insurance policy to every child who decides they want a policy. Well, we've kind of gotten confused about what insurance is in this country. Think about that, Madam Speaker. Think about all the insurance policies you have in your life. Which one are you really excited about utilizing? Is it your life insurance policy, Madam Speaker? You are really hoping that day comes when your maker takes you home, and you can bring that life insurance policy to fruition? No. Is it your car insurance policy? You are really excited about getting into an accident this afternoon so you can call your insurance company and have them pay for it? That's going to be great? No. Maybe it's your homeowners insurance policy, Madam Speaker. Maybe you are hoping a fire breaks out there tonight so you can go home and call that homeowners insurance company and collect on the full value of your policy. No. Insurance is for things you hope don't happen, but you want to be ready for them in case they do. That's not so with health insurance. How many friends or neighbors do you have who have said, You know what? I'm going to put that procedure off until I get my health insurance? That's not insurance. That's discount health care. That's prepaid health care. That's any number of things. But it's not insurance. Insurance is for things that you don't know are going to happen. Well, going back to the President's health care bill that mandated that all children get the policies that they apply for. Well, guess what? Some children are already sick. So when they go to apply for a policy, they're not applying for insurance. They're applying for free health care. Insurance companies aren't charitable organizations. My church is a charitable organization. The United Way is a charitable organization. Insurance companies are not charitable organizations. They are in the business of providing a service for a fee. So when the President's health care bill went into effect--a bill that I promise you, I am as certain as I stand here today, that the President intended to be a boon for children, that he intended to be helpful for children, that he intended to provide more services for children--it shut down every single insurance company in Georgia that offered child-only policies. When you went to buy an insurance policy after the President's health care bill went into effect, the health care bill that guaranteed that insurance companies had to issue you a policy, you found that not a single policy remained because every single insurer in that marketplace had left. Madam Speaker, that's not surprising, those laws of unintended consequences. They're undeniable. And the President's health care bill is taking us down that road not just in child policies, not just in terms of guaranteed issue, not just in terms of the Federal mandate, but on issue after issue after issue. The Supreme Court is going to make their decision next week. Well, they've made their decision. They're going to share it with the rest of us. But just to be clear, I hear what you might be saying: Well, Congressman Woodall, you are one of those hardcore conservatives from the great State of Georgia. You just don't care about people. Because I hear that charge--not against me personally, but against conservatives in general. It drives me crazy. I will concede that there may be Members on the other side of the aisle who care about people as much as I do. But there is not one man or woman in this Chamber who cares about people more. Not one. All I'm saying is the Federal Government shouldn't screw it up for those people. Because I have here, Madam Speaker, a chart of what every State in the Union was doing in 1996. This Chamber hadn't gone mad in 1996 when it decided, under a Republican Speaker and a Democratic President, to sign a health care law. It hadn't gone crazy. It chose to only regulate Federal plans because State plans were already being regulated at the State level. Take a look: What kinds of things are you interested in? Are you interested in guaranteed issue, Madam Speaker? That guaranteed issue is when you say, I don't care if somebody's sick; you have to take them anyway. That's not a great insurance practice, but it's a heartfelt belief. It's called guaranteed issue. Well, let's see. Alaska's got it. Arizona's got it. Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, on and on and on. This isn't something that requires a Federal solution. Are there people in this Chamber who want a Federal solution because it consolidates power in Washington, D.C.? Absolutely, there are. Are there men and women in this Chamber who want a Federal solution because they believe in their heart they care more about people than anybody else and so they want it to be their solution that people utilize? Absolutely, there are. But hear this, Madam Speaker, and share this with your constituents back home. There is not one health care problem that the President aims to solve in his health care bill that your State legislature cannot solve itself at home today. Madam Speaker, how many times have you heard somebody say, But I know this family, and they can't get insurance, and my heart aches for them. I hear that. I hear that regularly. And your State legislature can solve that for you today. You don't need Washington, D.C.'s permission. Something happened in this country, Madam Speaker, and it's not healthy. Folks call Washington, D.C., for solutions. I got a call the other day from a homeowners association. They said, I can't get a building permit put through the city council, and I want you to fix it for me. That's what folks believe. I get it. That is not what America is. The place to solve your city council issues is with your city council. And the place to solve your county commission issues is with your county commission. And the place to solve your State insurance regulation issues is with your State. The President's health care bill was a solution in search of a problem that does not exist. Guaranteed issue is available today. This chart goes on to talk about the portability issue: can you move from one insurance policy to the other without penalties. It talks about preexisting conditions: how to deal with if you're already sick and you've gone to apply for a policy today, when will they cover that illness. Every single issue that the President's health care bill purports to solve, States have already been at work on and in many cases have those solutions already. The President's health care bill erases them all in favor of a one-size-fits-all solution. I just want to go back for a moment, Madam Speaker, to Kentucky's experience. Thoughtful men and women, people who care about their neighbors and their communities, did the very best that they could to address their health care crisis. And in doing so, they ran from 43 insurance companies helping people in the State, down to two, because the rest of them went out of business and went home. Left the State altogether. That's not what they intended to happen, but that's what happened. When we talk about the Supreme Court striking down the President's health care law next week--and I feel certain that it will because as I look at my Constitution, it is so patently unconstitutional to mandate that Americans engage in some activity they might not otherwise. And that's the principle on which the entire house of cards is stacked. The entire bill must be struck down. The question is: What next? And what I want the American people to hear, Madam Speaker, is that what next is happening in your State legislature today. It was happening a year ago. It was happening 10 years ago. You do not have to have an act of Congress to have your problem solved. You can do it right there at home. And States are. But if you call your Congressman and you ask your Congressman to solve your problem for you, I promise you your Congressman is going to go to work to do it. But when they do it, they are likely to craft something that destroys the system it was meant to save. And then where will we be as 315 million Americans? I'll give you a little insight into just what I'm thinking, Madam Speaker. I'm not trying to associate my thoughts with the whole of the freshman class or the whole of the Congress. But there was a study out the other day where they went to the Fortune 100 companies, Madam Speaker, and they said: What are you going to do if the Supreme Court upholds the President's health care bill and all of these mandates go into effect? Well, only 71 answered that survey. And every single one of those 71 Fortune 100 companies said: we'll do better to cancel every insurance policy we have in our company and pay the fine than we will to continue to provide insurance to our employees. Now, you remember the promise, Madam Speaker, that the President made: if you like your insurance policy, you can keep it. Well, the insurance policy I had didn't comport with the President's bill so they canceled it altogether. I did not get to keep my insurance policy. And what 71 of the largest companies in America have said is the bill gives them every incentive to cancel every policy and dump all of their employees out into the exchange. Now this was reported in the news as if it was some miraculous discovery. I will tell you this. This is the secret I was going to share, Madam Speaker. I don't think it's miraculous news. I don't think it's a surprise to anyone who crafted this bill. This bill was never about solving these problems that the States are already solving. This bill was never about solving problems that the States already have the ability to solve. This bill was about moving us one step closer to having the Federal Government pay for every single health care bill in this country. A single-payer system. That's what the President said during the campaign he wanted. That's what he said in his entire career he wanted. And this bill that does in fact destroy the free market health care system that we have takes us one step further in that direction. You need look no further than that Fortune 100 survey to see that. Madam Speaker, when the Supreme Court strikes down the President's health care bill next week, I want to encourage a deliberative process in this body. There is no rush to judgment in this body. It was a rush to judgment that got us here. You have to read the bill to know what's in it. We've all been down that road; 2,000 pages that nobody had time to read. Taxes and mandates that folks are still finding out about. Let's talk about that, because I hope, Madam Speaker, that I've laid out a fairly persuasive case that while the health care system in this country is in crisis, it is in crisis because of Federal Government intervention--not in spite of it, because of it--and that States have the ability to solve each and every one of these problems. And States are in fact providing those solutions. So what are we getting in the President's health care bill? Is it worth it? Because I've got to be honest with you, Madam Speaker, I hope you were as surprised by this as I was when you got here. There's a real reluctance in this town to do cost-benefit analysis. There's a real reluctance to weigh the costs and the benefits and see which side it's on. Why? Because if I'm the brilliant guy who came up with the brilliant bill, it's brilliant. And so if it costs a whole lot more than it's worth, that's going to hurt my feelings, so I don't want you to release that data. I don't want you to do that research. Let's just implement my brilliant idea and see where it takes us. Nobody wants to do the cost-benefit analysis. Well, again, the President's health care bill, which solves absolutely nothing that States can't do on their own, and there's not going to be a single person in the President's administration that disagrees with me about that, they would prefer a Federal solution; but they know full well the States can do those things on their own. This is what it's going to cost us: $15 billion in taxes last year; $30 billion this year; $45 billion next year, all the way up to $320 billion in new taxes in this health care bill. When the Supreme Court strikes it down next week, it's going to be a $320 billion tax cut for American families because it's American families that are on the hook for these taxes in the President's health care bill. I'll go on. The President said this bill is going to take premiums down for the American families. Now, Madam Speaker, I did not graduate with an economics degree, but I have ordered a lot of sandwiches at Subway. And what I have found is when I want to add guacamole to my Subway sandwich, they want to raise the price on me. And when I want extra cheese on my Subway sandwich at Subway, they want to raise the price on me. You cannot give the American people more benefits without there being a price somewhere. So, yes, the President promised that this would bring down health care premiums. Here is his quote from June 9, 2008: We'll bring down premiums by $2,500 for the typical family. That's this blue line, Madam Speaker, that I have. The President's rhetoric, We're going to bring down health care costs $2,500 per family. The red line here is the reality, Madam Speaker. The reality is health care costs are going up. Premium costs are going up. Why? Because we've mandated that insurance companies do all these new things. Are you following universities, Madam Speaker? There's all this heartbreak down here talking about how to deal with student loan issues. Student loans are important. But what about student health care, Madam Speaker? Across the country, universities are looking at canceling policies that they can no longer afford. They could afford them before the President's health care bill, but they cannot afford them after. Why? Because the President's health care bill with mandate after mandate after mandate does not take insurance costs down. It takes insurance costs up. And the American people pay that price. It's all right here on this chart, Madam Speaker. At its core, when I talk to folks back home, folks care about access. I need access to insurance, and I don't have access. And they care about cost. I need access to health care services, but health care services are too expensive. That's what the whole health care debate was about. What can you do to help us with access? What can you do to help us with cost? Madam Speaker, every State in the Union can provide you with access, and many of them have. And all of them will if their electorate demands it. Now, that's the funny thing about this health care bill, of course. The majority of the American people have always opposed it. There was never a time when the majority of the American people said, This is what we want. The majority of the people have always opposed it. It was Washington, D.C., that said, Well, you might not want it today, but once we implement it and force it upon you, you're going to be thrilled. You just don't know it yet. You're going to be happy. Folks aren't happy still today. Cost and access is what took us down this road. We see that access is within the legislative purview of every State in the Union, and we see that costs have been driven up and not down. It's not a partisan issue, Madam Speaker. I'm from Georgia, so maybe I'm a little biased, Madam Speaker, but I'll tell you, I think Newt Gingrich has a reputation in this country. I know the Democrats do a lot of fund-raising by sending his name out as if he's a strident partisan. Well, maybe he is in other parts of the country; not in Georgia, but maybe in other parts. It was Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton that came together to reregulate the entire Federal health care marketplace doing away with preexisting conditions in a responsible and economically feasible way, requiring portability in an effective and economically feasible way, ensuring availability, using tools that make insurance more affordable instead of less. Cost and access we came together on in 1996, long before my time, and implemented for every federally regulated policy in the land. What's left are those areas of State control. Madam Speaker, I'm going to go back to the 10th Amendment because we don't spend enough time on the 10th Amendment around here: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. That is at the heart of our Republic. The Constitution lays out specific tasks that the Federal Government and the Federal Government alone must handle. And everything else, not some things else, not something else, everything else. It's not confusing. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. And as we see in that dissenting opinion in the Vinson case, the courts have gradually acceded year after year after year to Congress's demand for more power. And as Congress has continued to legislate, courts have continued to endorse it. And then Congress legislates more, and courts endorse it more, and Congress legislates more, and you turn around and the 10th Amendment now means nothing. What is that? Going back to that dissenting opinion, the dissenting judge said Congress has so expanded the Commerce Clause, courts have so ruled on the Commerce Clause, that there is no aspect of economic life that Congress cannot regulate. And then he went on to cite the necessary and proper clause and said, and if there's no aspect that Congress cannot regulate, Congress can do anything that is reasonably associated, necessary, and proper to implementing that bill. Folks, I don't think that's the America that you and I know. But no one loses their freedom overnight. You lose your freedom one fiber at a time, and you wake up one day and you say, golly, where did it go? It doesn't happen all at once. This has been time after time after time over decades. It's not a Republican problem; it's not a Democratic problem; it is an American problem. And next week, it's happening right across the street, Madam Speaker. Right across the street, next week, nine men and women are going to reset the clock to what our Founding Fathers intended, setting limits on what the Federal Government can do in your life. Madam Speaker, that inspires me. I'm not afraid. I'm inspired by that opportunity, that opportunity to be master of my own destiny. But I say to folks who fear that, to any of my colleagues on the left who fear the diminution of Federal power, there's a seat for you in your State legislature. If you have the urge deep in your heart to control every aspect of an individual's life, I suggest you go back home and run for your State legislature because State powers are plenary; Federal powers are limited. And every single power not delegated in the Constitution to the United States, nor prohibited by it to the States themselves, are reserved to the States and the people. Madam Speaker, that has always been the key to the success of this Republic. It has always been true that the finest innovations, the most creativity, is happening at the local level and working its way up, not happening in Washington, D.C., and working its way down. When the Supreme Court strikes down the President's health care bill next week, Madam Speaker, Americans are not going to be without health insurance. Americans are not going to be without choices. Americans are not going to be thrown into a lawless environment. They are going to have the benefit of lower prices in the absence of the President's health care bill, of more certainty in the absence of the President's health care bill, and the authority to solve every single problem that ails them, vested in that institution closest to home, closest to the people, State legislatures across this country. And if there's one thing I'm certain of, Madam Speaker, I've had those occasions where I have doubted the wisdom of this Congress, but I have never had an occasion where I've doubted the wisdom of the American people--not one. The American people have the authority to make these choices today. They do not need a Federal mandate to solve these problems. They don't need a Federal mandate to address these issues. They have that authority today. Our Founding Fathers made certain of it in the 10th Amendment. And after that court case comes down next week, Madam Speaker, folks will go to work across this country, as they always have, to address the issues and concerns of the American voter, and they'll do that in all 50 of the great and independent States of this Nation. With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, the House is fortunate today to have Reverend Dr. Richard Benjamin Haynes as our guest chaplain. He's a life-long servant of the Lord, growing up as the son of a Baptist minister. He now pastors Salem Missionary Baptist Church in my home county of Gwinnett. He's an avid angler, a fisherman. But first and foremost, he's a fisher of men. In the 23-plus years that he's led Salem Missionary Baptist, his congregation has grown from 100 to over 4,500. Beyond the pulpit, Reverend Haynes is active throughout our community. He is past chaplain for the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department, past director of the Statewide Ministers Convention, and currently member of the Gwinnett County Board of Education Advisory Board, to name just a few. I'm honored to have him in Washington, D.C., with me today. His wife, Beverly, is with us today, as is his daughter Sheena, and his two grandsons, Benjamin and VaShon. Reverend, thank you for your prayer today and thank you for your ministry every day.

Mr. WOODALL

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

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Thank you very much. I thank my friend from Tennessee for yielding. I just have to say, for folks who haven't been following your short 15 months here closely, they don't usually put freshmen on the Ways and Means Committee. They just don't. I mean, this is not a meritocracy. This is an organization that's often run by tenures, a little like a labor union shop. You put in your time. You play by the rules. You eventually get promoted. Yet, when this freshman class came in and when you looked at the kind of challenges that were facing the Nation, they looked at folks like you, Mrs. Black, who have invested a career in health care--not in talking about health care, but in implementing health care--they said, Where can we make folks the most valuable? I hear that time and time again back home. Folks say, Rob, why is it all the bureaucrats are making all the decisions in Washington, D.C.? What I get to say to them is, You know, that might have been the way it was, but today we have folks like Dr. Bucshon, like Dr. Heck, and we have folks like Diane Black, who are in the places where they can bring their real-life experiences to bear. I listened to my colleague, Mike Kelly, talk about how folks just discount job creators as they're passing legislation like this. You wonder why it is we're in the worst recession in my lifetime. We have folks who you could consult. We have folks that you could speak with. We have folks whose advice you could seek and employ. Yet Washington knows best. I actually saw your tax chart from my office, so I came down here. I thought that was going to be something about improving outcomes. I thought that was going to be something about how more folks have health insurance today than yesterday. What I see is that it is a chart of tax burdens--tax burdens. We knew that was going to come. We knew that was going to come because the promise was within that that we were going to provide more care to folks, that we were going to do more things for folks; and, more importantly, health care premiums for the average American family were going to come down by $2,500 per family. That was the promise the President gave us. I see you've brought out another chart. I would ask my colleague, what are we seeing here?

Mr. WOODALL

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

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. I thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate you staying late on a Friday afternoon so that the gentlelady from the District of Columbia can have her time; and I can have a little time, too. I know folks often think, Mr. Speaker, that votes have ended at the end of the day and folks have left the Chamber, and you wonder what in the world's going on there in Congress. Why are those guys still down there on the floor of the House talking after everybody else has gone back to their offices? Well, there's a lot of good reasons for that. As the gentlelady from the District of Columbia said, folks don't always get their say in the hustle and bustle of voting on those amendments. It moves fast. It's limited to 2 and 3 and 10 minutes of debate at the time. And so you need some additional time at the end of the day. But more importantly, I guess this is just one of the wonderful facets of modern-day life, Mr. Speaker. You and I are both freshmen here in the House, but they pipe this back into our offices. I always thought when I was growing up, and I suspect you did, too, Mr. Speaker, when you're at home and you turn on C SPAN or it's on the college campus or what have you and you look and the Chamber is empty, you think, What's going on? You don't realize that it's piped through the closed circuit and it's sitting on everybody's television back at home. Because when I got up here as a freshman, Mr. Speaker, I got so busy I couldn't afford to sit down here on the House floor and spend my days here. I had to be back in the office meeting with constituents and going through the paperwork, doing all those things we have to do each day. And what a wonderful thing that is--lousy because it sends the wrong impression to America as it shows up on C SPAN--but wonderful that folks are able to both serve their constituents back in their offices as well as keep track of what is going on on the floor. And what I brought down to the floor today, Mr. Speaker, and you can't see it from your chair, but you have these numbers committed to memory, just as I do. I've got the pie chart here of the spending in this country. You know, spending comes in two parts. It comes in the parts that unless the Members of Congress act each and every year, the spending goes away. They call that discretionary spending, as you know, Mr. Speaker. You have to affirmatively act in Congress or else the spending goes away. The other part of spending is called mandatory spending, and that's the part of spending that goes out the door whether Congress shows up to work or not. The President can take the year off. Congress can take the year off, that money is going to go out the door. That's our parents' and grandparents' Social Security checks. Congress doesn't have to affirmatively act to give you Social Security, Medicare. If you're 65 years old, you've worked the required amount of time, you show up at the Medicare office, you just get Medicare. And then we have to figure out how to pay for it. That's called the mandatory spending side of the ledger. And as you know, Mr. Speaker, the discretionary spending side of the ledger, the part that we have to affirmatively act on each year represents about one-third of all Federal dollars. That's automatic spending, Mr. Speaker. That's spending that goes out the door whether Congress shows up or not, and it represents two-thirds of everything we spend. You know, as I do, Mr. Speaker, that when we actually talk about spending money, about 40 cents out of every dollar that this Chamber spends, that this Nation spends, is borrowed from the next generation of Americans; 40 cents out of every dollar, Mr. Speaker, is money we don't have, but we borrow from our children and grandchildren. That's why the spending decisions we make are so important, why you and I are working so hard to try to restrain that spending. I'll give you an example, Mr. Speaker. If you started a government on the day Jesus Christ was born, and you borrowed $1 million a day to fund your government from the day Jesus Christ was born until today, 7 days a week you're borrowing that money through today, you would have to continue to borrow $1 million a day every day, 7 days a week for another 700 years to borrow your first $1 trillion. Your first $1 trillion, Mr. Speaker. You know how much we borrow from our children and our grandchildren-- and by ``we,'' I mean folks who've come from both parties, generations before us, and still today--$15.5 trillion with no end in sight. No end in sight. Now, I don't want to be about doom and gloom, Mr. Speaker, you know me. We're part of this freshman class. When one of us falls, there are another 99 to pick him up and set him back on track. I brought down a chart today to talk about our successes because we've really have had some successes. Now, as I listened to the gentlelady from the District of Columbia talk before, it sounded like this is a very partisan place to work. And I know when I pick up the newspaper, that's what I read, too. But it's not true. You can't do anything up here as a party. It's not about party. It's about the 900,000 people I represent back home. I am a Southern Republican, Mr. Speaker. I'm a hard-core right winger. I have more in common with a Democrat from Tennessee than I do with Republicans from California. This isn't about party; this is about American. And the only things that get done get done working together. Why? Because we have a Republican House. We have a Democratic Senate. We have a Democrat in the White House, and we have a constituency. We have an America that is divided about what to do. But I don't think there's anybody out there--well, with the exception of the President, Mr. Speaker--who believes that the problem is that we're not spending enough. I think a lot of folks think Washington is wasting the money that it's spending and that we can do better. And let's talk about those successes, Mr. Speaker, because I have them right here. I've got a bar chart, Mr. Speaker. I'm showing FY 2010. That was before you and I got here--$1.28 trillion in discretionary spending. Now, there's a lot of funny math in Washington, D.C., as you and I have learned, Mr. Speaker. A lot of funny math. But when I say $1.28 trillion, I just mean that--$1.28 trillion. No rates of growth. No inflation. No time value of money. No index dollars. Just real money like it sits in your wallet, if your wallet could hold $1.28 trillion. Fiscal year 2011, Mr. Speaker, the year you and I showed up to this institution, we were still working on the FY 2011 budget in 2012 because the folks who left the body before us didn't get it done. We actually reduced spending--it doesn't happen often in America--but we reduced discretionary spending in real dollars, actual dollars, from what we were spending in 2010 to what we spent in 2011. But that wasn't enough for this freshman class, Mr. Speaker. You know it wasn't. In 2012, we reduced spending again. Again, not rates of growth, not funny math, actual dollars going out the door. Fewer dollars went out the door in discretionary spending in 2012. We're in the middle of 2012--2012 ends on September 30, as you know, Mr. Speaker. Fewer dollars will go out the door in 2012 than went out in 2011. And, of course, fewer dollars went out in 2011 than in 2010; 2 years in a row, the first time since World War II, Mr. Speaker, we reduced spending in this country by focusing on the priorities that our voters back home have asked us to focus on. And we're doing it again for 2013. That process is going on right now. We've begun the process of appropriating dollars for the 2013 fiscal year, that fiscal year that'll start this October, October 1, having those debates, open debates, allowing amendments from all parties here, Mr. Speaker; and we are on track to spend less in 2013 than we're spending right now in 2012. Budget my office, Mr. Speaker, one of those things we actually have control over. The budget for the Seventh District of Georgia, Mr. Speaker, lower in 2012 than it was in 2008 because we have this new Congress that said thrift has to begin at home. If I'm going to look at other programs to cut, let's start with our own office budgets. So we're having some successes. It's not all about arguing up here. It's not all about fussing at one another. It's about trying to come together and finding those opportunities that we can agree on. And when I talk about the way spending has actually gone down, I'm not talking about our vision of how it should go down, Mr. Speaker. I'm talking about bills that have been signed into law by the President of the United States, guaranteed savings that cannot be taken away. That's the kind of work we've gotten done here in 16 months, Mr. Speaker. I'm proud to have worked with you on it. This chart, though, shows the challenges that we're facing. I see some folks sitting in the back of the room, Mr. Speaker, so I'm going to hold this one up, if you don't mind, just to make sure everybody can see it. I've got two lines here, Mr. Speaker. I've got the red line that shows spending in this country, the red line that shows where spending is headed in this country. Now, this chart goes, as you know, Mr. Speaker, from 1947, the end of World War II, as America was coming out of World War II, it begins to track spending in this country, tracks it with a red line. Here we are right here in today's dollars, Mr. Speaker. So the red line tracks spending going back to World War II. The green line tracks taxes going back to World War II--as a percent of the economy, right, because a dollar is not the same dollar today it was in 1947. Your parents probably tell you like my parents tell me, Mr. Speaker, Oh, Rob, I used to go to the movies for a nickel and I had money left over that I could buy a Coke and popcorn with. Do you get that same story, Mr. Speaker? The dollar is not the same dollar today as it was then. So we track this as a percentage of GDP, a percentage of our entire economy. Now, I want you to look, Mr. Speaker, at how level this green line is. The green line is taxes, taxes that the American people are willing to pay. It doesn't matter whether the income tax rate has been 90 percent, as it was in the Carter years, or whether the income tax rate is 28 percent, as it was in the Reagan years. Taxes, as a percentage of the size of our economy, have remained relatively stable. That's the flat green line. The red line is the spending that this Congress, this Senate, other Presidents have chosen to associate with America. Now, you tell me, Mr. Speaker, do we have a taxation problem in this country or do we have a spending problem in this country? You need to look no further than a relatively level tax line and an incredibly exploding spending line. Spending is the challenge, and that's what you and I are focused on here in this body, Mr. Speaker. But all spending is not created equal. The United States Constitution gives us responsibilities, gives us responsibilities to defend this country, gives us responsibilities to regulate trade. There are responsibilities that the Constitution says, Congress, you need to raise money and you need to spend money on these priorities. But this chart, Mr. Speaker, tracks, going back to 1965 through today, that discretionary part of the spending pie that I showed earlier, that part that we actually have to affirmatively act on every year, and the mandatory part, that part that just goes out the door automatically. Again, Mr. Speaker, what you see is discretionary spending, in terms of real dollars, is staying relatively flat. What pushes the line up is this growth in mandatory spending. Why does mandatory spending grow? Because it's automatic, because you and I, Mr. Speaker, don't have an opportunity each and every year to try to rein that in and do oversight on it. It requires action by the Senate and by the President and by this House to change the laws about the automatic spending to stop it. If we can't agree on how to stop it, it just keeps going. That distinguishes it from discretionary spending where we have to affirmatively vote ``yes'' or ``no'' each year. That's the spending we've been so successful at controlling. Mr. Speaker, this chart just shows it a little differently. I've got the blue line representing mandatory spending and the red line representing discretionary spending. What you see here is that between 1962 and 2012, the last 50 years, discretionary spending--which used to be most of what Congress does--has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller as a piece of the pie, and mandatory spending, that that goes out the door automatically, is getting larger and larger and larger and larger. So I say to you, Mr. Speaker, and I say to the young people who are in your district, if you're worried about your economic future, should you focus on your discretionary spending? Absolutely, you should. But should you concern yourself with mandatory spending more? The answer is yes. That's where the growth is. That's where the inability to constrain it is. And that's now where the big, big dollars are. It's mandatory spending, Mr. Speaker. And it's getting worse. I told you I would bring you some good news, Mr. Speaker, and I've got more good news to bring you, but we need to be honest about the nature of the challenge. Because I talk to folks back home and they say, Rob, it can't be as bad as you say that it is. It can't be as bad. I was just looking at the Federal Government books about 4 years ago and things looked like they were sustainable. Well, Mr. Speaker, you know the world's changed a lot in the last 4 years--and that's not a political statement. It started changing under the watch of President George Bush. It continued changing under the watch of President Barack Obama. I remember growing up in the 1980s, Mr. Speaker. Ronald Reagan was President. We used to talk about the deficits we were running, worried that the American economy might not survive--got to get those deficits under control. Those deficits, Mr. Speaker, those deficits are a page relative to the deficits we're running today, which look like a book-- trillion dollar deficits every year. The public debt, the debt that our young people owe, Mr. Speaker, has increased 50 percent in the last 4 years. Now, change doesn't usually happen in America that fast. Change is usually slow. It was designed to be slow. You know, my gripe with the United States Senate, Mr. Speaker--a lot of folks say, Doggone that Senate, they haven't passed a budget in the last 3 years. Well, I share that frustration. But the truth is I'm not frustrated with the Senate that they're moving too slowly. The Constitution designed the Senate to move slowly. I'm disturbed that over the last 3 years the Senate has been moving so fast. It was supposed to play a deliberative role, but instead it passed stimulus bill after stimulus bill, health care bill after health care bill, regulatory bill after regulatory bill, and did not slow the process down the way that our Founding Fathers designed the Senate to operate. What you get--you can see it here on this chart, Mr. Speaker. This red line is tracking Federal revenue; the blue line is tracking Federal spending. They move in concert right up until 2007, into 2008, into 2009, into 2010, where those lines diverge, Mr. Speaker. These trillion dollar deficits, it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. We've taken steps to do it, but there's more that we have to do, and it's not easy to get it done. This shows the chart differently, Mr. Speaker. There are some folks out there, because I go home and I ask people in my district, Mr. Speaker, I say, Now, of the $800 billion that the Federal Government spent in the stimulus package--$800 billion--there are about 154 million families in this country, right? So that's about $6 for every billion, eight times six. That's about $4,800, Mr. Speaker. I ask them, Did you get your $4,800? Did you feel it? When the Federal Government borrowed $800 billion from your children and your grandchildren, did you feel the additional money in your pocket? And the answer is, No, Rob, I don't know where that money went, but it didn't come to me and my family. Look what's happened with spending, Mr. Speaker. This is spending as a percent of GDP in inflation-adjusted dollars. Here we go. From 1970 to 2010, the average household income in this country, Mr. Speaker, increased by 25 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. The buying power of the average American family rose about 25 percent over the last 40 years--40 years, 25 percent growth in spending power of the average American family. The red line represents Federal spending, Mr. Speaker. Over those same 40 years, Federal spending has increased 290 percent. You and your family have an additional 25 percent to spend; we, the Federal Government, have increased our spending 290 percent. You know, I learned something up here, Mr. Speaker, during freshman orientation. It turns out there's no secret drawer that we dig into here to get money to spend. The only place we can get money is to either take it from American families in taxes or borrow it from American children in future obligations. Those are the only two places we can get money. That's what we've done, to the tune of 290 percent, while households in this country only saw an increase of about 24 percent. Going back to the good news, Mr. Speaker, it's not as if there aren't places that we can reduce spending. And we can agree on both sides of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, of those areas to reduce spending. This is a chart of the 10-year Federal program growth rates, Mr. Speaker, 10 years. This is what has happened to spending over the last 10 years in Federal dollar terms. Won't surprise many people, Mr. Speaker, energy conservation is at the top of the list. In 2002, we spent almost $1 billion a year on energy conservation spending, $1 billion in 2002. Today, we spend almost $10 billion, a 975 percent increase in spending over 10 years. Our food stamp program, Mr. Speaker. Now, I know families are hurting these days and we're trying our best to minister to the needs of those families. Over the last 10 years, food stamp spending in this country has increased 267 percent. We had a debate on the floor of this House last week. You remember that, Mr. Speaker. The debate was should you actually have to qualify for food stamps to get food stamps, or should you just be able to get food stamps anyway because you're involved in a number of other programs? And it was a contentious debate. We could not even agree, Mr. Speaker, that the only folks who should get foods stamps are those who qualify for food stamps. There was a sense that we need to put food stamps into more families' homes. I get that folks want to legislate with their heart in this body, Mr. Speaker. But don't ask me to spend other people's money with my heart. Ask me to dig into my own wallet to legislate with my heart. When I come to Washington, D.C., I've got to legislate with my head. And I will tell you, the bill that we put forward last week, instead of increasing food stamp spending 270 percent, as is the law of the land, we wanted to increase food stamp spending by only 260 percent. Hear that, Mr. Speaker. Instead of 270 percent, we wanted it to be 260 percent. And it turned into a knock down, drag out, brouhaha here on the House floor. I've got to tell you, Mr. Speaker, folks need to go home and talk to the young people in their district. Talk to those folks who are going to pay back that money that's been--the debt that's been increased by 50 percent over the past 4 years. Ask them if they think, in the $3.8 trillion dollars that go out the door in Washington, D.C., do they think we might be able to reduce the rate of growth of some spending programs from 270 percent down to just 260 percent. I don't think that's unreasonable. Education spending, Mr. Speaker, up 239 percent; unemployment spending, up 100 percent; Medicaid spending, up 86 percent; housing assistance, up 79 percent; community development, up 76 percent; ground transportation, up 62 percent; Federal employment retired, up 53 percent. The American economy, up 16 percent. That's the only place we have to get money, folks paying taxes. Folks don't pay taxes unless they're making some money. The American economy has grown 16 percent, while the kind of spending that's happened in Washington, D.C., is growing in the triple digits. Mr. Speaker, GDP is up 16 percent, but family income in this country, over these same 10 years, down 4 percent. It's not free money in Washington, D.C., Mr. Speaker. Every dollar that goes out the door is either borrowed from foreign creditors like China, or it's taken from American families that would have spent that on something else like food or education or housing or possibly even a summer vacation, Mr. Speaker, if they're fortunate. Median income down 4 percent, Mr. Speaker. Spending in the Federal Government, up almost 1,000 percent in some categories. Well, we're taking action, Mr. Speaker. That's the take-home message here. So many folks talk and talk and talk and talk and nothing ever gets done. And candidly, when I read the newspaper and they describe what's happening here, Mr. Speaker, it sounds like they're describing people talking and talking and talking and nothing getting done. But it is getting done. I showed you that chart already of how the discretionary spending was coming down, not how we wanted it to come down but how it was actually coming down. What I have here is a chart about the Budget Control Act, Mr. Speaker, the Budget Control Act that begins to go after some of that mandatory spending I talked about earlier. It goes after some more discretionary spending, trying to bring spending down in a responsible way. But folks need to know, in terms of where we're saving money in sequestration, part of that Budget Control Act, about 14.6 percent of the savings, are in interest. By reducing what we're spending we're going to save about 14.6 percent of our goal by not having to borrow more money and not having to pay interest on it. And you see net interest as a size of the spending today. You see it as a size of savings down below. That's going to be a good chunk. Over here, this giant square, Mr. Speaker, that's the entitlement spending. That's that mandatory spending that we're talking about. The little bitty square down here, about 14.8 percent, is how much we're going to save out of that pie. Now, folks, I've just got to tell you, and I think honesty is one of the things that we lack. Nobody likes to deliver bad news. This big square is where the dollars are. We've got to get into that big square if we're going to put our fiscal path on track. I'm in my forties, Mr. Speaker. We have to come to folks who are in their forties and tell them today, Rob, you are not going to get the Social Security and Medicare benefits your parents got, because I'm not. We've got to come to people today and give them the bad news. Rob, you are going to continue paying the highest payroll taxes in the history of this country to go into the Medicare and Social Security Trust Fund, but when you retire, you will not get the kind of medical and Social Security benefits that your parents got. We've got to deliver that bad news because I'm not, and other folks in their forties aren't, and folks in their thirties aren't, and their twenties aren't, and their teens aren't. We overpromised, Mr. Speaker. If you don't believe we overpromised, I want you to go back, you can look it up on the Internet, Mr. Speaker. In fact, it's on the Social Security Web page. A young woman named Ida Mae Fuller. You may not know who Ida Mae Fuller is, but she was the very first American to retire under the Social Security program. The very first monthly check that she received, Mr. Speaker, returned every penny that she'd paid in in taxes over her lifetime. Hear that. The first monthly check that she received returned to her every penny that she'd paid into Social Security taxes over her lifetime, and she continued to receive a check of that size every month for the next almost 30 years until she died in the early nineties. Well, Mr. Speaker, when you're handing out money like that, you have to know that system's not going to sustain itself. In those days there were about 30 American workers paying in for every one retiree, and so we could be generous. Today there are about two American workers paying in for every one retiree, and the American workers can't afford that. I don't want to pull the rug out from under today's seniors, Mr. Speaker. We've made promises, and we need to keep those promises. Folks have lived their entire life banking on those promises, and I think we owe it to folks to come through. They did everything they were supposed to do. They paid their taxes, they played by the rules. I think we owe it to them to come through for them. But for folks in their forties, for folks in their thirties, for folks in their twenties, we need to deliver the bad news today that that train has come to a stop. And we'll tell you what the new plan's going to be, we'll tell you what the new dollars are going to be, and you'll be able to plan for your future accordingly. But know that we have to deliver that kind of candid bad news. Take-home message from this chart right here, Mr. Speaker, is that defense spending in this country, over an 8-year period, is about $5.3 trillion. But sequestration is going to find about 42 percent of the savings out of the entire bill out of the defense side of the budget. Now, I'm one of those folks who says we've been spending on wars for the last decade. Do we have waste in the Defense Department just like we have waste in the Ag Department and waste in the National Park Service and waste in the Judiciary, and on and on? Of course we do. You can't be in the Federal Government business spending other people's money without getting careless from time to time, which is why we need to push that money back to the State level. We can find savings in the Defense Department. But we're coming to a point where the President's Secretary of Defense tells us we are about to begin to undermine national security, our troops, and their families. Now, if you don't know, the Secretary of Defense today is Leon Panetta. He was once the Democratic chairman of the Budget Committee right here in this House. He was once the OMB director, the Office of Management and Budget. That's the budget office for the President. He was once the OMB Director for President Clinton. He was once President Clinton's Chief of Staff. He understands everything that's happening in this town. He understands the challenges in Congress. He understands the challenges in the White House. And as Secretary of Defense, he understands the challenges of defending a Nation. And he says we're on the verge, if we keep targeting defense, of undermining national security, our troops, and their families. Now, that's not to say, Mr. Speaker, that defense gets a free pass. It absolutely doesn't. I have a chart right here that shows defense spending, Mr. Speaker. It starts in FY 2009. It goes out to 2021. It's in constant dollars. It's a downward slope. If we do absolutely nothing more than what we've already done, Mr. Speaker, we're going to reduce defense spending year, after year, after year in a responsible way that protects our national security, that protects our troops and that protects their families. But if we leave in place this sequester--it's represented by the light blue line down here at the bottom--you're going to see defense spending cut almost in half. I challenge you, Mr. Speaker, and I challenge you to challenge your constituents: go and find the men and women in uniform in your communities. Go and find them, and ask them if there is waste, fraud and abuse in their particular parts of the Defense Department. I promise you they're going to tell you yes. I want you to ask them if there is 50 percent waste, fraud and abuse, and the answer is going to be no. We can absolutely reduce defense spending, Mr. Speaker. You and I together, with our colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle, have absolutely reduced defense spending; but it has to be done in a responsible way. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your being with me down here today, and I appreciate your partnership in these successes. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friend from Massachusetts that I am prepared to close if he has anymore speakers.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friend that I wish he would show me the code sections here that go into the SNAP program, the codes that say, under the SNAP program, the income criteria that we had yesterday is changing, and so folks aren't going to get those benefits tomorrow. That's not here. All this bill does is to say you need to apply, and you need to earn those benefits on your own merits. When the gentleman talks about paperwork, he knows good and well the CBO took that into consideration. When the CBO says 1.8 million families are no longer going to qualify, it means some folks are going to get thrown off of categorical eligibility because that is the gaming of the system. They're going to go back in, and they're going to apply for benefits, and they're going to get them, but 1.8 million are going to go back in and apply and get denied because they don't qualify for benefits. Mr. Speaker, if we need to change the eligibility criteria, if we have folks in need who can't qualify, let's change the eligibility criteria. But in the name of good government, when we're going into programs and saying we have rules of the game--we just want people to have to follow them--to somehow define that as being mean-spirited, it galls me. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. I'll be happy to yield to my friend.

Mr. WOODALL. Reclaiming my time from my friend, I would say reaching out and bringing folks into the program who do not qualify for the program. The rules for the program are clear, Mr. Speaker. If you qualify for food stamps, I am the first one who wants you to have it. If you qualify for the SNAP program, under SNAP program rules, you should get food stamps.

Mr. WOODALL. I'd be happy to yield to my friend from California.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, there are no tough choices here. I talked to the gentleman whose seat I took the other day. I said, John, you know, when you were up here as a Congressman, you made it look fun. Folks were always saying thank you, thank you, thank you for all the spending that was going on here. I said, I don't get to make any fun decisions. When you've increased the public debt in this country by 50 percent over the last 4 years, you're all out of giveaway decisions. All we have now are tough decisions. That's all we have. And, again, I know that my friend from Massachusetts speaks with passion and conviction. His advocacy for the neediest among us is an inspiration on the floor and in committee and on and on, and I don't fault him for that a bit. But I would say to my friend, had we not given that payroll tax cut to Members of Congress, we could have provided that food stamp increase that you discussed earlier to an additional 2 million individuals in this country, an additional 2 million individuals in this country had we foregone that tax increase right here. But we didn't. We chose just to go along with the program and cut away, spend away. We can't do that. We've got to stop that. And I would say to my friend, because it's hard, I have the same families struggling in my district that you do. In fact, our foreclosure rate in my district is higher than it is in your district. Our number of folks who are going homeless in Georgia as a result of foreclosures, higher than it is in Massachusetts. But when you talk about the additional 1.8 million folks, 1.8 million folks, Mr. Speaker, according to the CBO, who are going to lose their food stamp benefits under this bill, there's no question about that. But here's the thing, Mr. Speaker, and this is important. This bill doesn't cut anybody from food stamps. This bill says the only people who can get food stamps are people who apply and qualify for food stamps. Hear that, Mr. Speaker. The CBO tells us, and my friend from Massachusetts quotes, that 1.8 million people are going to lose food stamp benefits. But the only change this bill makes is that you actually have to apply for the benefits to get the benefits. So that means 1.8 million people in this country are receiving food stamp benefits who would not qualify for food stamp benefits if they had to go and apply. Mr. Speaker, that is not mean-spirited. If you want to change the food stamp rules, if you want to make it a laxer process, whatever you want to do, let's do that. But let's not demonize each other. Let's not say we're trying to throw poor children out in the streets, when all we're saying is we have a successful food stamp program, and why don't we just limit it to those people who qualify for it.

Mr. WOODALL. I thank the Speaker for his help there. I'm sorry that I needed it, but I appreciate him offering it. You know, we passed a budget in this House, a comprehensive budget in this House. And to hear my colleagues talk, you'd think this is the only bill we're going to pass for the rest of the year. To hear my colleagues talk, you'd think we're not going to bring the farm bill to the floor and go after ag subsidies. To hear my colleagues talk, you'd think we're not going to bring a tax bill to the floor and try to raise revenues in this country. To hear my colleagues talk, this is it. This isn't it. This is the bill that responds to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, who said in February of this year about the cuts that we're trying to prevent today: I will tell you that I am prepared to say that sequestration will pose an unacceptable risk. That's what we're here to talk about today: How do we mitigate the unacceptable risk? How do we mitigate against the challenges that former Democratic Budget Committee chairman, former Clinton OMB Director, former Clinton Chief of Staff, current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says threaten our national security? And, again, we're going to have a choice, Mr. Speaker. We've brought a very powerful program, a very powerful proposal to the floor today, a very powerful proposal. For the first time in over a decade, we're trying to get a handle on that out-of-control portion of spending in this budget. Just a little bit, Mr. Speaker. Just a little bit. And, again, we just have a different idea of what balance is. We have a different idea of what deficit reduction is. My idea of deficit reduction is over the next 5 years we reduce the deficit. My colleagues' idea of deficit reduction is over the next 5 years we spend an additional $40 billion above and beyond what we were going to borrow and spend anyway. It's a legitimate difference of opinion. I'm glad we're bringing this rule to the floor, Mr. Speaker, so that we can have a vote on that opinion. I look forward to the debate on the underlying bill. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.