Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Just a moment. I'd be happy to yield to my friend. When you're borrowing $1.4 trillion a year from your children, when you're mortgaging the future of this country, it's not a choice of either spending cuts or revenue changes; we've got to have both. We've got to have both. And to describe it to the American people as if we can do one or the other and get ourselves out of this mess, we cannot. We absolutely cannot. It takes both. I would ask my friends--and with this, I'd be happy to yield to my colleague--when this House brought to the floor a tax cut bill that gave every Member of Congress a tax cut at the end of 2011 that said we only have to pay 4 percent of payroll taxes that we owe, instead of 6 percent of payroll taxes that we owe, I voted ``no.'' I said there's not a Member in this body that needs a tax cut. I said we have too big a problem in this Nation to give tax cuts to Members of Congress. I voted ``no.'' Did anybody else vote ``no'' with me? Did anybody else vote ``no'' with me? I will not be lectured about how it is that tax cuts are distributed in this country when we have opportunities to cut them on this floor, to eliminate them on this floor, and my colleagues continue to vote ``yes.'' We could have added a provision that eliminated those tax cuts for the rich. We did not, and we should have. With that, I'd be happy to yield to my friend.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, you know, when I hear my colleagues talk, it sounds as if we have a choice about doing one thing or another thing. I will say to my colleagues, when you're borrowing $1.4 trillion a year from your children----

Mr. WOODALL. I would be happy to let the gentleman have his own time, Mr. Speaker, because I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say we just disagree on what balance is. When our proposal for budget reduction is to reduce spending by $65 billion over 5 years and your proposal for budget reduction is to spend an additional $35 billion over those same 5 years, we disagree on what balance is. We are moving in the wrong direction under your proposal, right direction under our proposal. I'm very proud of our proposal, proud to serve on the committee with my friend. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Michigan (Mrs. Miller).

Mr. WOODALL. This is important, Mr. Speaker, and I hope folks are paying attention back in their offices. The gentleman is talking about the error rate, the error rate, folks who have mistakenly gotten food stamps because in the application process they got the application process wrong. They shouldn't have qualified but they have given them away anyway. What the CBO says is something entirely different. What the CBO says is that 1.8 million American families, if they walked into the office today and applied for food stamps today, would not qualify for food stamps. It's not an error. It's not a mistake. It's that the rules of the game have been changed to say we just want everybody, we just want everybody to have a part in the program. When the gentleman says it's a paperwork nightmare for States, I happen to agree with the gentleman. There's a tremendous paperwork challenge for States. But this does not solve that. All we're saying is go through the application process. To suggest that we're trying to take benefits away from people who need those benefits is disingenuous.

Mr. WOODALL. I have a very brief question. My understanding of your substitute is that it raises $3 in taxes for every $1 in spending cuts. Could you tell me which bipartisan commissions have represented that, have also agreed that $3 to $1 is the right combination?

Mr. WOODALL. Will my friend yield?

Mr. WOODALL. Reclaiming my time from my colleague, and I very much appreciate her passion--if I can get regular order, please, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. WOODALL. Reclaiming my time, I would say to my friend, what we have within our power is the power to stop the borrowing and the spending. I'm reading here from today's Congressional Quarterly, because folks sometimes get confused, Mr. Speaker. We talked about the Reading Clerk and the tough work they had yesterday, reading today from Congressional Quarterly, it says here that Democrats left open the possibility that they would offer an alternative proposal through a motion to recommit, which is allowed under the rule. My friend on the Rules Committee knows that to be true. My friend on the Budget Committee knows that to be true. I look forward to your using that opportunity to bring your substitute to the floor for a vote. I think that is the right of the minority. I'm glad we preserved the right of the minority, Mr. Speaker. And with that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. WOODALL. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman both for his comments and for his offering of that substitute. The reason is threefold: Number one, that substitute doesn't comply with the rules of the House. We made a decision in this body that we were going to not continue to ask for more and more and more out of taxpayers' pockets but that we were going to try to do our own business here in terms of oversight on all the money that's already being borrowed and spent and sent out the door. Number two, that happened to be the rules that we adopted in this Congress, Mr. Speaker, but under the rules adopted in the last Congress in which you were the Budget chairman, you know your substitute would also not have been in order under the PAYGO rules that you instituted. Again, not a Republican or Democratic issue. Under a Republican House, the substitute is not in order. And under a Democratic House, the substitute is not in order. But, number 3, and, I would argue, most importantly, I say to my friend, we've got a trust deficit with the American people, and it doesn't surprise me. When we talk about the 5-year impact of the reconciliation plan that we passed out of our Budget Committee and I hope that this House will pass today, we're talking about a net effect on debt reduction, the process for which reconciliation was created, of $65 billion over 5 years. Over the next 5 years, $65 billion is not going to have to be borrowed from our children and our grandchildren. Under the gentleman's substitute, over that same period of time, spending is actually going to go up by almost $37 billion. This is a process that is designed to reduce borrowing and spending, to reduce the burden we are placing on our children, and the gentleman's substitute increases the burden that we place on our children.

Mr. WOODALL. I yield myself such time as I may consume. I say to my friend, as the Republican Budget chairman said to him yesterday, I appreciate his passion on this issue. What brings us to the very best decisions that we can make in this body, Mr. Speaker, is having folks who work hard day in and day out educating themselves on the issues. They can bring the very best case for the American people to the floor. And that's why I would ask my friend whether or not he believes it actually helps that debate to get involved in some of those rhetorical feats of mind, I guess we would call them, because he knows as well as I know that under the law of the land, in 2002, food stamp benefits, SNAP benefits, would have gone up by about 40 percent over the last 10 years, and Republicans and Democrats came together over the last decade and increased those benefits 270 percent, Mr. Speaker. Now, this proposal suggests that instead of going up 270 percent, we allow those benefits to go up 260 percent. That's the draconian cut. We see that in the same rhetoric in the student loan program, Mr. Speaker. Everyone in this body knows the law of the land was that student loan rates were at 6.8 percent--a below-market rate of 6.8 percent. They were lowered for a very small fraction of the student population for a very temporary period of time to 3.4 percent, and the law now hasn't gone back to 6.8 percent, to standard levels. But folks want to talk about that as a doubling instead of a returning to common law. And more importantly, Mr. Speaker, to continue to suggest, as he knows is not the case, that Republicans are unwilling to focus on the Defense Department, let me say it plainly. I believe there is waste and fraud and abuse in the Defense Department, and I stand here willing to work with you to eradicate it all. I supported Ranking Member Van Hollen's amendment to put Defense on the table. The budget that this House passed--the only budget that's passed in all of Washington, D.C.--reduced defense spending by $300 billion in recognition of exactly that. And, Mr. Speaker, again, the rhetoric just gets a little overheated from time to time, and, candidly, I think it gets in the way of us doing the people's business. When I say to you that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, on August 4, 2011, said: If these defense cuts happen--and God willing that will not be the case, but if it did happen--it would result in a further round--because we've already cut once; in fact, already cut twice--a further round of very dangerous across-the-board defense cuts that I believe, says Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense, would do real damage to our security, our troops, and their families. I would say to my friend: How does it advantage us to make this a Republican-Democratic issue when the Democratic chairman of the House Budget Committee, Leon Panetta, says allowing these cuts to go forward would be dangerous to our defense, to our national security, to our troops, and to our families? How does it advantage us to make this a Republican-Democratic issue when President Clinton's OMB Director, Leon Panetta, says this would be dangerous across-the-board defense cuts that would do real damage to our security, our troops, and our families? How does it advantage us to make this a partisan issue when President Clinton's Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, former OMB Director, former Democratic Budget Committee chairman, says: I believe allowing these cuts to go forward would do real damage to our security, to our troops, and to our families? Do we have real choices to make? We do.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you coming in early to be with us early this morning. This is a big day. This is the reconciliation bill. I serve on both the Rules Committee and the Budget Committee, Mr. Speaker. As you know, we've had some tremendous successes in the appropriations process. This week, we've been working through the Commerce-Justice-Science bill. It's a bill that's reduced spending to those levels that we had in 2008, doing those things that the voters sent us here to do. We're going to vote on that bill today in final passage. But that appropriations process that we have control over here in the House, that process where we reduced spending from 2010 levels down to 2011 levels, down to 2012 levels, and are going to go down again to 2013 levels to be responsible stewards of taxpayers' dollars, those are only one-third of the taxpayer dollars. Two-thirds of the taxpayer dollars that are spent in this town--and by spent I really mean borrowed and then spent--come on what they call mandatory spending programs. Mr. Speaker, as you know, mandatory spending programs are dollars that go out the door whether Congress acts or not. Appropriation bills require Congress to act affirmatively, but mandatory spending goes right out the door without any oversight from this body until you get to reconciliation. Reconciliation is that process that Democrats put in place wisely years and years ago to allow the House and the Senate to come together and begin to reduce, restrain, do oversight on those mandatory spending dollars. This is a rule that brings that bill to the floor. That bill is going to be coming under a closed rule, Mr. Speaker. We're talking about a bill that has been put together by almost every committee of jurisdiction here in this House and then assembled by the Budget Committee and brought here to the floor. It's been the subject of countless hearings already. We looked at whether we'd be able to bring a Democratic substitute to the floor. None was submitted that complied with the rules of the House. So we have one bill on the floor today, an up-and-down vote, on whether or not we're willing to engage in the first serious reconciliation process on this floor--I would argue--since 1997. Some folks might say 2003. I say 1997. Why, Mr. Speaker? I'll tell you, it's the right thing to do anyway. It's the right thing to do anyway as responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. But in this case, these aren't reductions for the sake of reductions. These are reductions for the sake of complying with what I would argue is a very good deficit-reduction agreement between the President and the Senate and the House last August. And as a part of that agreement, we put in some blanket cuts to national security, some blanket cuts to national defense. And some commentators have described these cuts, Mr. Speaker, as being intentionally so crazy that they would never happen but would be used only as a tool to get the Joint Select Committee to act. As you know, Mr. Speaker, the Joint Select Committee did not succeed last fall. It's a source of great frustration for me and is also a source of great frustration for the Members who served on that committee. They had an opportunity to bring an up-or-down vote to both the House and the Senate floor on anything they came up with, Mr. Speaker. They didn't have to get the whole $1.2 trillion. They didn't have to get $1.5 trillion. They could have gotten $1 trillion. They could have gotten $500 billion. They could have gotten $250 billion, and we would have brought that to the floor for an up-or-down vote. But they got nothing. So where are we? Well, in the words of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, he says: We are at a place where, if these cuts were allowed to go, the impact of these cuts would be devastating to the Defense Department. I happen to share his concerns. Again, these were across-the-board cuts put in place to be so intentionally crazy that Congress would never allow them to occur, and it would spur the Joint Committee to action. I happen to have supported an amendment offered by Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the ranking member on the Budget Committee. When we were going through the Budget Committee process last year, he offered an amendment that said, dadgummit, everything's got to be on the table, and that includes the Defense Department. I agree with him. The Defense Department does need to be on the table. And in fact, the Defense Department is undergoing $300 billion worth of reductions today. This bill does nothing to change that. There is $300 billion being reduced from the Defense Department, as well it should. It's not easy, but it should happen, and it is happening. This isn't dealing with that. This is dealing with even additional cuts. Again, in the words of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, a former Democratic Member of this House: The impact of these cuts would be devastating for the Department. So we have an opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to do what, I would argue, you and I came here to do--and not just you and I, but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--to do those things not just that happened year after year after year, those things that have 12 months of efficacy and then go away, but the things that can be set in permanent law to change the direction of spending and borrowing in this country. And, candidly, Mr. Speaker, it's more about the borrowing than it is about the spending. There are priorities in this country that we need to focus on, and I would argue that we've done a great job of focusing on those priorities. But when you are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar from your children and your grandchildren, we have to redefine what responsibility is because, I will tell you, that is irresponsible. And this bill then takes a step in two directions: one, turning back this second round of Defense Department cuts--not the first round but the second round, the round that Leon Panetta describes as devastating to the Defense Department--and then setting us on a path to bend that cost curve going forward by tackling mandatory spending programs for the first time in almost a decade. And with that, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to strongly support this rule. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 648 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

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

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

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Massachusetts for joining me on the floor today. I will say I think he chose exactly the right words when he was trying to make his points: describe your opposition as hating women and children, and that's your best chance of winning your argument. If only it were true. And that's what I hope the American people take home from debates like these, Mr. Speaker--that there are serious challenges here and that there are serious people who are here who are trying to solve these challenges. But we get wrapped around the axle in the name- calling I hear, that I would argue does nothing to feed a child and that does nothing to take care of a family. The gentleman says that we're the richest Nation in the world. I would tell the gentleman there is no poorer nation on the planet. There is not a nation on the planet that has borrowed more money than this Nation has--not one, not one. What do they say about socialism, Mr. Speaker? It's a great plan until you run out of other people's money. Guess what? We've run out of other people's money. I just want to show you a chart, Mr. Speaker. This is a chart--and I'll show it so that other Members can see it. The green line represents tax revenues in this country. It goes back to 1947. What you'll see is that tax revenues are fairly flat as a percent of the economy. In fact, because this chart goes all the way back to 1947, it reflects the New Deal with FDR. It reflects all of that growth in government. The red line is the government spending. It goes all the way back through 1965. It reflects Lyndon Johnson and all the Great Society spending that goes on. I just want to make sure all of my colleagues can see it there. The red line represents where spending is going in this Nation, and the green line represents where taxes are historically in this Nation. Mr. Speaker, does this look like we have a tax problem here? Does it look like we have a spending problem in this Nation? Taxes have remained the same as a percentage of GDP, as has spending, until now. Until now, we have a spending-driven crisis in this Nation. I say to my friend that, again, he chose all the right talking points: they want to protect the rich; they want to protect the oil companies. There is one bill in this Congress that you know well, Mr. Speaker, that eliminates every single corporate loophole exemption deduction and break. There's one. That same bill, Mr. Speaker, eliminates every loophole the wealthy use to avoid paying their fair share. Mr. Speaker, it is the single most popularly cosponsored tax bill, fundamental reform bill in the House and in the Senate. It has almost 70 Members in the House; it has nine Members in the Senate, and there is one Democrat on it. Mr. Speaker, giving the right speech down here about what folks ought to do doesn't move us in the right direction. Putting your name behind some legislation and moving something forward gets us in the right direction. This Budget Committee chairman sitting here beside me, I'm so proud of him. Chairman Paul Ryan, that's a man known around this country as a man who is trying. There are a lot of folks here who are known for blaming. There aren't many folks who are known for trying, who say, I don't care about the slings and the arrows. America is facing crisis. And if not me, then who? We got that in the House-passed budget, Mr. Speaker, folks who said, If not me, then who? And they made tough choices. Here we have the first reconciliation bill. My colleagues on the other side are going to offer a motion to recommit to this deficit-reduction bill that actually increases spending and call that balance. Mr. Speaker, the food stamp program spending has increased 270 percent over the last decade. The mean-spirited folks that my colleagues talk about want to increase it by 260 percent instead. These aren't easy decisions, Mr. Speaker, but they're not going to put one family out that qualifies for food stamps. We're going to move beyond the demagoguery, Mr. Speaker. We're going to move into the real business that governing this Nation takes. I hope we'll get a strong bipartisan vote on this rule. I hope we'll get a strong bipartisan vote on the underlying bill. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of both the rule and the underlying bill.

Mr. WOODALL. Then I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I'll tell you, I don't actually prepare remarks when I come down here to sit opposite my friend from Florida, because I always know his opening statement is going to be that line by line by line that reminds me of absolutely everything that I want to say. And generally speaking, it reminds me of absolutely everything I'm proud of, and sometimes things that my friend from Florida wishes had not happened. You know, folks ask me back home, Mr. Speaker--I'm a freshman here. They say, Rob, what have you learned in your first term in Congress? And I say, What I have learned is that when you watch the House floor on C SPAN, it looks like theater. And what I've learned is that the comments from my friends on the other side of aisle, it's not theater at all, it is heartfelt belief in absolutely every word that comes out of their mouth. And that's instructive, because if it were theater, we could go into a dark back room somewhere and try to sort it out around the edges. But when it's heartfelt belief about what direction we ought to take this country, it requires the full and open hearing that we give it here on the House floor. Mr. Speaker, I don't know if you were here for the deem and pass of the budget several Congresses ago before I was elected, but the gentleman's absolutely right. Deeming a budget as being passed by both Houses of Congress is a terrible way to run this institution. He is absolutely right. Now, I'm proud that he and I did not shirk our responsibilities. We passed a budget here in this House under yet another open process. We asked any Member of this House that had an idea about what the budget ought to look like in this country to bring that budget to the floor of this House and we'd have a vote and a debate on it. And we did, and we passed a budget here in the House of Representatives. Now, sadly, our friends on the Senate side have chosen for the 3rd year in a row not to pass a budget. And I would say again, those areas on which we agree, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman's absolutely right. In the absence of actually having a budget that has passed the Senate--and not just because they haven't passed one, Mr. Speaker, but because they have said affirmatively and apparently with some pride they do not plan on passing a budget. So what's the responsible body here on the other side of the Capitol supposed to do? Well, what we said is we need to move forward with our appropriations process, and so we are going to move forward under the budget that has passed this entire U.S. House of Representatives. Now, the truth is we did that in a rule a couple of weeks back and we got it wrong. This is not the first time we've had to make up for the Senate's mistake. You would think, as often as we've had to take up for those folks, we'd have figured out how to do it right. But sadly, we didn't get it quite right, and I hope we don't get into the habit of getting it right. I hope we get into the habit of actually passing a budget over there, bringing a budget to conference, and having a budget that controls all of Capitol Hill. But in an effort to make up for what's not happening there, we did absolutely, in this rule that's before us today, Mr. Speaker, specify that the caps that we created, the 435 of us created in the budget that we passed, will be the caps that regulate the activity that the 435 of us engage in for the rest of the year. And I welcome the Senate to join in that debate. You know, to be fair to my colleague from Florida, we just see the Budget Control Act differently. I think we both voted for the Budget Control Act last fall. I viewed it as budget caps. In fact, if you open up the legislation, it says budgetary caps. And when I read the word ``caps,'' Mr. Speaker, what I see is you can't spend any more than that. I was never under any illusion that I was obligated to spend absolutely all of it. And, candidly, I think that's one of the issues we have here in this body, Mr. Speaker. You may hear other speakers come down here today on the other side of the aisle who believe exactly that, that because we signed an agreement with the President that we would not spend a penny more than $1.047 trillion this year that we are, in fact, now obligated to spend every single penny of that $1.047 trillion. As we talked about, 40 cents out of every dollar that we spend in this town, Mr. Speaker, is borrowed, borrowed from our children, from our grandchildren. Forty cents out of every dollar is money that we do not have but we are borrowing against the next generation's prosperity to spend on our priorities today. My friend from Florida brings up the COPS program. The COPS program is a neat program, provides dollars to local law enforcement agencies to help them succeed in their local law enforcement mission. But the clever little secret that sometimes we don't talk about, Mr. Speaker, is that my community back home takes all the tax money out of their pocket and they send it to Washington, D.C. We don't have access to any money in my part of the world, my little Seventh District there in northeast Georgia. There's no money that we get back that we didn't send in to begin with. We can prioritize those local priorities locally. We can control those outcomes locally. Forty cents out of every dollar we're borrowing. Not one budget. I mentioned earlier, Mr. Speaker, that in this open process we allowed every Member of Congress to bring any budget they wanted to the House floor for debate and consideration. Not one of those budgets, not one, balanced next year. Not one. Not one budget. And some of the brightest leaders I hope that our Nation has to offer, Mr. Speaker, sit here in these chairs in this body, and not one of them had a proposal for how to right this ship next year. Not one. So the question is: What, do we just quit trying? Do we just quit trying, Mr. Speaker? Do we just concede that the economic security of this Nation is just going to drip, drip, drip away with deficit spending year after year after year? Are we going to concede that the 50 percent increase in the public debt that's occurred over the last 4 years is just the way it's going to be; that's a pattern that is going to continue, instead of a pattern that needs to be stopped? But here is the good news. I have heartfelt feelings on that issue, and my friend from Florida has heartfelt feelings on that issue. The rule that we from the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker--my colleague from Florida and I--have brought to the floor today is going to open up that debate so that absolutely all Members can have their passions and feelings heard on this issue. One more point of pride, Mr. Speaker, because I really do like coming down here on open rule days. What we don't talk about sometimes from that Budget Control Act is that those caps--that $1.047 trillion I mentioned earlier, which is the most that we could possibly spend--that's only good from October 1 to the first week of January because that very same agreement said that in the failure of the Joint Select Committee last fall to act--and I will tell you it was quite the failure--it was going to lead to 8 percent across-the-board reductions in every single account that we're talking about here on the floor today--8 percent across-the-board reductions. What our budget does and what our caps do is recognize that failure, Mr. Speaker, that the House Representatives on that Joint Select Committee and that the Senator representatives on that Joint Select Committee did not come to an agreement on deficit reduction. Thus those caps, those 8 percent across-the-board reductions, are barreling down the road towards this institution, Mr. Speaker, and picking up speed every day. Now, we can either tell the American people that all is well and let's go ahead and spend the maximum amount possible--but, oh, watch out; here come those across-the-board cuts that nobody planned for--or we can do the responsible thing, and the responsible thing is to plan for that contingency. I say ``contingency.'' I dare say, Mr. Speaker, it's almost a certainty that we're not going to find a way around those across-the-board cuts but that we can find a way around them with the budget that this institution passed. With the numbers that this institution passed, we can replace those revenues--replace that spending that was going to be saved with across-the-board cuts--with targeted cuts, with targeted cuts to programs that we in this body agree on. Mr. Speaker, I didn't come to this body to do across-the-board cuts. There is good spending and there is bad spending. I didn't come to this body to use the meat ax to go after everything. I came to this body to set the priorities that my constituents sent me here to set. Far from being an abomination of the process, this House-passed budget, this House reconciliation bill that's coming at the end of this week--and yes, this first appropriations bill, the FY 2013-cycle--is the way this process is supposed to be done. I rise in strong support of this rule, Mr. Speaker, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Florida for joining me here for this debate today. And there really are some things that we disagree about here in this body at large. But one thing we don't disagree about is the importance of bringing open rules to this floor to debate appropriations bills. This appropriations bill that we're bringing under this rule, Mr. Speaker, is a 1 percent reduction from the levels the President has proposed. As we hear folks talk about the doom and the gloom and the kicking of children and the punishing of women--1 percent. There's a long, hard fall to the bottom coming all right, and it's coming in the American economy. And I'll tell you who gets hurt the most in a bad economy: it's the poorest and the weakest among us. We all know it. We're asking for 1 percent less than what the President proposed in the name of taking a small step in the right direction. You could have gotten me for 20 or 25 percent less, just to be clear. You could've gotten me on board if we'd gone 20 or 25 percent less. But this body is trying to move in a responsible fashion. There's only one budget that's passed in this town, Mr. Speaker. The President's budget didn't pass. It got zero votes last year in the Senate. It got zero votes this year in the House. It didn't even get introduced last year in the House. There's only one budget in this town that has passed. That's the one that came out of the open process that we had right here. We can take our toys and go home or we can try to do our appropriations bills under the one proposal that has garnered a majority vote in this entire Nation. I vote for the latter. And a vote for this rule is a vote for the latter. Let's go ahead and start that process. Let's go ahead and do for the American people what we promised them we would do; and that is, operate this institution so that everybody has a voice, and at the end of the day we move our very best legislation forward. The material previously referred to by Mr. Hastings of Florida is as follows: An Amendment to H. Res. 643 Offered by Mr. Hastings of Florida At the end of the resolution, add the following new section: Sec. 4. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution the Speaker shall, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule XVIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R. 4816) to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to extend the reduced interest rate for Federal Direct Stafford Loans, and for other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided among and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means. After general debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. At the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the Committee shall rise and report the bill to the House with such amendments as may have been adopted. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit with or without instructions. If the Committee of the Whole rises and reports that it has come to no resolution on the bill, then on the next legislative day the House shall, immediately after the third daily order of business under clause 1 of rule XIV, resolve into the Committee of the Whole for further consideration of the bill. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the consideration of H.R. 4816.

Mr. WOODALL. As am I.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say to my friend from Massachusetts that there is only one bill in this institution that abolishes not just the oil company tax credits that he wants to go after, not just all the corporate welfare that he wants to go after, not just all the benefits and exclusions and exemptions that the wealthy in this country utilize to lower their tax bills. There is one bill in this Congress that abolishes every single special exemption, deduction, carve-out, and giveaway in the entire United States Tax Code. It's H.R. 25. I'm the sponsor of that legislation. I join you in your desire to eliminate all those special interest tax breaks and deductions. I welcome your cosponsorship of that legislation. I reserve the balance of my time.