Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. I am the final speaker.

Mr. WOODALL. Less than what you're paying now.

Mr. WOODALL. Twenty-three percent.

Mr. WOODALL. Given that it eliminates the payroll tax, which is the largest tax 80 percent of American families pay----

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds just to invite my friend from New Jersey to join me on H.R. 25, the Fair Tax Act. Not only will it create jobs in this country, it's the only bill in Congress that will eliminate every single corporate piece of welfare, loophole, tax exception, credit, so on and so on, because none of them need a nickel of it. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I proudly submit this statement congratulating two young people from my district, Miss Myasia Burns and Mr. Charles Orgbon III, who were recently chosen as being among the top youth volunteers in the State of Georgia for 2011 in the 16th annual Prudential Spirit of Community Awards Program. The Prudential Spirit of Community Program is an annual honor conferred on the most impressive volunteers in each State and the District of Columbia. Miss Burns, age 17, of Monroe, Georgia, was nominated by her school, Monroe Area High School, for her work in raising more than $16,000 for the American Cancer Society through the ``Team Burns Charitable Foundation,'' an organization started in memory of Miss Burns' father. Mr. Orgbon, age 15, of Dacula, Georgia, was nominated by Mill Creek High School for founding ``Greening Forward,'' a national environmental awareness campaign, which he started in 2008. Both of these individuals possess a servant's heart and a leader's mind. Ms. Burns and Mr. Orgbon should be proud to have been singled out from close to 29,000 volunteers who participated in this year's program. They are not only making a positive impact on our communities, but they are setting the standard for their peers and for future generations of young Americans.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf).

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my new friend, the gentlelady from New York (Ms. Slaughter), 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 ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 92 provides for a modified open rule for consideration of H.R. 1. This bill reaffirms our commitment to fiscal responsibility by implementing two main pillars of our pledge to America: to cut discretionary spending and to ensure an open and bipartisan debate. If you had told me 6 months ago that I would have been standing here on the floor of the House handling my very first rule on the floor of the House and that we would have been succeeding on two pillars of the pledge to America, I would have told you that might have been wishful thinking. But we have come together as a House, not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as a House to bring this process forward today. Now, you know, Mr. Speaker, as an experienced Member of the Rules Committee in a former life, how unusual it is to have an open process on a continuing resolution. I daresay, even the dean of the House, the gentleman from Michigan, has not seen a continuing resolution come to the floor under the open process that we're bringing it to the floor under today. And that's important, because as I listened to 1-minutes this morning, and I heard some folks on the left and heard some folks on the right who weren't quite happy with the way H.R. 1 turned out, that was an important consideration over the past 4 years, even over the past 10 years, over the past 20 years, because if you weren't happy with the way a continuing resolution turned out when leadership brought it to the floor, too bad for you. You didn't have a voice. You didn't have a vote. You didn't have a process. It was take it or leave it. Whether it was Republican leadership or whether it was Democratic leadership, take it or leave it. In the 112th Congress, our new leadership said we can do better, we have to do better, and the American people deserve better. And today, we are fulfilling that promise. This open process will allow any Member, Republican or Democrat, to come to the floor today, tomorrow, bring their amendments to the floor so that they can say, We don't think you got it right. My 600,000 constituents back home want to make a change. We think we can do better. We think you did too much. We think you didn't do enough. The first time a continuing resolution has come to the floor in this open process. I ran on that commitment of openness, Mr. Speaker, and I believe in that commitment of openness. I can't tell you how many times I said that if Speaker Nancy Pelosi rammed a bill through in the middle of the night, that was wrong. And if Speaker Newt Gingrich rammed a bill through in the middle of the night, that was wrong. That right and wrong are not partisan issues. Right and wrong are American issues. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed our Rules Committee hearing last night, Mr. Speaker, where we had the ranking member and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee come forward, lay out competing views about where they think we should take spending in this country, and then agree to come to the floor over the next several days to offer amendments, to work through that process, to make sure that at the end of the day, no longer do we have a take-it-or-leave-it leadership bill from either side of the aisle; that at the end of the day, we have a bill that was truly the work product of this new 112th Congress of this people's House. And it's just with tremendous pride, Mr. Speaker, that I take part in this debate today. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, you've caught me both on my first rule on the floor and a day where I am just so pleased to be here because of the things that are going on here today, because of the changes that I believe in, both in terms of fiscal responsibility and in terms of openness here in the process. Now, I understand this rule isn't going to make everyone happy. It doesn't make me happy because we're only here today, and it's been very confusing for folks back home, Mr. Speaker. We talked so much about receiving the President's budget on Capitol Hill yesterday. Of course, that was his budget for FY 2012. We're still here working on the budget for 2011. This is the fifth continuing resolution that we've had to try to get that process right, and it's the first one since I've been sworn in that we've been involved in. Now, I can tell you, as much of a voice as you have in this continuing resolution today, we have not seen this much debate or this many amendments in the last four continuing resolutions combined. In fact, I'm told that last night more than 400 amendments were filed to be eligible to come to the floor. Now, I hear from my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle, for whom I have deep respect and admiration, that they believe this bill was put together in a hasty process. I'll tell you, we've been working on this bill day and night for weeks. But then I hear from my friends that they're disappointed that we have a pre-printing requirement to allow for the thoughtful consideration of amendments, and they would rather it just be a willy- nilly process that happens here on the floor as folks come up with good ideas, one by one. Well, I'll tell you, I look forward to that process. I very much hope we can have that as the appropriations bills move forward. But, folks, this is a time of urgency. We have troops in harm's way overseas. We have economic development projects going on around this country that have no idea after March 4 whether there will be a single nickel available to support their cause. No idea. It is no way to run a government. And, again, to put credit where credit is due and blame where blame resides, both parties, over the last decade, have been guilty of this horrendous practice of bringing continuing resolutions to the floor. Today we bring forward a bill that will put a stop to this process, that will get us through the end of 2011 and allow us to go through regular order to bring the remaining appropriations bills to the floor. And it's a process I very much look forward to. I see my friend Mr. McGovern in the Chamber this morning. He and I had a discussion last night in the Rules Committee about how to go after some, what I would call, egregious tax subsidies, those things that happen on the tax side of the ledger that shouldn't happen. I believe in a fair code. I believe in a code that's transparent, that people understand. You'll see my fair tax pin that I'm wearing here today. I believe in fundamental tax reform. But today we only have a chance to talk about FY 2011 spending. I want to have that discussion about fundamental tax reform. I want to have the discussion that the gentlelady from New York wants to have about entitlement reform because I know precisely what my colleagues know, which is if we're going to be serious about budgets, that's where the dollars are, that's where the growth is, that's where the change has to come. But today we have, because it's an open process, simply one bill that we can deal with, simply one idea that we can deal with, and that one idea is spending for FY 2011. It would have been easy, Mr. Speaker, for this new House to have punted on making tough decisions. It would have been perfectly legitimate for this new House to say, we didn't cause this problem, we inherited this problem from last year's Congress, and we're just going to continue a continuing resolution on until the end of the year because we don't have the time or the commitment to start making tough choices. But we didn't. And I'm just so proud that we didn't. What we said is, we have 7 months left in the year. Let's start right now. Let's start right now; and let's lay these ideas out one by one by one, not in big general terms, but in specifics, line item by line item by line item across literally thousands of appropriations accounts. And we didn't say it's my way or the highway, Mr. Speaker. We said, if you have a better idea, if you have a better idea, come to the floor and let's talk about it. If you have a better idea, if we did too much here, tell us where we did too much and tell us how we can do better. And if we did too little here, tell us where we did too little and tell us how we can make it better. I so look forward, at the end of this rules consideration, as we pass this rule and move forward in the general debate, to being able to engage in those amendments one by one, not in a back room somewhere, not off in the corner where it's just the leadership involved, but here on the floor of the people's House, for all of America to see, line item by line item by line item about where our priorities are. Now, I'll tell you, Mr. Speaker, you know, as I know, that every nickel we collect in Federal revenue today goes to fund entitlements and service our national debt. And every nickel that we spend on every program we're going to talk about today, every program on the discretionary side, on the non-defense discretionary side, is a nickel that we borrow. So when we talk about are these things good to do, I promise you that that's not where my heart is today. I know there are some good programs out here that are doing good things. What I also know is we're borrowing every nickel to fund those programs from our children and our grandchildren. When we talk about priorities, one of those priorities is paying for what it is we commit this Nation to. Again, my good friend Mr. McGovern was very persuasive last night when he said, for Pete's sake, they are programs I don't agree with; but dadgummit, if we're going to be involved in them, we ought to fund them; and I couldn't agree with him more. That's hard. We received the President's budget just yesterday; and over a 10-year window, our systemic deficit never falls below 3 percent of GDP. We don't even qualify to join the European Union. We are so devoid of fiscal responsibility at this point in our Nation's history that we do not even qualify to join the European Union. I tell you, Mr. Speaker, that's a low standard. We should do better. We should do better. We can do better. We brought H.R. 1 to the floor today, this rule, we'll bring it to the floor this afternoon so that we can do better. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to yield 2 minutes to the hardworking member of the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from Georgia, Jack Kingston.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I will say again, I can't believe that here on my first rule we have an open process; for the first time in the history of this House, the best I can tell, an open process on a continuing resolution. Now, we're only dealing with this continuing resolution because of the mess we were left in last year, and we're doing the very best we can with it. You've heard words like ``draconian,'' ``decimates,'' ``slashes.'' I want to put it in terms that I think we can all understand. I want you to think about it in terms of your family grocery budget, Mr. Speaker. If you went to the grocery store today and bought your groceries for a month, our friends on the other side would have you believe that we want you to fast for an entire day, because that's about what it is, this $100 billion, about 1 day out of a month's grocery budget. But if you took that 30 days of groceries and you spread those 30 days around--and that's what we do under an open process. We let you spread it around--add where you want to add; cut where you want to cut; spread that around. Can we do that? Can we do that as a very first step towards getting our fiscal house in order? Not only can we do it, Mr. Speaker, we must do it. I'm grateful to the leadership for allowing us to do it. I urge a strong ``yes'' vote on the rule. The text of the material previously referred to by Mr. McGovern is as follows: An Amendment to H. Res. 92 Offered by Mr. McGovern of Massachusetts At the end of the resolution, add the following new sections: 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. 11) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend the Build America Bonds program. 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 and controlled by the Majority Leader and Minority Leader or their respective designees. 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. Sec. 5. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the consideration of the bill specified in section 4 of this resolution. (The information contained herein was provided by the Republican Minority on multiple occasions throughout the 110th and 111th Congresses.)

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson).

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from the freedom-loving State of Idaho (Mr. Simpson).

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to yield 3 minutes to a true American patriot, a lover of this country, the gentleman from Iowa, Mr. Steve King.

Mr. WOODALL. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOODALL. I appreciate the gentleman's yielding. As a newcomer here to the U.S. House of Representatives, I would certainly defer to the Parliamentarian; but I'm encouraging everyone to bring every amendment. Bring every amendment, Congressman, to the House floor and offer that amendment for debate and discussion.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, at this time I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham).

Mr. WOODALL. I am pleased to yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I send to the desk a privileged concurrent resolution and ask for its immediate consideration.