Congressional Record, Volume 153 Issue 2 (Friday, January 5, 2007)

[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 2 (Friday, January 5, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H100-H107]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE PASSING SCENE

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is
recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, Mr. McHenry's input into this dialogue
that we have here is essential. I look forward to the pugnacious Mr.
McHenry's deliveries on this floor and in committee and before the
media over the next 2 years of the new 110th Congress.
As always, Mr. Speaker, it is a profound honor and privilege to
address you on the floor in the United States House of Representatives,
the people's House. As I bring up this subject matter that is here
before us, I have a series of things, random thoughts on the passing
scene, focused on current events will be my message here today.
There are mistakes that are made and there are things said and done
in political campaigns that don't always reflect the wishes or the
policy, but things are said sometimes to win elections and then you
have to follow through on that.
We have had some standards to look back on. The first 100 days of the
presidency, many Presidents have made their pledge that in the first
100 days they are going to move pieces of policy, and they have
endeavored to keep those pledges.
When the Republicans took over the majority in 1994, they also made a
pledge in the first 100 days that they would bring, at least bring to a
vote a series of reform changes called ``Contract With America.''
Looking back on that, and it depends on your analysis and definition,
but something like two-thirds of that agenda was passed into law. I
believe all of it was voted on in this Congress. But yet it was done
under a regular order. It was done under an open process, and it was
done by bringing the legislation of the Contract With America, which I
am comparing now to this first 100 hours of the new majority's agenda,
comparing those two initiatives that were brought up in the campaign
and the pledges that were made. But they were brought through in
regular order in the Contract With America in 1994.
Regular order meaning that the bills were introduced and they were
brought to subcommittee where they had a full subcommittee hearing and
there was open debate and there was an opportunity for Democrats and
Republicans to offer their amendments into the subcommittee on each of
those pieces of legislation. As it came out of subcommittee, it went to
full committee where there was an opportunity for the full committee
members to weigh in. As we know, the committees are where we have
established and developed expertise. If you look at the chairs and also
the seasoned veterans on committees, both Republicans and Democrats,
and I look at the Judiciary Committee where there is a tremendous
amount of seniority, and I have the honor to serve on the House
Judiciary Committee, there is a replete, not necessarily complete but a
very replete body of knowledge within the minds of the members of the
committee and the staff. And of course the history and the resources
that are there.
That is why we put legislation through the subcommittee and committee
processes so we can weigh in with our judgment and bring our individual
expertise to bear, and we have an opportunity to hear from our
constituents because they will read the language and they will parse
the words and let us know where the flaws are.
Mr. Speaker, my first step into public life was going from the
private sector, being a construction company founder, owner and manager
into the legislative arena as an Iowa senator. And the first thing I
learned was the law of unintended consequences.
In other words, you can have a good idea and it sounds perfect to you
from your limited perspective. You can put that down into the form of a
law, and if I were king for a day as a younger man, I might have
offered some of those ideas I had earlier in my political career as an
edict that I believed should have been the law of the land and lay that
out there and give a bob of my scepter and declare that to be law. But
my mistakes would have been as a younger, less experienced man, and
sometimes still today those mistakes, I didn't understand the law of
unintended consequences. I didn't understand that my ideas needed to be
vetted across the spectrum of the other people that I served in the
State legislature with, and I carry that experience with me into this
Congress. I didn't understanding that I needed to float those ideas out
to the various constituency groups that are there to be voices of
individuals, and I didn't understand that I needed to float those out
to individuals and get those ideas out in the press and publish my
bills so that people that are interested can look in and weigh in and
make phone calls, send e-mails and write letters, come and visit and
lobby as individuals or join up with their various constituency groups
that are out there to be able to analyze and be a louder voice as
members of a group so that all of the expertise that America has to
offer can come to bear on the judgments and decisions that we make here
in this Congress.
But that whole process that I have described, the process utilized in
1994 with the Contract With America, that entire open, bipartisan
process has been usurped by this rules package that has been brought
here to the floor of this Congress. We learned essentially a new term.
I don't know if anybody in this Congress understood it at the time.
Some did, I imagine, because they came up with the effort on the rules.
I came down here to put up my first vote on a motion to commit. Now I
have voted many times on motions to recommit.

[[Page H101]]

Mr. Speaker, if I may describe that. A motion to recommit is a motion
that says if you bring a bill to the floor and then it gets debated
here on the floor, the motion to recommit says we want to recommit it
back to committee and sometimes recommit it with instructions back to
committee because there are Members here in the full House that didn't
have an opportunity to weigh in on that bill as it came through
committee. They didn't sit on the appropriate committee, for example.
So they had a viewpoint that needed to be considered. And if a
motion to recommit is successful here on the floor, that says a
majority of the Members of the full House of Representatives have
concluded that there are other ideas that needed to be considered, send
it back to committee with instructions so those other ideas can be
considered. That is a motion to recommit.

But we voted on a motion to commit, not recommit, a motion to commit.
A motion to commit is send it to committee. And the reason it is a
motion to commit rather than a motion to recommit is this legislation
has not gone through committee. It has not gone through the
subcommittee process or the committee process. It simply then is
legislation that was held very tight. I don't know if it was in a
locked briefcase, but it was something that the public and press didn't
have access to. Members of Congress didn't have access to it. In fact,
I believe many of the lower ranking Members of the majority party
didn't have access to this legislation. It was secret legislation that
was thrust upon us and the only opportunity that we have is a
nondebatable motion to commit to committee for the first time because
it didn't go through the committee process.
I submit, Mr. Speaker, that is inconsistent with the pledge that was
made throughout the election process and throughout the campaign
process.
There are a number of quotes that were identified, and I have some of
them. I don't have all of them. One of them by now-Speaker Pelosi was
this, and this was on CNN on November 9, so 2 days after the election.
That would have been Thursday. She said, ``Democrats are ready to lead,
prepared to govern.'' I don't quibble with that part of the statement.
But the completion of the sentence is, ``ready to lead, prepared to
govern, and absolutely willing to work in a bipartisan way.''
Mr. Speaker, there is no definition of bipartisanship that I can
apply to this process unless many of the Members of the majority party
were as shut out of this process as the entire minority party was. I
suspect that is the case. I don't want to parse the language in there,
I just want to say that the spirit and intent of that statement,
``willing to work in a bipartisan way'' has been violated here, but
maybe not the technical definition of that. We can expect these things
because we have a house full of lawyers that are good with language and
they will find a way to convolute this language to be able to defend
themselves.
So I point out this process. Motion to commit, nondebatable motion.
All you can do is plead for a recorded vote, and that is the only
opportunity to voice objection, but there is not an opportunity to
improve the legislation. And that is really what we need to do, always,
all of us in a bipartisan way, at least provide an opportunity for
amendments in the process. That means in the subcommittee process and
in the full committee process, and then here on the floor of the House
of Representatives in open debate so the public can evaluate this
process, not a secret or closed process, but an open process to the
public. We owe you that, America. We owe you an open and clean process
and we owe you an open dialogue and an open debate.
If we don't do that, you will be drawing conclusions such as they
don't believe in what they are doing enough to be able to have an open
debate. What kind of work is being done here that we are not able to
have it withstand the scrutiny and the criticism that might come from
the public if it were an open process.
So I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that promises get made during
campaigns. There were many promises made during the last campaign that
will not be kept by the new majority party. But the promise that seems
to be the one that is sacrosanct is the promise that in the first 100
hours we will do these things. In order to accomplish these promises of
achievement within the first 100 hours, which is comparable to the
first 100 days in presidential promises or the promise of the 1994 new
majority, in order to achieve those goals and keep those promises, the
promise we will do it within the first 100 hours, the only way to meet
that was to take this bipartisanship and set it aside and suspend it at
least temporarily, if not permanently, for the 110th Congress, and to
set aside the subcommittee process and set aside the committee process.
We have one more avenue here that there can be an open forum, and
that is the rules process. At least a member can bring an amendment to
the Rules Committee, explain their amendment in open forum and ask for
a vote on their amendment as to whether that amendment can be allowed
to be considered here on the floor of the House of Representatives.
I was astonished there were this many amendments when I came here as
a freshman a couple of Congresses ago. I was astonished that there were
so many amendments that were turned down, that did not see the light of
day. But there was an opportunity to present them to the Rules
Committee, and I did that many times and I got turned down many times
as a member of the majority party. But we don't even have a rules
process that is open enough that you can present your amendments to the
Rules Committee.
In fact, I believe the Rules Committee, as an example already, will
not be meeting, it will simply be a decision that is made by the
leadership of the majority party, and the recorded votes of the Rules
Committee will be secret. That is part of this package, as I understand
it, too, Mr. Speaker.
So of all of the promises that will be broken, the one that should be
broken is the one that is sacrosanct, the promise of accomplishment in
the first 100 hours. If we could just look at that and say we
understand your motive, but this is not conducive to bipartisanship or
open process; in fact, it is not conducive to good legislation because
the good ideas of Democrats and Republicans are shut out of this
process.
I will just ask this of now-Speaker Pelosi: Why don't you just break
one promise instead of a series that will ultimately be broken, and
break that promise about 100 hours so that you can keep your promise
about bipartisanship, and keep your promises about an open process and
ethical process. That is far more important to the American people than
a promise to accomplish certain legislative endeavors within the first
100 hours.
This 100 hours is meaningless to the American people. All of this has
to go over to the Senate. The Senate has to be willing to take it up.
The Senate has to be able to vote cloture on some of this, and I think
it will be filibustered, and it has to get to the President for
signature. Timing is not as essential, it is the policy that is
important. It is important to have an open process, it is important
that we weigh in and that amendments be allowed to be offered and that
they be considered and that they be voted on so the American people can
have confidence in this process.

{time} 1530

And sometimes, sometimes, this body, this great deliberative body of
the people's House, will reach the right decisions. In fact, I believe
often we will. When we do so with public debate and an open process, we
reach the right decision for the right policy for America and we also
reach it by using the right reasons, the reasons of open dialogue that
allow people's positions and their knowledge to come to that debate.
Sometimes we will make the wrong decision, and when we do that, if we
have open dialogue and open debate, then at least it is arguable that
we have arrived at the wrong decision, but at least we followed the
right process, and we can't fault the reasoning on how we get there.
I would compare Gerald R. Ford, and may he rest in peace, Gerald R.
Ford, whom we said good-bye to within this past week, the man who came
to the Presidency after having served 25 years here, Mr. Speaker, in
the House of Representatives, a man who was almost without guile as
President. A President who made decisions at a time when we

[[Page H102]]

needed someone who had absolute integrity. The person who had
confidence, the confidence and the endorsement of Democrats and
Republicans at the time, Mr. Speaker. And with Gerald R. Ford as
President, when he made a decision, when I agreed with him and he laid
out his reasoning and his rationale, when he made the right decision,
he made it for the right reason.
He thoughtfully deliberated on the components of the information, the
interactivity of them and what the result would be and what the
constitutional foundation was on that decision. And he made his
decision, and he told us why. And that established confidence in the
integrity and the judgment, in the intellect, and the character and in
the faith of Gerald R. Ford.
When he made the wrong decision, and I will just say when I disagreed
with him would be my definition of the wrong decision, he still laid
out his argument. And when he laid out his argument, I could not fault
him for using the wrong criteria. It was well thought out. He made his
arguments well. When we disagreed, I would have a different argument.
But those kinds of debates that he had within himself, he earned that
respect of us for President Ford. That kind of deliberation, that kind
of integrity so far in the 110th Congress is nonexistent because there
hasn't been an opportunity to have that debate on any of this that has
come to this at this point and the rules deny there be that kind of
debate and deliberation in the future.
So I talked about the new motion, still it was in the rules, but a
motion to commit. New to use. You will hear a discussion, Mr. Speaker,
about PAYGO. PAYGO means pay as you go. It means something different to
Democrats than it does to Republicans. And I will say that when
Republicans talk about PAYGO, we mean we want to pay as we go, as do
Democrats, but we believe we should constrain spending and slow the
growth in government and we should find ways for reconciliation and
maybe do a rescissions package so that we can rachet this spending down
to keep it within the revenue stream.
We believe that the Bush tax cuts have absolutely flat out been
proven to stimulate this economy. Revenue is up. Revenue has increased
significantly since the Bush tax cuts were put in place. That is why
our deficit has been reduced. It is because revenue has gone beyond our
expectations. But the PAYGO argument for me is I want to slow this
growth in spending so that we can get the size of our Federal
Government back in line with the size of our revenue stream.
For example, last year there were mistakes made by the majority party
in the last couple, three Congresses. I believe that there was too much
money that was spent, Mr. Speaker, and I think that we should have shut
that down earlier. I was surprised when I came to this Congress as a
freshman in January of 2003 that there wasn't a balanced budget that I
could simply endorse, jump on, and go to work with. It was a condition
where we were dealing with the reality of the politics rather than the
necessity of balancing the budget.
And in order to produce a balanced budget, I would have had to create
my own with my new staff, who didn't really have that time and
understanding of this overall 2.7 or $2.8 trillion national budget. But
things crept away from a balanced budget, and we know why. We know
there was the bursting of the dot-com bubble that took place and it was
necessary, and I could go into that perhaps on another date, Mr.
Speaker.
And we also know that we faced an attack on September 11 that shut
down our financial industry and that the effort was to turn our United
States economy into a tailspin. It needed to be brought out of that
nosedive, and the tax cuts that we passed brought it back up out of
that nosedive. We knew that we had to engage in a global war on terror
and it was going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars to be able to
defend Americans that had been killed in greater numbers on our soil
than ever at any time in history, and we set about to do that.
So three big things sent us into a deficit: the bursting of the dot-
com bubble, the attack on September 11, and the necessity to fund the
effort in a global war on terror. Those three things. And as the
stimulants took place on the tax cuts, it has taken a little while to
get them to take hold, but there is no argument that this economy is
the strongest and most powerful economy that I have experienced in my
lifetime, and it is measurable by a lot of different ways. Anything
that goes up and is good for the economy is up. Anything that goes down
that is good for the economy is down, and the opposite is also true.
This has been a powerfully strong economy with growth in something
like 18 of 19 previous quarters, and all of that growth has been up
around the 3 percent level. So this economy has been powerful, and this
growth has been really a great position to be in to be able to say let
us let the economy grow us out of this. Let us slow this growth of
balance. Let us balance this budget.
But let us not balance it, Mr. Speaker, with tax increases. That is
what PAYGO means to Democrats. The tax cuts have provided the growth in
our revenue stream. Tax increases will diminish the growth in our
revenue stream. But their idea of pay-as-you-go is to increase taxes
and increase spending, as we heard Mr. McHenry say, to the tune of $800
million in this package. That $800 million won't be paid for by cuts in
other line items in any significant way. That, in their mind, is paid
for by tax increases.
As has been stipulated by the new incoming chairman of the Ways and
Means Committee, Mr. Rangel of New York, none of the Bush tax cuts he
would say he would support or endorse. And as you listened to him
respond across the media airwaves, it always came back to the only way
that you could characterize his position was we are going to increase
taxes.
When you increase taxes, you slow this economy. Ronald Reagan once
said what you tax you get less of. What you tax you get less of, and
what you subsidize you get more of. But I want to talk about the what-
you-tax-you-get-less-of component of that, a very wise statement of
President Reagan's, and that is in our infinite lack of wisdom here in
the United States of America, Mr. Speaker, we tax all productivity in
America.
In fact, the Federal Government has the first lien on all
productivity in America. And you can measure that by personal income
tax, corporate income tax, capital gains, taxes on interest income,
taxes on dividend income, taxes on your pension, taxes on your Social
Security. I am forgetting some of those taxes. How about your savings
and investment? Any way you can describe productivity, the Federal
Government is there to tax it; so we get less productivity because we
tax our productivity in America, and Democrats are poised to increase
the taxes on our productivity. What you tax you get less of.
If you are paying a 10 percent income tax and you are making $50,000
a year and they want to raise that tax up to let's just say 50 percent,
why in the world would you try to increase your revenue stream by 50
percent if your taxes are going to go up by the average of 50 percent
and 10 percent, say, roughly 30 percent on average? That will not
happen in the minds of the American people. That is why organized
economies never work. That is why Marxism has failed. That is why
socialized economies, managed economies, have always failed. Free
enterprise has been the thing that has provided incentives so that
people could produce all they could produce and they had an incentive
to be able to keep the max amount possible and still be able to provide
the services that are necessary to hold our sovereign state together.
Democrats want to raise taxes to balance the budget. Republicans want
to cut spending to balance the budget.
So last year I put together the formula that would get us to a
balanced budget. And if we just wanted to do it all at once, we need to
be looking at what that balanced budget was to do that all at once. And
we say, first of all, there is nondiscretionary spending. This is the
kind of spending that is already in the formula, that is, what it is
going to cost for Social Security, what it is going to cost for
Medicaid, what it is going to cost for Medicare. That is most of them,
those formulas that are automatic transfer payments that are

[[Page H103]]

already set up in the equation. That is nondiscretionary spending. Many
people think you can't affect that. That we shouldn't change it, maybe
adjust the rules in such a way that there would be fewer recipients or
fewer dollars of Medicaid, for example.
That needs to be addressed, and we have tried to address entitlement
spending. That is that nondiscretionary spending and the other phrase
for it: you are entitled to Social Security. You are entitled to
Medicare. You are entitled to Medicaid. But the rules of those
entitlements are in the code today, and those rules are something that
can be changed and adjusted. And I am not here to talk about how to do
that specifically, although I do have some ideas on how to approach
that, but we need to address entitlement spending.
That was the President's effort when he came out right after his
second inaugural address and traveled the countryside and spoke about
reforming Social Security. That operation will collapse at some point
unless we have the political courage to touch that third rail and fix
it. That is an entitlement.
Another one is Medicare. Being from the State that is last in the
Nation in Medicare receipts on a per capita basis, there is much that
must be done to help our people out who are on the short end of that
stick. But entitlement spending is a component of this. They want to
increase taxes rather than adjust entitlement spending. And the more
they can grow entitlement spending, the more they can take us into
socialism. And I don't want to have a managed economy. I want to have a
free enterprise market economy. That is what I came here to promote and
defend.
PAYGO for Democrats is raise taxes; PAYGO for Republicans is cut
spending. And last year for the 2007 fiscal year, which much of that is
still ahead of us, we could have left entitlements in place. We could
have left defense spending in place at the appropriated levels that we
have now and done nondefense discretionary spending. That is the rest
of the budget that I haven't mentioned.
Mr. Speaker, nondefense discretionary spending could have been
appropriated at the term of 95 percent of what it was for the 2006
fiscal year and we would have had a balanced budget.
Some of the Democrats have pledged to support a balanced budget that
does not include increasing taxes, that does include reduction of
spending in nondefense discretionary, that discretionary spending that
doesn't put our Nation at risk. Ninety-five percent of the 2006 fiscal
year, that doesn't mean an increase. That actually means a decrease of
5 percent in funding.
Well, if I have a family budget and all of a sudden I look around and
I think I am going into debt here and I guess I am not going to be in a
position to pass that debt along to my children, and we should not be,
then we need to be willing to live within our means. And whatever your
means are, most of us, if we had to look back and think we can have a
balanced family budget if we would just reduce our overall spending
down to 95 percent of what it was last year, we would willingly make
that adjustment, recognizing that we haven't been as responsible as we
should have been, and made the budget adjustment.
That is the kind of PAYGO we need to do in this Congress. We need a
balanced budget here, yes, Mr. Speaker, but not PAYGO with tax
increases. Pay as you go without tax increases. That is the Steve King
position, and I believe that will be a core position on the part of
many of the Republicans.

{time} 1545

Another way that we can adjust, address spending, is the earmark
reform. I have been in strong support of earmark reform. I have stepped
in and voted for 16 of the 17 that Congressman Flake brought to the
floor of this Congress in the 109th Congress, but I don't think that
really does the job. They are pieces that I agree with.
But I want to do some real reform here, Mr. Speaker, and I am
prepared to introduce a bill. It is a bill that I introduced last year.
The problem is this, we talk about giving the President a line item
veto, so that when there is spending that comes out, and maybe you want
to talk about the Bridge to Nowhere, that is one of those issues that
has been raised up as a earmark. Well, if the Bridge to Nowhere comes
up, or the Cowgirl Hall of Fame comes up or some of these other
earmarks that have been rather notorious in the media, we would ask the
President, under a presidential line item veto to veto that, take it
out of the budget, save that $273 million or whatever the number might
be for any of those items, or $1 million line item veto to maybe study
the nocturnal habits of the salamander, or whatever it might be. You
know some of those, Mr. Speaker, they have been out in the news.
These are earmarks that get slipped in, generally at the committee
level, as the bill is being drafted. It comes out here. No Member of
Congress has an opportunity to evaluate those earmarks, nor an
opportunity to bring an amendment that could strike those earmarks from
the bill. They arrive in a compromised fashion often as a conference
committee report that comes back in the negotiations between the House
and the Senate.
It comes to the floor. We have got to vote on it to move to keep the
government operating, and what happens is, there are line items in
there that have been earmarked by people who are inside that conference
committee, and these Members of Congress here, Democrats and
Republicans, are held accountable for voting ``yes'' or ``no'' on pork
projects that they didn't know was in the bill.
I would illustrate it this way, when I first came to this Congress,
there was a 3,600 page omnibus spending bill. I was only here about 3
days, or maybe even two, and that bill came to the floor of this
Congress, and 20 minutes after it was made available to my staff to
evaluate, the final vote went up here on the floor of the House of
Representatives.
That process meant that I was accountable for all of those earmarks
that were in that omnibus spending bill, those 3,600 pages. It is one
thing to try to evaluate a bill and read what's in it, it is not
possible within the time we had, but it is at least possible to
evaluate something that is in the bill.
Try and find, Mr. Speaker, something that is not in the bill. Try and
look through 3,600 pages to determine that there are omissions as well
as the issues, the earmarks that are in the bill.
This process does need to be more open, so I have drafted the CUT
Act, and it is cut unnecessary tab, and the tab references, if you have
a tab in an eating or drinking establishment, we want to cut this tab.
I believe this, that Members of Congress need to have a legitimate
opportunity to have their own line item veto. I think every Member of
this Congress should be able to offer an amendment to a bill that
strikes out the line items of their choice under an open rule.
So the CUT Act does this, Mr. Speaker, it allows once a quarter, four
times a year, for a bill to come to the floor under an open rule, and
it may just be a shell bill, it may not have a single line item strike
in it, but it allows under an open rule any and every Member to bring
forth their list of objectionable spending, objectionable earmarks, and
have them offer those earmark strikes.
All it would do is be a rescissions bill that reduces spending, and
the reduction in that spending goes to address the deficit. When the
deficit is addressed, then it goes back into the general fund, which
ultimately reduces our national debt, gives every Member of this
Congress an opportunity to have a line item veto of their own offered
to all Members of Congress.
So let us say there is a crazy appropriation out here that got
slipped into a bill. It will surely happen, Mr. Speaker, it will happen
hundreds and perhaps thousands of times. Let us just say that the
blogosphere out there is lit up, that people go to their Web pages, and
they scrutinize the work that we do. We need to give them a lot of
access to do that because they are the next watch dogs on this
Congress.
It used to be that the watch dogs sat in this gallery, and many do,
and I am glad they are here, but then as those watch dogs were also up
here in the press corps, and then the press wrote, and it got into the
newspapers, and sometimes, weeks later, had got out into the press in
the corners of the United States of America

[[Page H104]]

Well, now we are real-time. We are real-time, and it has been press
real-time for a long time, but it is even better now because we have an
Internet, we have a blogosphere. Let us just say that there is a
completely objectionable earmark that has been slipped in by a
committee chairman, or maybe an agreement with a ranking member, that
comes out of a conference committee, and it comes down to the floor of
this Congress.
Let us just pick the nocturnal habits of salamanders for $10 million,
to have a subject here that we can talk about and understand. Well, we
don't really need to understand the nocturnal habits of salamanders, at
least at that kind of experience to the taxpayers. But whatever the
motivation was that put it in there, we will not see it. We will not
have time to read the bill. But that bill then, once it passes a
conference report, goes to the President, and he will sign that bill,
because there are many things in there that we must have to keep the
government operating, and now we have got $10 million wasted on the
nocturnal habits of salamanders.
There is nothing Congress can do about it, we have done it. We have
been complicit, our rules have been complicit in allowing these things
to happen, not just with this earmark, Mr. Speaker, but hundreds and
even thousands of them. My CUT Act allows this, it allows a Member to
stand up on the first day of the quarter, hopefully it will be the
leader and the leaders, and they will say, I have a bill at the desk
made in order under the rule, and this bill is the CUT Act bill, then
that allows the shell bill to come up like an appropriations bill, only
this is a deappropriations bill, a rescissions bill, that every
amendment that strikes spending by line item is in order, and the
Members can flock over here to the Capitol, and being responsive to
their constituents, being responsive to their constituency groups,
being responsive to the bloggers out there, that have gone down through
this legislation, have read every single line item, have read the
details and the nuances of it, read every details and the nuances of
it; and then, these Members of Congress can come here, offer their
amendments to strike the $10 million that would be spent for the
nocturnal habits of salamanders, and you can add line after item after
line item, strike after strike to that.
When that happens, we will have an open process, a process that will
allow for the people of the United States of America to weigh in on our
appropriations that we are doing here.
That, Mr. Speaker, is a description of how the CUT Act works. A lot
of us would like to see the President with a legitimate and effective
line item veto. But I believe this Congress deserves a legitimate and
an effective line item veto. It is why I put a lot of research into
this, I have examined it, I have floated it out to the various
constituency groups. I have asked them for their input because I don't
want to have unintended consequences. I want to be able to provide a
process here that is good for the future of America, an open process, a
process that gives everybody in this Congress a line item veto, at
least to offer the amendment.
When that bill passes off this floor, and I don't envision just
eliminating $10 million on the nocturnal habits of salamanders, I
envision there to be 25 or 50 or 100 or 300 or more line items that are
accumulated into that bill that are struck. Because individually, they
will not be able to withstand the scrutiny of the majority of the
Members of Congress, because you, the people of America, and the
American people, I should say, actually, Mr. Speaker, will insist that
we be fiscally responsible and that we not waste money.
So let us just say that there are now 100 line items strikes, each
one of them representing an amendment to the CUT Act bill that is in
order, and that $10 million to the nocturnal habits of salamanders is
the first one, and that saves the taxpayers $10 million. We go right
down the list of those things that you know about, Mr. Speaker, those
things that are in the media, strike after strike after strike, and we
have now accumulated 100 different strikes, line item vetoes, and out
of those 100, there is in there, perhaps, let us pick a round number,
$1 billion. Now this bill, then, passes off this House of
Representatives, and it goes over to the Senate, where we ask them to
take it up.
We cannot write their rules, Mr. Speaker, but we can ask them to take
up a bill that we pass here, a rescissions package that has the full
support of the American people that cuts $1 billion out of our spending
that reduces our deficit and when, successfully, we are at the balanced
budget level, pays down the national debt.
That is the CUT Act, Mr. Speaker. That is a line item veto for
Members of Congress. That is Congressional accountability. That is the
kinds of things that we need to have an opportunity to debate here on
the floor of this Congress when we kick off this 110th. That is the
kind of amendment that has been shut out of this process, not just out
of the process of subcommittee and committee, but shut out of even
being presented at the Rules Committee so that there can be access to
the media for the debate, the deliberation, and so that there will be
people that can be held accountable for their vote when they decide
they don't want this kind of an open process.
I submit that there is no desire for this open process on the part of
the majority. I believe that I need to continue to beat this drum, and
I will.
To package the PAYGO argument up and move on to the next component of
this, PAYGO, for Republicans is, control and constrain spending to
achieve a balanced you budget, no new taxes, less spending, balanced
budget, fiscally responsible, PAYGO for Democrats is buy what you need
to, spend what you need to pass by your Members, raise taxes, so that
you can say that you balanced the budget.
That will work until you kill the goose that lays the golden egg,
what you tax you will get less of. We will get less tax gas production
in America as taxes increase. That means then that there will be less
revenue coming in, coming off of the production in America, and
eventually this economy will be constrained It will shrink, and we will
have, we will finally kill the goose that lays the golden egg. We will
have to come back around, reduce tax again, stimulate again, do what we
did in the aftermath of September 11 to reduce tax, do it in the Reagan
way, do it in the John F. Kennedy way, the Reagan way, the George W.
Bush way, those things, those tax reductions have always increased and
stimulated our economy. That doesn't seem to be something that is
within the scope of understanding on the other side, because there is a
different agenda. It is a socialization agenda.

So, that is the description of PAYGO, Mr. Speaker. Now, the next
component that I want to talk about within this rules package is the
idea of ethics reform. Ethics reform, I agree, we needed to reform some
ethics. We didn't do enough in the 109th Congress to reform ethics. We
did things that were, I thought, window dressing.
My view on ethics is that, I mentioned the bloggers a little bit
earlier. We need to give the American people sunlight. They have got to
have sunlight on this process. That means that we should not have rules
that are written and reports that are written in such a way that the
information is difficult to access, or difficult to understand, or
impossible to legitimately analyze and draw real black and white
conclusions.
But in truth, that is the system that we have today, and it is the
system that has been improved some over the years, but it has got a
ways to go. The system that I would submit is under a package that I
have offered called the Sunlight bill. That means that I want a light
on the things that we do.
I think that we live in a fishbowl anyway, all 435 of us, we are
scrutinized by the press whenever we show up in public, we are
recognized, and that is great, it is flattering. It is a tremendous
honor to be able to represent the people here in the United States
House of Representatives. The trade-off for that is you don't get a lot
of privacy. The requirement for that is that you report your finances,
for example, and that we report our campaign finances, as well as our
personal finances, and we report our financial dealings. That includes
real estate transactions, purchases.
But we have a system that is not open. We have a system that is not
accessible. We have a system that is not really sortable, and it is
vague enough

[[Page H105]]

that you can't draw clear conclusions from that reporting system that
we have. I have offered the Sunlight Act to fix all of that and to make
it more, and I am going to say far more, accessible to the American
people.
First and the easiest one to deal with is the Federal Election
Commission reporting. Now, all of us have to go out and raise money in
order to get elected to this Congress. Money is a necessity for the
people to express their freedom of speech. If we don't raise the money,
eventually someone will spend a lot of money. No matter what our level
of integrity is, you cannot sustain a seat in the House of
Representatives if you are not willing to go out and raise some money
and be able to advertise on a political campaign.
It is unfortunate. I don't know that it was envisioned by our
Founding Fathers, but it is necessary. Mr. Speaker, if we concede the
point that money has to be raised by Members of Congress, and it does,
then we also need to discuss, and I believe, concede the point that we
should have full reporting of our campaign finances, and we do have a
law that requires full reporting, and I don't want to imply that that
doesn't exist, it is just that the reporting isn't necessarily in real-
time.

{time} 1600

It isn't necessarily in a format that is accessible. So if it is not
accessible, easily accessible, then it is not as full as the reporting
should be. The Sunlight Act asks this, that the Federal Election
Commission reporting, our campaign finances, be reported in real-time.
And it sets up some parameters on how much time you have if you receive
some revenue from an individual or from a PAC, the timing of that is a
little looser until you get down to the last 30 days of a campaign. In
the last 30 days the Sunlight Act requires that you file those campaign
contributions every 24 hours, every single day, the last 30 days, you
file those campaign revenues. Somebody hands you a check, that gets
deposited, but it gets reported the same business day. That is not too
much to ask when you have that kind of flurry going on. We have to do a
lot of things on a real-time basis, and that is one of them.
But that is only, but to report that, to report it to the FEC and
have the FEC bring that report out in their own good time, in a time
that it is not possible for the public to understand where the monies
come from, and we agree, I believe, that utilization of funds to
advance a candidacy or to advance a cause are political speech, but
free speech.
So if funds are speech, and the reporting of those funds is an open
process, it needs to be in a timely fashion. So say if there were, what
if there happened to be an entity out there that was one who was
rejected by Democrats and Republicans but put a lot of money in a
campaign and that didn't show up until after the election, Madam
Speaker. But the public, had they known that, might have voted for the
candidate who didn't receive those funds. That is my argument as to why
we need to have real-time reporting.
But I want to take this back to the blogosphere. We have people out
there that have their blogs and they are watching the mainstream news
media. They are interacting with other blogs. They have their
information conduits that come from whatever their access points are.
Maybe they happen to be in politics, or maybe they are just a pundit
that is well wired and well connected. And they might see information
that the rest of the country doesn't see. That is how news is gathered.
So the bloggers are gathering the news and they are writing their
opinions and sometimes they are taking information and then sorting it
in a fashion that people can use it and they can understand it.
I submit that we should submit ourselves, Madam Speaker, to the
scrutiny of the blogosphere; that we should have FEC reporting,
campaign finance reporting in real-time in a searchable, sortable,
downloadable format that will allow anyone out there in America that
has access to a computer or to the Internet to go click on that
information, if they want to know where Steve King's revenue stream
came from, download that into a database that you can sort.
If you want to sort it alphabetically, sort it alphabetically. If you
want to sort it by dollars, biggest contribution down to smallest, do
that. If you want to sort it by date, do that. If you want to sort it
by name, do that. But we should put that information out to the public
so that you can scrutinize, in the public, where our campaign funds
come from, so that you can evaluate sometimes the positions that we
take. Because if they can be indexed to the influence of money, you
need to hold us accountable. We owe you our best judgment.
We don't owe the public a vote that is a bought vote. And the public
needs to have an opportunity to identify if there is someone who is
influenced too much by money, and it needs to happen in real-time. It
needs to happen every single day 30 days prior to an election. That is
part of the Sunlight Act, to shed light on our Federal Election
Commission reporting, real-time, Internet accessible, downloadable,
searchable, sortable database so that the American public has access.
Now, Madam Speaker, that would take care of the reporting on our FEC
documents. Essential open process, put me in the fish bowl, make it
real-time. I am already in the fish bowl. Let's be honest and open
about it and we will get these adjustments made, and they will be made
by the people out there in the country, and that is where it should be.
The next part of this that needs reform even more, Madam Speaker, is
our personal financial reporting from an ethics perspective. And I will
reiterate that when a Member of Congress files a financial disclosure
form and files it under the ethics rules that are there, they sign that
document and pledge that it is true and accurate and done so within the
rules and the guidelines of ethics. And to violate that, to willfully
violate that and falsely report is a felony. It is a felony. It is
worse to report wrong data on your ethics than it is to come into the
United States illegally. It is a felony to report inaccurate
information willfully on our financial disclosure forms.
But we have ranges of financial reporting, ranges that, not all of
them committed to memory, and I didn't come down here prepared to go
through them component by component. But I can just give some examples
off the top of my head, Madam Speaker. And it works kind of this way.
If you have liabilities, I am speaking again in general terms, not to
the specific numbers within their financial reporting. If you have
liabilities, perhaps between zero and $100,000, you put a little X in
that column on this little kind of little spread sheet but it is a
paper spread sheet. So you put an X in there and say, well, I owe
somewhere between zero and $100,000. Or maybe you say I have no
liabilities. And if you have assets that might be within $250,000 and
$750,000, you put a little X in that box.
Well, then if you want to analyze what somebody is worth, you might
have $100,000 worth of debt and they might have no more than $250,000
worth of assets, but you can't determine if they have no liability or
$100,000 worth of liability and you can't determine whether they have
$250,000 worth of assets or $750,000 worth of assets. And so as people
go up the line in their reporting, the difference, the dollars in
disparity get greater and greater and greater to the extent that, Madam
Speaker, we have a Member seated in this Congress who reported low six
digits in net worth assets 5 years earlier, and then 5 years later,
showed up with somewhere between $6.4 million and $25 million in net
worth. How does a person make $6 million in assets or, excuse me, in
net worth value over a period of 5 years on the salary of a Member of
Congress? How could a person expand that from $6.4 million on up to $25
million. Those questions cannot be legitimately answered without the
Department of Justice and search warrants and Ryder trucks and filing
cabinets loaded up to take into the investigation and computers being
picked up and brought in and a massive financial analysis to figure out
what really was going on. Were there taxpayer dollars that were pouring
into this? Was there a Member of Congress that was enriching himself at
the expense of the taxpayers? That is why we have the reporting of our
finances.
But the ranges that are in there don't allow for the public to see
that early enough to be able to call that question, get it into the
media and bring that

[[Page H106]]

Member into bay so that it doesn't get completely out of hand. This
one, from my viewpoint, looks like it is completely out of hand, and I
think it is going to take more tha months yet for Justice to be able to
do complete scrutiny of this and find out what really happened.

But if that Member that I am referencing, and if every Member, and I
am speaking about every Member in this Congress, were required to put
down exactly the dollar amount of their liabilities and exactly the
dollar amounts of their assets so that you could look at their net
worth, and understand that there is an amount of appreciation that
might come with real estate investment. There might be an amount of
appreciation that comes with stock options and investments. That needs
to be reported. That should be traceable and trackable, and we should
be required to put down exact dollar amounts, not ranges. Not a range
of $5 to $25 million. If I were in that range, it is a lot of
difference between being worth $5 million and $25 million. Where did
the money come from is the reason that we have to report our finances.
The American people, Madam Speaker, do not have access to that
information. That allows unethical Members of Congress to hide the
worth that they may have been gathering in a fashion that is less than
ethical. I believe we need to have sunlight on all of the financial
proceedings, not just our Federal Election Commission reporting, not
just our campaign side, but on our personal side as we are required
today, but not in a range, not in a range of $5 to $25 million, not in
a range of zero to $100 now, or $250,000 to $750,000, but in a range
that is to the nearest dollar.
Exact reporting, and, Madam Speaker, do so in real-time. Do so in a
downloadable, searchable, sortable database format, so that the
bloggers out there, or anyone who has access to the Internet, be it a
public library or their laptop on the bus or whether it is their hard-
wired computer that sits in their basement, can sit down and say, I
think I have been watching somebody here that is my Member of Congress.
I don't know how they are doing so well. I am hearing rumors out here.
Let's see what's really happened and go look and see, if we are going
to be an open process, let's be an open process. Let's put sunlight on
everything that we do in this Congress, Madam Speaker.
Let's put real-time reporting, downloadable, searchable, sortable
formats on our FEC reporting for our campaign funds. Let's do that same
thing for our personal finances. Let's open this up to the American
people. Let them scrutinize our finances and the movement of our
finances so that if some Member can be in here in the year 2000 with a
net worth of perhaps $100,000, and in the year 2005 have a net worth of
$6.4 million, or more, the American public can ask the question, why.
Why did that take that kind of jump? It is not something that can be
analyzed or justified unless there are special conditions. Those
conditions, those circumstances have not been addressed at this point.
I believe we need sunlight on everything that we do, sunlight on our
campaign stream, sunlight on our personal finances.
And while we are shedding light on what is going on here in the
Chamber, Madam Speaker, it is a bit of a surprise to many of us who
come into this Congress to walk down here on the floor of Congress and
hear a debate going on and it doesn't seem to be fitting with the
debate we were watching on C-SPAN on the television in our office in
the 5-minute walk over here. Things have changed. And you can walk on
the floor of this Congress and thinking you are coming to weigh in on
the debate of H. Res. 5 and find out you are debating H.R. 3495.
Now, neither one of those bills has a name in my mind. But we have
names for these bills too that help describe what it is we are
debating. And we are sitting in this technological era, where I have
just called for real-time access for financial reporting of the Members
of Congress, but the people that are sitting in the gallery here in
this House of Representatives, Madam Speaker, unless they have got some
kind of ear piece in them or some kind of a BlackBerry that they are
allowed to have and I don't know that they are, that can tell them what
is going on here on the floor of Congress they will not know when they
walk in this Chamber what this debate is all about.
They will not know the bill that is before us. They will not know the
amendment we are discussing. They will not know why some of the
rhetoric doesn't match the language of the bill and the intent of the
subject we are talking about. They can't know, Madam Speaker, because
there isn't a single sign around this Chamber that tells the people
that come into the gallery to witness the people's House what it is we
are actually talking about. And if a Member of Congress walks in and
they have been 1 minute or 5 minutes or 10 minutes out of the loop in
their walk from their office and their watching their C-SPAN camera to
come over here, the bill may have changed or a bill may have been
temporarily deferred. It might be a different one that is taken up. And
in that transfer of that subject matter, they can't know unless they
walk over here and interrupt the person or the staff and ask what are
we discussing, what are we debating. What is happening. I thought I
came over here to talk on H.R. 6, and instead I am over here on H.R.
3094.
The reason that we don't know that is because we don't use the
simplest of technology, a technology that at least when we vote puts
the number of the bill up here on either end of the Chamber,
illuminates it on the wooden panels so that you can see the vote that
comes up. There is no technological reason, there is no procedural
reason why we can't just ask for the sunlight bill on finances, why we
can't just shine the light up on the wall, a subject matter that is
being debated, the number of the bill that is being debated and the
name and perhaps the number of the amendment that is also under
discussion at the moment. That would allow anyone who comes in off the
street to witness the debate and deliberation of the people's House to
immediately sit down and understand what the debate is all about and
understand what the amendment is and who has got the amendment up, and
they will figure out then instantly who is the proponent, who is the
opponent, and the process becomes more open.
The simplest thing that should be nonpartisan, this very simple idea
is not just my idea but an idea that is supported and endorsed by many.
I would ask if we could submit this idea to the freshmen that have come
in. Those who have come out of State legislatures understand that the
technology is there and has been there for years in State legislatures.
When you walk into the chamber of a State House or a State Senate
almost anywhere in the country, the subject of the bill is illuminated
on the wall, the bill number is illuminated on the wall, the name of
the person offering the amendment and the number of the amendment is
offered on the wall with a short description of the bill, the
amendment, so that the public can easily see what is going on, so that
the members who are elected can walk in the room and instantaneously
understand the process that they have walked into and be able to pick
up immediately and engage in the process.

{time} 1615

That is part of the light that needs to be shined on this process,
Madam Speaker. And I raise this issue up with this particular
discussion because it happens to be something that is almost without
cost. It should be absolutely bipartisan. In fact, it should be
nonpartisan in its nature. Everyone who serves here should be
interested in being able to have easy access to the process and the
procedure we happen to be under. And it is something that allows the
people in the gallery to understand what is happening.
Right now, it could have ``Special Order by King'' on there. They
could have a little clock on there to tell me how much time I have left
before the gavel drops and my time has run and expired.
But at this point I would ask the Speaker how much time I have
remaining.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. DeGette). The gentleman has 30 seconds.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Oh, boy. The gentleman will then immediately
conclude my discussion, and I really appreciate that I have been able
to bring it to that conclusion in exactly the 60 minutes that have been
allowed. I appreciate

[[Page H107]]

also the privilege in speaking to you, Madam Speaker.

____________________