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[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 123 (Thursday, September 13, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H5956-H5969]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                              {time}  1540
                NATIONAL SECURITY AND JOB PROTECTION ACT

  Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 778, I call up

[[Page H5957]]

the bill (H.R. 6365) to amend the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit 
Control Act of 1985 to replace the sequester established by the Budget 
Control Act of 2011, and ask for its immediate consideration in the 
House.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 778, the bill 
is considered read.
  The text of the bill is as follows:

                               H.R. 6365

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``National Security and Job 
     Protection Act''.

     SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

       Congress finds the following:
       (1) Current law requires that there be across-the-board 
     cuts, known as a ``sequester'', imposed on January 2, 2013. 
     The sequester will result in a 10 percent reduction in non-
     military personnel programs of the Department of Defense and 
     an 8 percent reduction in certain domestic programs, such as 
     the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and border security.
       (2) Intended as a mechanism to force action, there is 
     bipartisan agreement that the sequester going into place 
     would undercut key responsibilities of the Federal 
     Government.
       (3) As the Administration stated in its fiscal year 2013 
     budget request, ``[Sequestration] would lead to significant 
     cuts to critical domestic programs such as education and 
     research and cuts to defense programs that could undermine 
     our national security. . . . [C]uts of this magnitude done in 
     an across-the-board fashion would be devastating both to 
     defense and non-defense programs.'' (The Budget of the United 
     States Government, Fiscal Year 2013, p. 24, February 13, 
     2012).
       (4) On March 29, 2012, The House of Representatives passed 
     H. Con. Res. 112, the budget resolution for fiscal year 2013, 
     which includes reconciliation instructions directing House 
     Committees to craft legislation that would achieve the 
     savings required to replace the sequestration called for in 
     fiscal year 2013, as established by the Budget Control Act of 
     2011.
       (5) On May 10, 2012, the House of Representatives passed 
     H.R. 5652, the Sequestration Replacement Reconciliation Act 
     of 2012, which would replace the $98 billion sequestration of 
     discretionary spending called for in 2013, as established by 
     the Budget Control Act of 2011, by making changes in law to 
     reduce direct spending by $310 billion through fiscal year 
     2022.
       (6) An analysis of the impact of the sequestration prepared 
     for the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee found 
     that if left in place, sequestration would cut the military 
     to its smallest size since before the Second World War, all 
     while we are still a nation at war in Afghanistan, facing 
     increased threats from Iran and North Korea, unrest in the 
     Middle East, and a rising China.
       (7) Major consequences identified by the House Armed 
     Services Committee include the following:
       (A) 200,000 soldiers and Marines separated from service, 
     bringing our force well below our pre-9/11 levels.
       (B) Ability to respond to contingencies in North Korea or 
     Iran at jeopardy.
       (C) The smallest ground force since 1940.
       (D) A fleet of fewer than 230 ships, the smallest level 
     since 1915.
       (E) The smallest tactical fighter force in the history of 
     the Air Force.
       (F) Our nuclear triad that has kept the U.S. and 30 of our 
     allies safe for decades will be in jeopardy.
       (G) Reductions of 20 percent in defense civilian personnel.
       (H) Two BRAC rounds of base closings. (House Armed Services 
     Committee memo entitled ``Assessment of Impacts of Budget 
     Cuts'', September 22, 2011).
       (8) Secretary Panetta and the professional military 
     leadership have also looked at the impact of sequestration 
     and reached similar conclusions.
       (9) Secretary Panetta stated, ``If the maximum 
     sequestration is triggered, the total cut will rise to about 
     $1 trillion compared with the FY 2012 plan. The impacts of 
     these cuts would be devastating for the Department. . . 
     Facing such large reductions, we would have to reduce the 
     size of the military sharply. Rough estimates suggest after 
     ten years of these cuts, we would have the smallest ground 
     force since 1940, the smallest number of ships since 1915, 
     and the smallest Air Force in its history.'' (Secretary 
     Panetta, Letter to Senator John McCain, November 14, 2011).
       (10) General Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
     Staff, stated, ``[S]equestration leaves me three places to go 
     to find the additional money: operations, maintenance, and 
     training. That's the definition of a hollow force.''.
       (11) The individual branch service chiefs echoed General 
     Dempsey:
       (A) ``Cuts of this magnitude would be catastrophic to the 
     military. . .My assessment is that the nation would incur an 
     unacceptable level of strategic and operational risk.'' -
     General Ray T. Odierno, Chief Of Staff, United States Army.
       (B) ``A severe and irreversible impact on the Navy's 
     future'' -Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, Chief of Naval 
     Operations.
       (C) ``A Marine Corps below the end strength that's 
     necessary to support even one major contingency,'' -General 
     James F. Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps.
       (D) ``Even the most thoroughly deliberated strategy may not 
     be able to overcome dire consequences,'' -General Norton A. 
     Schwartz, Chief of Staff, United States Air Force (Testimony 
     of Service Chief before House Armed Services Committee, 
     November 2, 2011).
       (12) According to an analysis by the House Appropriations 
     Committee, the sequester will also have a significant impact 
     on non-defense discretionary programs, including the 
     following:
       (A) Automatically reducing Head Start by $650 million, 
     resulting in 75,000 fewer slots for children in the program.
       (B) Automatically reducing the National Institutes of 
     Health (NIH) by $2.4 billion, an amount equal to nearly half 
     of total NIH spending on cancer this year.
       (C) A reduction of approximately 1,870 Border Patrol Agents 
     (a reduction of nearly 9 percent of the total number of 
     agents).
       (13) Beyond the negative impacts sequestration will have on 
     defense readiness, it will also undermine the industrial base 
     needed to equip our armed forces with the weapons and 
     technology they need to complete their mission. A study 
     released by the National Association of Manufacturers 
     suggests that 1.1 million workers in the supply chain could 
     be adversely affected, including 3.4 percent of workers in 
     the aerospace industry, 3.3 percent of the workforce in the 
     shipbuilding industry and 10 percent of the workers in the 
     search and navigation equipment industry.

     SEC. 3. CONDITIONAL REPLACEMENT FOR FY 2013 SEQUESTER.

       (a) Contingent Effective Date.--This section and the 
     amendments made by it shall take effect upon the enactment 
     of--
       (1) the Act contemplated in section 201 of H. Con. Res. 112 
     (112th Congress) that achieves at least the deficit reduction 
     called for in such section for such periods; or
       (2) similar legislation that achieves outlay reductions 
     within five years after the date of enactment that equal or 
     exceed the outlay reductions flowing from the budget 
     authority reductions mandated by sections 251A(7)(A) and 
     251A(8) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control 
     Act of 1985, as in force immediately before the date of 
     enactment of this Act, as it applies to direct spending in 
     the defense function for fiscal year 2013 combined with the 
     outlay reductions flowing from the amendment to section 
     251A(7)(A)(i) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit 
     Control Act of 1985 made by subsection (c) of this section.
       (b) Revised 2013 Discretionary Spending Limit.--Paragraph 
     (2) of section 251(c) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency 
     Deficit Control Act of 1985 is amended to read as follows:
       ``(2) with respect to fiscal year 2013, for the 
     discretionary category, $1,047,000,000,000 in new budget 
     authority;''.
       (c) Discretionary Savings.--Section 251A(7)(A) of the 
     Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 is 
     amended to read as follows:
       ``(A) Fiscal year 2013.--
       ``(i) Fiscal year 2013 adjustment.--On January 2, 2013, the 
     discretionary category set forth in section 251(c)(2) shall 
     be decreased by $19,104,000,000 in budget authority.
       ``(ii) Enforcement of discretionary spending caps.--OMB 
     shall issue a supplemental report consistent with the 
     requirements set forth in section 254(f)(2) for fiscal year 
     2013 using the procedures set forth in section 253(f) on 
     April 15, 2013, to eliminate any discretionary spending 
     breach of the spending limit set forth in section 251(c)(2) 
     as adjusted by clause (i), and the President shall issue an 
     order to eliminate the breach, if any, identified in such 
     report.''.
       (d) Elimination and Conditional Replacement of the Fiscal 
     Year 2013 Sequestration for Direct Spending.--
       (1) Elimination.--Any sequestration order issued by the 
     President under the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit 
     Control Act of 1985 to carry out reductions to direct 
     spending for the defense function (050) for fiscal year 2013 
     pursuant to section 251A of such Act shall have no force or 
     effect.
       (2) Conditional replacement.--To the extent that 
     legislation enacted pursuant to section 3(a)(2) achieves 
     outlay reductions that exceed the outlay reductions flowing 
     from the budget authority reductions required in section 
     251A(8) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control 
     Act of 1985, as in force immediately before the date of 
     enactment of this Act, the direct spending reductions for the 
     nonsecurity category for fiscal year 2013 otherwise required 
     to be ordered pursuant to such section shall be reduced by 
     that amount, and Congress so designates for such purpose.

     SEC. 4. PRESIDENTIAL SUBMISSION.

       Not later than October 15, 2012, the President shall 
     transmit to Congress a legislative proposal that meets the 
     requirements of section 3(a)(2) of this Act.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett) 
and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) each will control 30 
minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey.

[[Page H5958]]

                             General Leave

  Mr. GARRETT. I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 
legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and 
include extraneous material on H.R. 6365.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from New Jersey?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. GARRETT. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to 
myself.
  Mr. Speaker, under current law, there will be a $110 billion across-
the-board cut known as sequester. It will be imposed in this country on 
January 2, 2013, resulting in a 10 percent reduction in the Department 
of Defense programs and an 8 percent reduction in certain domestic 
programs as well.
  In May of this year, the House passed a bill to deal with this. That 
was H.R. 5652, the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act. What this 
legislation would do is it would replace that sequester of 2013 with 
commonsense spending cuts and reforms. Unfortunately, we have seen a 
lack of leadership both over in the Senate and in the White House. The 
Senate has failed to act on this legislation--the Senate, where all 
good bills go to die, so too with this, or any sequester replacement 
bill. Today the House will once again try to responsibly fix the 
sequester.
  The National Security and Job Protection Act would ensure our 
national security, but at the same time we do that, we'll cut spending. 
The National Security and Job Protection Act would do two things 
quickly. First, it would turn off the sequester of Congress, enacting 
the House-passed reconciliation bill or similar legislation that 
achieves equal levels of deficit reduction. Secondly, the National 
Security and Job Protection Act would require the President of the 
United States to submit to Congress a legislative proposal to replace 
the sequester with an alternative no later than October 15 of this 
year.
  Up until this point, we have seen absolutely no leadership, we have 
seen no plan from the President to fix this sequester problem, but yet 
there is strong bipartisan agreement that the sequester, as it is right 
now, is bad policy and should be re-prioritized. Once again, the 
President has failed to lead in this area, failed to put forward a 
credible response, failed to put forward a legislative proposal, and 
the Senate has failed as well. The result is that in less than 100 days 
we will see reductions that our own Secretary Panetta says will hollow 
out our Armed Forces and make totally arbitrary reductions in other 
spending programs.
  Not only has the President failed to lead in this area, he has failed 
to put forward a plan. The President has also failed--and this is 
important--to submit to Congress a report, as law requires him to do 
so, detailing specifically how this administration would implement the 
sequester.
  Mr. Speaker, after months, literally months, of stonewalling Congress 
on how this administration would implement the sequester, Congress now 
comes to the floor because we are forced to pass legislation requiring 
the President to submit a detailed sequester implementation program. 
When that legislation became law, as we said, the President's response 
has been no response. Rather than him doing his homework, the President 
has simply taken a pass on this matter and instead has provided 
Congress with nothing, and he is not even meeting the requirements of 
the law. It is an example, I think, to use the President's own word, of 
an ``incomplete'' by this President on his report card.
  That the President lacks leadership is simply stunning to this Member 
and to the American people as well. As I say, the Senate is no better 
for failing to respond in this matter. The Senate refuses to take up 
any bill or to replace the sequester whatsoever.
  Today, Mr. Speaker, we again come here passing legislation to try to 
solve this problem, to fix the sequester, to make sure that these 
draconian cuts do not go in place now. We're not saying that it has to 
be the House-passed bill that passed. We're also asking the President 
to put forward his own legislative proposal, for the Senate to act 
before the legislation takes effect.
  Americans are looking for leadership, and they're getting it from the 
House of Representatives today.
  With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, this is really quite a charade we're engaged in here 
today on the floor of the House of Representatives. Let's just flash 
back a year ago to how we got to this spot.
  At that time, our Republican colleagues threatened that the United 
States would default on its full faith and credit, that we wouldn't pay 
the bills that we already incurred, that this Congress had already 
voted for, and threatened to tank the economy unless we passed their 
version of the budget, the Ryan budget, the budget that came out of the 
House Budget Committee. In order to prevent the United States from 
defaulting, everybody got together--the House, the Senate, and the 
President--and they passed the Budget Control Act. To hear our 
Republican colleagues today, you'd think they had nothing to do with 
the Budget Control Act. We heard the chairman of the Budget Committee, 
Mr. Ryan, on television the other day not wanting to associate himself 
with that.

                              {time}  1550

  The reality is he voted for it. The Speaker of the House said he got 
98 percent of what he wanted. Here's the Speaker of the House after we 
passed the Budget Control Act:

       I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I'm pretty happy.

  Now we are faced with the consequences of the Budget Control Act. 
What did it do? Two things: It cut spending, discretionary spending 
over 10 years by a trillion dollars by putting in spending caps, and it 
created a sequester process.
  There's agreement in this House that allowing the meat-ax sequester 
agreements to take place would really be a stupid thing to do. There's 
agreement on that.
  The issue is: How do we replace that? How do we achieve a similar 
amount of deficit reduction to replace that sequester?
  We hear our Republican colleagues say there is no leadership from the 
President; they haven't heard any alternatives. That's just not true.
  There are lots of alternatives that have been put on the table. They 
just don't like the alternatives. And do you know why? Because the 
Democratic alternatives to the sequester, and the one put forward by 
the President, takes the same balanced approach that's been recommended 
by bipartisan commissions.
  They say that in order to tackle our deficit we should make 
additional cuts. But we should also eliminate a lot of special interest 
tax breaks for Big Oil companies. We should ask the very wealthy to go 
back to paying a little bit more in taxes, about what they were paying 
when President Clinton was President, the last time we balanced our 
budget.
  The President has submitted that. In fact, a year ago the President 
sent down a plan right here on how we could take a balanced approach to 
deficit reduction.
  Just yesterday in the Rules Committee, on behalf of my Democratic 
colleagues, we proposed a substitute that would totally have replaced 
the sequester, again through a mix of cuts, cutting some of the 
excessive agriculture subsidies, but also raising revenue by cutting 
some of the big breaks for Big Oil companies and asking the wealthiest 
to chip in a little bit more.
  Our Republican colleagues who say they want a big open debate on the 
floor here, they denied us even a vote on that amendment. We're not 
going to get to vote today on that amendment. Instead, we're voting on 
this resolution that, even if we pass it and the Senate passes it and 
the President would sign it, it would do nothing about the sequester--
nothing. That's why I said this is a charade.
  We had an option to bring to the floor of this House a real 
substitute proposal that, if we passed it, it would have removed the 
sequester, made sure that there are no cuts to defense and nondefense 
under the sequester. We don't get to vote on that today. Instead, we're 
voting on something that is totally meaningless.
  They say they're going to ask the President to submit a report to the

[[Page H5959]]

Congress. He's already done it. He did it a year ago. They just don't 
like it because it takes a balanced approach, because it does ask Big 
Oil companies to give up some of their big taxpayer subsidies.
  So, Mr. Speaker, let's end the charade. The moment our Republican 
colleagues come to the conclusion that it's more important to protect 
defense spending than it is to protect special interest tax breaks for 
Big Oil companies, we can move on and deal with this in a balanced way, 
the same way bipartisan commissions have recommended.
  I reserve the balance of my time.

                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would remind all Members that it 
is inappropriate to traffic the well while a Member is speaking.
  Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the sponsor of the 
legislation before us, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. West), who 
recognizes that while the President may have presented a plan to this 
Congress, that bill went down 414-0, and to the Senate 97-0.
  Mr. WEST. I want to thank my colleague for allowing me to come here.
  This is not a charade. I served 22 years in the United States 
military, and I was part of a reduction in force coming out of Desert 
Shield/Desert Storm, and I know what these types of cuts will do to the 
military. Also, this is what these types of cuts will do to non-defense 
discretionary.

       The sequestration will put at risk all that we have 
     accomplished in education and weaken programs that help 
     children, serve young families, send young people and adults 
     to college and make the middle class American Dream possible.

  Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.
  Secretary of Defense:

       This mechanism of sequestration will force defense cuts 
     that, in my view, would do catastrophic damage to our 
     military and the ability to be able to be protect our 
     country.

  I think right now, Mr. Speaker, it's very simple. George Santayana 
had a quote back in the 1920s and said:

       Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat 
     it.

  At the end of World War I, we cut our military, then came World War 
II. At the end of World War II, we cut our military, then came the 
Korean War. At the end of the Korean War, we, of course, did the exact 
same thing, and, of course, we had to chase communism all over the 
world, Vietnam.
  As I spoke about earlier, I participated in the RIF after Desert 
Shield/Desert Storm. This sequestration does one simple thing: It takes 
the Army and Marine Corps down to 1940s levels.
  It puts 200,000 of our men and women in uniform on the streets.
  It makes our United States Navy go to 1915 levels. Currently, we have 
a naval force of 283 warships. It goes down to 230.
  It takes our Air Force down to the smallest Air Force we have had in 
modern history, when we created the United States Air Force. It cuts 
nontactical fighter squadrons.
  If you talk to any of our service chiefs, if you listen to the 
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who talks about hollowing out this force, 
we should not be doing this at a time when we all see what is happening 
in the world right now, when the United States of America has had a 
sovereign piece of its territory attacked. We have had an Ambassador 
that has lost his life. The message that we are going to send is that 
we are going to do nothing?
  This legislation says, very simply, we have passed a plan out of the 
House. The Senate, if you don't like our plan, come up with your own 
plan. Mr. President, you are the Commander in Chief. Come up with a 
plan.
  One of the things that you learn as a young officer, that if you ever 
get into a firefight, you are ever in an ambush, to do nothing means 
that people lose their lives. I will not stand here and do nothing at 
this time because those are my friends still in uniform; those are my 
relatives that are still in uniform.
  Now, I did not have the ability to be selected to be on the 
supercommittee--maybe because I have only been here as a freshman--but 
that does not mean that I will not be an adult and present a solution 
that says, very simply, If you don't like what we passed in the House, 
then do something. Come up with a plan.
  We just heard the debate about the continuing resolution, a 
continuing resolution we have been forced into because we have a Senate 
that has not passed a budget in close to 3 years. We have a Senate that 
has not taken up any appropriations bills.
  Well, I will tell you--and I will reach out to my colleagues from the 
other side--at least here in the House we have done something. But we 
have been forced into a position with this sequestration to say we have 
got to come up with a solution. The supercommittee did not meet its 
enacted mandate.
  Does that mean we're going to stop? Does that mean that we're going 
to look at the men and women in uniform and say we will allow this to 
happen? Did that mean that we're going to look at other people that are 
affected by these non-defense discretionary cuts?
  All I'm saying is, with this piece of legislation, those who have 
come up with a plan, tell us what you want so that we do not have this 
occur. Think about the second- and third-order effects that will come 
to this.
  We are talking about the people that will be lost in uniform.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. WEST. No, I will not yield, so please--thank you.
  We're talking about the Department of Defense civilian positions that 
would be lost. We're talking about the defense industrial base, the 
technology that is going to develop the next generation of weapons 
systems for our men and women that will be lost. We're talking about a 
critical decision for the way ahead for the United States of America.
  And I understand what has been said about this balanced approach that 
the President sent over in his fiscal year 2013 budget. They had $1.9 
trillion of new taxes, but yet it never balances at any time. If it was 
such a good plan, such a good budget, no one here took it up. That's my 
concern.
  This is a last chance for us to be the adults, to do something, to 
stave off this sequestration. The House voted. The House sent a piece 
of legislation out in May. The House voted on the Sequestration 
Transparency Act. We still have not gotten anything.
  The Director of the OMB, Mr. Jeffrey Zients, testified before the 
Armed Services Committee he has no plan. All he did was sit there and 
say that, if you guys would stop with these tax cuts not being brought 
up on the rich, then this would not happen.
  What is a fair share when the top 1 percent pays close to 37 percent 
of taxes? That's not the debate, Mr. Speaker. The debate is what we're 
going to do about this sequestration.

                              {time}  1600

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  We've heard before that there was this vote on the President's plan 
and that it got no votes. We had a vote on a fake President's plan. 
When we actually had to vote on the Democratic alternative, which the 
White House made clear was closer to their plan than the one that was 
put up for a fake vote, it got a huge vote from our Democratic 
colleagues.
  I would just ask Mr. West to read his own amendment. Because if you 
read the bill, it's pretty clear if we were to pass it and the Senate 
was to pass it and the President would sign it, it doesn't make the 
sequester go away. No, it doesn't make the sequester go away. It calls 
for action. In fact, it says the President should submit a plan within 
a certain period of time. It's right here in your bill: Presidential 
submission not later than October 15, 2012. The President shall 
transmit to the Congress a legislative proposal.
  Mr. WEST. If the gentleman will yield, it says that it would be 
replaced. If you come up with a plan, it will be replaced.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Exactly. And reclaiming my time, that's exactly 
right. That's exactly what it says. But you tell the President what his 
plan has to do. You tell the President that his plan cannot include one 
penny of revenue for the purpose of reducing the deficit. In other 
words, you say the President's plan has got to look like your plan.
  So, Mr. Speaker, the issue here is not whether the President has a 
plan or not. He does have a plan. Our Republican colleagues don't like 
it because it says that it's more important to protect defense spending 
and protect domestic spending like NIH than it is to

[[Page H5960]]

protect special interest tax loopholes. And I see the chairman of the 
Armed Services Committee on the floor, and I respect him greatly. 
That's the position he took last October. Here's what he said when he 
was asked:
  ``If it came that I had only two choices, one was a tax increase and 
one was a cut in defense over and above where we already are, I would 
go to strengthen defense.''
  That is the President's position. That's the President's position, 
Mr. West. He said we need to take a balanced approach to reducing the 
deficit. We need to combine cuts. But we also should end special 
interest tax breaks for the big oil companies. George Bush himself said 
when you've got oil above $50 a barrel, you don't need these ridiculous 
incentives to keep them drilling. And we should ask very wealthy 
individuals, frankly, to pay the same tax rate that the people who work 
for them do; the same effective tax rate. And we should eliminate some 
of these ag subsidies.
  Now you asked about other proposals. I have a proposal in my hand. I 
took it to the House Rules Committee yesterday. It would have totally 
replaced the sequester. If we actually voted on this, it would replace 
the sequester for defense and nondefense. You know how we do it? We do 
it through cuts to big ag subsidies, we do it by eliminating subsidies 
for the big oil companies, and yes, we ask people making more than a 
million dollars a year to pay a little bit more because we think it's 
more important to do that than allow these cuts to defense to take 
place and all the consequences you talk about, and we think it's 
important to protect investments in places like NIH, people who are 
fighting to try and find cures for diseases.
  So, Madam Speaker, the issue is not whether we replace the sequester. 
The President's got a proposal. I've got a proposal. It's how we do it. 
And, again, our Republican colleagues have doubled down on this idea 
that you're going to protect every tax break that's out there before 
you protect spending on our national defense.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. GARRETT. Before we hear from our leader, I yield 15 seconds to 
the gentleman from Florida (Mr. West).
  Mr. WEST. We voted to cut defense spending by $487 billion. We're 
talking about additional. And when you talk about raising these taxes, 
Ernst & Young had an independent report that talked about the adverse 
ramifications that will come from raising taxes.
  Obviously, one thing we fail to understand, small business operators, 
subchapter S corps, LLCs, you're going to ruin this economy and more 
job losses by raising those taxes.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  I just would ask the gentleman, and I would yield to him for an 
answer, whether he means Bain Capital is a small business.
  Mr. WEST. I'm not talking about Bain Capital. You said raise taxes on 
individuals. I'm talking about personal income.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time. Mr. West, when Mr. 
Romney and Mr. Ryan and all our Republican colleagues cite those 
figures about passthroughs, that includes companies like Bain Capital. 
It also includes some Fortune 100 companies. The President has put 
forward a proposal that says let's act right now to extend tax relief 
to 98 percent of the American people and 97 percent of all passthrough 
businesses.
  It's true we don't think that Bain Capital needs a big additional tax 
break when we've got a big deficit that we should deal with in what we 
think should be a balanced way.
  I reserve the balance of my time.

                Announcement by the Speaker pro tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Miller of Michigan). Members are 
reminded to direct their remarks to the Chair.
  Mr. GARRETT. I yield 1 minute to our leader, the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Cantor).
  Mr. CANTOR. I want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey and commend 
the gentleman from Florida on bringing this bill forward.
  Madam Speaker, the bill before us is not about tax rates. Because I 
think that that issue will be resolved one way or another here shortly 
in this election. We know that there's a difference between the two 
sides. Unfortunately, our counterparts on the other side of the aisle 
think it's very important in this tough economy to raise taxes. We 
don't believe that, Madam Speaker. The bill before us simply asks the 
President to give us his plan for replacing the first year of cuts in 
the sequester.
  It has been 126 days since we passed our plan to responsibly replace 
the sequester with cuts that maintain our fiscal discipline. Our plan 
controls unchecked government spending and reduces wasteful and 
duplicative programs. But still there has been no action and no 
proposal coming from the other side of the Capitol, coming from the 
other side of the aisle.
  It has been 126 days since the President said he would veto our plan. 
But he has failed to put forward an alternative. And the letter that 
some of us Republican leaders wrote on July 14 asking the President to 
engage with us to come and find a bipartisan solution to the 
sequestration, that letter has gone unanswered.
  Madam Speaker, inaction carries a very high risk. Instability and 
unprecedented political transformation throughout the Middle East, a 
civil war in Syria, Iran's dogged pursuit of nuclear weapons in support 
for terrorism, as well as challenges posed by a rising China and 
geostrategic shifts in the Asia Pacific make maintaining American 
military preeminence as important as ever. And the deadly and tragic 
attacks on Ambassador Chris Stevens, Foreign Service Information 
Management Office Sean Smith, and two other Americans at our consulate 
in Benghazi, Libya, make clear that Islamic extremist terrorism remains 
a tremendous threat to the Middle East, the United States, and the 
international community.
  If the cuts in the sequester go forward, they will fundamentally 
weaken our current and long-term security and our ability to meet 
challenges we're facing. Implementing these cuts will mean reductions 
in shipbuilding, aircraft and missiles, shrinking our current force to 
levels not seen since before World War II. And that means fewer 
defense-related jobs. According to a study conducted by the Aerospace 
Industries Association, the job losses will reach 2 million. Let me put 
that in perspective. The economy added less than 100,000 jobs last 
month. Worse, more people dropped out of the labor force than were 
added to it. Under the sequester, unemployment would soar from its 
current level up to 9 percent, setting back any progress the economy 
has made. According to the same study, the jobs of more than 200,000 
Virginians, my own State, are on the line. A small business in my 
district called Produce Source Partners, which provides fresh food to 
military bases, says the sequester threatens the jobs of their 200 
employees. Another small company in Virginia, HI-TEST Laboratories, 
could be forced to reduce their staff by as much as 30 percent. 
Removing these jobs from the community will shrink the local economy 
and set back an already underutilized business zone. That same 
predicament faces hundreds of hardworking men and women in towns from 
here to California.
  Madam Speaker, we are here today asking the President simply to come 
forward with a plan. We are here today because the minority has failed 
to work with us to find a solution to prevent these cuts that would 
hollow out our military and result in massive layoffs.
  Madam Speaker, the House has acted. Now we need leadership, Mr. 
President.

                              {time}  1610

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  It's hard to know where to begin because--I hope everyone was 
listening very carefully. If we allow these spending cuts to take 
place, we will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs in Virginia alone. 
Thousands of jobs around the country.
  You know, I've heard a lot of complaints from our Republican 
colleagues about the recovery bill and the fact that we had to do some 
emergency spending to prevent the loss of millions of jobs. You know 
what? That worked. And here our Republican colleagues here today are 
saying that we've got to make sure the spending cuts don't take

[[Page H5961]]

place because if we do, it will result in a lot of lost jobs.
  Well, you know what? It takes jobs to build an aircraft carrier, 
absolutely. It also creates jobs when you invest in trying to repair 
and modernize our roads and our bridges, our infrastructure.
  The President submitted a jobs bill more than a year ago to this 
House to do exactly that. Let's invest more in modernizing our 
infrastructure. We haven't had a single vote on the President's jobs 
bill.
  So I'm really glad to hear our Republican colleagues say that if we 
make these kinds of cuts, it's going to result in lost jobs because you 
know what? You are right about that.
  The debate today is not about whether we should prevent the sequester 
from taking place. As I said, we should. It's how we do that.
  I heard again from the Republican leader the President doesn't have a 
plan. He has a plan. They just don't like his plan. They don't like his 
plan because it takes a balanced approach. It says, you know what? In 
addition to cuts, we should also ask people who make more than a 
million dollars a year to contribute a little more to reducing our 
national deficit and preventing the sequester. We should ask big oil 
companies to give up their taxpayer subsidies.
  So, the question, Madam Speaker, is not whether we replace the 
sequester. There are lots of plans that I've already talked about. The 
one in my hand, I offered it yesterday. I can't get a vote on it today.
  The issue is not whether; it's how. We should take a balanced 
approach.
  I yield now 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Pennsylvania (Ms. 
Schwartz).
  Ms. SCHWARTZ. Madam Speaker, I'm pleased to participate in this 
debate in some ways, although I do have to say that this is not really 
the kind of honest debate that we need to be having. We should be 
having a conversation. We should have been having a conversation well 
before now about how we would avoid sequester and do it in a bipartisan 
way and do it in a balanced way. That is not what is happening. Right 
now what we're seeing is a Republican plan without that kind of 
conversation, without that kind of willingness to find common ground or 
balanced approach.
  The Federal budget is about choices. The choices we make matter. Do 
we choose to protect our seniors, to grow the middle class, to make 
smart investments in our economy, to be able to reach agreement on 
deficit reduction in a way that is fair to the American people or not?
  Republicans have made their choices, their priorities, and their 
values very clear. Once again, they are wasting America's time playing 
politics instead of working to find that common ground.
  Sequestration was put in place to push us, to force us in Congress to 
work together on a bipartisan, balanced approach to deficit reduction. 
We knew it would be tough. We all knew we would not want to implement 
sequester, that that would be difficult. But we put on the table what 
needed to get done if we couldn't have that kind of conversation, and 
we have not yet seen the Republican leadership in the House be willing 
to engage in that kind of serious deficit reduction conversation that 
takes a balanced approach, respects our obligation to Americans and our 
future.
  Today's legislation does not move us any closer to achieving the goal 
of deficit reduction done in a balanced way, in a fair way, in a real 
way. We know we must reduce the Nation's deficit in a balanced and 
fiscally responsible manner. We've seen every bipartisan independent 
commission tell us that.
  It means, and they've told us and we know, that we have to take some 
hard hits in spending cuts, that we have to require greater efficiency 
and greater effectiveness from all sectors of government, that we must 
do this with a balance, with increased revenue. It cannot be done 
without it.
  In order to build economic growth in our Nation, we need to do all of 
this. Deficit reduction means spending cuts, it means increased 
revenue, it means a balanced approach if we're going to grow the 
economy for now and the future.
  The Republicans in Congress have rejected this balanced approach, and 
in doing so they have made it clear that they are not serious about 
deficit reduction. They are, in fact, willing to add $800 billion to 
our deficit with tax breaks to the wealthiest. That's what this 
legislation does today. They are adding $2 trillion more in defense 
spending, more than the Pentagon has said it needs to keep us safe and 
defend our Nation. They're willing to do this at the expense of our 
middle class, our seniors, and our economic recovery.
  The Republican approach to replacing the sequester means that we will 
be less prepared to compete in the 21st century economy. Now is not the 
time to make drastic cuts in transportation and infrastructure, in 
innovation and clean energy, or in education and health care. And 
that's what this would do.
  The Republican plan creates false and unfair choices for the American 
people.
  Let's get serious. Let's have some real solutions. Let's move forward 
on deficit reduction and economic growth for the American people.
  Mr. GARRETT. Madam Speaker, I would now like to yield 5 minutes to 
the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) who recognizes that it is 
really not a balanced plan to say that we want to raise $3 on every 
American in taxes and only $1 in spending reductions, and it is not a 
balanced plan to say that we want to pick and choose winners and losers 
when it comes to the Tax Code reform.
  Mr. McKEON. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the National 
Security and Jobs Protection Act offered by Mr. West from Florida. I 
have the privilege of serving on the Armed Services Committee with him, 
and I thank him for his leadership in bringing this important bill 
forward at this time.
  It boggles my mind, Madam Speaker, that we are standing here ready to 
wipe out our national defense at a time when we turn on the TV in the 
morning and see the Middle East erupting, when we see Iran moving 
forward on their plans to achieve a nuclear weapon, when we see China 
increasing their defense spending while we're cutting ours.
  People need to understand that we have cut $487 billion starting 
October 1 over the next 10 years out of our defense. And on top of 
that, we have added this problem of sequestration, which adds another 
500, $600 billion over the next 10 years starting January 2.
  The first $487 billion, some thought was put into, and plans. Even 
though we had to adjust our strategy that we've had since World War II, 
we've had to cut back. We know that we won't be able to carry out the 
missions that we've been called on to do in the future, but we will be 
able to survive, according to our military leaders.

  But the sequestration--we held five hearings last September with all 
of our former military leaders, our current military leaders, former 
chairmen and Secretaries of these committees, and to a man, every 
single one said that the sequestration would hollow out and wipe out 
our national defense.
  We would take the Navy back to the size it was in World War I, the 
Armed Forces, the ground forces back to the size they were in 1940, and 
the Air Force back to the smallest it's been since it was created. How 
does anybody think that given these times that is not a stupid thing to 
be doing?
  The way the sequestration would take effect is you just pull out the 
budget and take a percentage--the administration hasn't told us yet 
what percentage; it's probably going to be about 15, 20 percent--off of 
every single line item. So mowing the lawn at Fort Dix will have the 
same priority as ammunition for the troops in Afghanistan. How can 
anybody think that that is a smart idea?
  You know, we have a Constitution of the United States, and it tells 
us how we should operate here in this Congress. It says one body passes 
a bill, the other body passes a bill, a conference is formed, you work 
out your differences, you take it back for final passage, and send it 
to the President to be signed into law.
  The House has acted. We took tough votes. We accomplished our 
objective of paying for the first year of sequestration, not just the 
defense cuts, but all of the cuts across the board, to move it back, 
pay for the first year, move it back into a time where we're

[[Page H5962]]

less stressed with the election upon us, where we could do it in a less 
political environment, and the Senate hasn't acted. In 126 days, the 
Senate hasn't acted. Excuse me. The other body hasn't acted.

                              {time}  1620

  Madam Speaker, they don't like our bill; I understand that. All they 
have to do is pass another bill, get it to conference, and then we'll 
work out the differences. We accomplished ours through cuts, they can 
accomplish theirs through increasing taxes, and then we can work out a 
difference. All the gentleman on the other side says is, They've 
presented a plan and we don't like their plan.
  Well, a plan is nothing. What they have to do is pass a bill. Show 
us. Get the votes, pass a bill, and then go to the conference. It's in 
the Constitution. That's how we operate. And it's important enough that 
we should all act like adults and follow the Constitution and get it 
done. Our Nation, our security depends on it, and we don't have much 
time left to do it.
  Madam Speaker, I think it's very important that we pass this bill. I 
encourage my colleagues to vote for it. Let's act like adults. Let's 
earn our salaries here. Let's get this job done.
  Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the National Security and 
Jobs Protection Act offered by Mr. West, whom I have the pleasure of 
serving with on the Armed Services Committee. We all know that in less 
than 4 months, the automatic across-the-board cuts known as 
sequestration will go into full effect, significantly reducing funding 
for our national defense and vital domestic programs.
  Mr. West and members of our committee understand just how much these 
draconian cuts will undermine our constitutional obligation to provide 
for the common defense. They will result in the United States having 
the smallest Army since World War II, the smallest Navy since World War 
I and the smallest Air Force in U.S. history. That is why President 
Obama's own Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, has said the pending 
sequester is devastating and akin to shooting ourselves in the head.
  So the natural question is--what is our government doing to stop 
sequestration? On May 10, 2012, the United States House of 
Representatives passed a measured and responsible proposal to deal with 
this impending threat, H.R. 5652, the Sequester Replacement 
Reconciliation Act of 2012. Yet, 126 days later the Senate has not 
acted. The President has not acted.
  Madam Speaker, the House is prepared to work with the President and 
the Senate on alternatives to sequestration. We urge them to come to 
the table. That's what Mr. West's legislation does. Our colleagues in 
the Senate tell the press that they are negotiating a deal. Well they 
have been talking about that for a year now. It is time to put 
something down on paper and get it passed. We must not allow the well 
being of our troops and our national security to be used as a 
bargaining chip in this debate.
  Just this week we were reminded at how unstable and dangerous our 
world is. The killing of Americans in Benghazi on the anniversary of 
Sep 11th is a reminder and a challenge to every member of this body 
that we must put our national security and our national interests 
first.
  As one senior military official recently told me, America's inability 
to govern ourselves past sequestration plays directly into the hands of 
those who spread a narrative of American decline and will ultimately 
thrust us into a more dangerous world.
  This legislation will require President Obama to live up to his 
obligation as Commander-in-Chief and submit his alternative plan to 
replace sequestration, while encouraging the United States Senate to do 
the same. Let us also not forget that it was the President who put 
defense ``squarely on the table'' last summer in the negotiations for 
the Budget Control Act.
  Madam Speaker, we are running out of time before the draconian cuts 
in sequestration take effect. There are 111 days remaining. We need to 
work together to find a solution. I urge members to vote ``yes'' on 
this legislation.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  I agree with the chairman of the Armed Services Committee; we should 
act like adults.
  We agree that the sequester cuts are done in a stupid, meat-ax way. 
We also agree with what the chairman of the Armed Services Committee 
said last October when, if it came to choosing between allowing all of 
the terrible consequences that he rightly spoke about and taking a 
balanced approach to deficit reduction which included some additional 
revenue, he would accept the balanced approach.
  Mr. McKEON. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I will yield for a very quick question.
  Mr. McKEON. You presented something that I said when I was asked 
after a speech what I would do, given two bad choices. But you don't 
have anything on the floor yet. You haven't passed a bill, so I don't 
even have the opportunity to vote for increased taxes because you 
haven't passed a bill yet.
  Thank you.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
  We wanted to give you that opportunity yesterday, which is why I went 
to the House Rules Committee with this substitute--which is in my hand, 
Mr. Chairman--that said you can replace the sequester right away if 
you're willing to cut some big ag subsidies, which I thought we were 
all agreed that we could do, but also get rid of some of the subsidies 
for the Big Oil companies, not some of the smaller producers, the big 
five, and you ask folks over $1 million to pay the same effective rate 
that people who work for them pay.
  I agree with what you said last October, which is that it's more 
important to prevent the kind of cuts that we're talking about here 
today to defense and non-defense than it is to protect tax breaks for 
Big Oil companies.
  Mr. Chairman, I wanted to vote. We wanted to vote. If the Rules 
Committee will allow us a vote, you can do it right now. In fact, the 
thing I have in my hand, the substitute, if we passed it, would 
actually replace the sequester. The resolution on the floor doesn't 
replace the sequester, even if it goes to the White House.
  I now yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan, the 
distinguished ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. 
Levin.
  (Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. LEVIN. Well, I have now been here 30 years, with 26 on the Ways 
and Means Committee. So why are we at this point of serious impasse? I 
think a major reason is that the radical right has taken over House 
Republicans. Balance is considered surrender; compromise is considered 
retreat.
  Indeed, since the passage of the Budget Control Act in August of 
2011, the Republicans have made sequestration even more likely. Before 
August of last year, the Republican position was no new revenues. The 
Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy were untouchable. But in their 
budget passed this March, the Republicans not only said that the Bush 
tax cuts for the wealthy must continue, but also they should be 
expanded. They are doubling down on a policy of tax cuts for the 
wealthiest while annual income stagnation continues for the middle 
class, and we have the worst income inequality in generations. So, in a 
word, they went from bad to worse, furthering the likelihood of 
sequestration.
  Under the Ryan budget and the so-called tax reform fast-track bill 
they passed last month, a recent analysis concluded that the average 
millionaire would lock in an average tax cut of $330,000, while the 
average person making less than $200,000 would see their taxes rise by 
$4,500.
  I support tax reform, but so far Republicans have refused to say 
which policies they would eliminate to pay for it. It's been dodge and 
deception.
  Half of the money in individual income tax expenditures is in the 
lower rates for capital gains and dividends, and they propose to cut 
those rates even further, Mr. Ryan down to zero on capital gains. Most 
of those benefits go to those making over $1 million. Most of the other 
major tax expenditures--mortgage interest, health insurance, education 
benefits that would have to be decimated--are mainly middle class 
benefits.
  This bill ignores the fact that the President put forward a balanced 
deficit reduction package over a year ago that would have cut the 
deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years.
  I close by emphasizing the word, ``balanced.'' Essentially, the 
Republican Party that I've known over the years has become very deeply 
imbalanced in terms of the mainstream of America.

[[Page H5963]]

  Mr. GARRETT. Madam Speaker, at this time I'd like to yield 2 minutes 
to another gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell), who understands 
that we are in fact presenting a balanced approach inasmuch as we 
present the options to either pass this legislation that the House 
already did or an alternative.
  Mr. CAMPELL. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, I had made some notes I was going to say, but I'm now 
going to go off script as the gentleman from Maryland, who I genuinely 
like and respect, made some comments to which I feel I must respond.
  The gentleman referred to, as the President does often, additional 
taxes on domestic energy, for which they use the pejorative ``Big 
Oil,'' and taxes on job creators, for which they are creating a 
pejorative, ``the rich,'' and that these two things will solve all 
ills.
  Well, by my count, when we did the budget this year in the Budget 
Committee, the Democrats used those two taxes to pay for seven, by my 
count, different items of spending.
  Now, let me explain what that's like. It's like this:
  Here is a dollar. This is one dollar, a single dollar. If I go into a 
store and spend it and buy these breath mints, the dollar will be gone 
and I will have the breath mints. I cannot now take this dollar into 
six more stores and buy six more bits of breath mints because the 
dollar is gone. I spent it. So you cannot use the same tax increases to 
pay for everything that are multiple times what those tax increases 
will ever raise.
  Now, I understand this is a political talking point. I get it. Look, 
we all do those. I get it. But this is not a game. We saw this week, 
with the reprehensible assassination of Ambassador Stevens, that our 
national defense is not a game--it is definitely not a game now--and 
our economy is not a game, as millions of people who are out of work 
can attest. This is a real proposal. We're asking the President for a 
real proposal and not a political talking point, and we need to solve 
this problem.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, I want to thank my friend from 
California for those comments, and I would just say this:
  I have in my hand a proposal, a substitute amendment. If we passed 
it, it would prevent the sequester from taking place on defense and 
non- defense in a balanced way. You spend these things one time to get 
rid of the sequester.
  The chairman of the Armed Services Committee said he wished he had an 
opportunity to vote on something like this, and I say to him, I wish 
the Rules Committee had given him that opportunity.
  With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland, the 
distinguished Democratic whip, Mr. Hoyer.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I tell my friend from California whose dollar was at issue here, the 
gentleman from California, I will tell you with all due respect and 
affection, your party, over the last 10 years, took that dollar and 
they bought those mints; and they went to the six subsequent stores and 
they gave them a credit card for the next mints they bought. It's time 
to pay the bill.
  Mr. CAMPELL. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HOYER. I have a very short time, but I wanted to make that point 
that you kept buying mints; you just didn't keep paying.
  Madam Speaker, this bill is another instance of this Republican 
caucus walking away from its responsibility. The budget sequester was 
never intended to be a solution in and of itself. It was meant to be 
the blunt instrument to force compromise. Unfortunately, ``compromise'' 
is a dirty word around here in some quarters.
  To lay out conditions, as this bill does, requiring one side to 
concede before negotiations even begin--and while solving only part of 
the problem--disregards sequestration's fundamental purpose: to be 
equally unacceptable to both sides that it forces compromise.

                              {time}  1630

  This bill, which I strongly oppose, essentially says, let's pretend. 
Let's pretend we don't have a deficit challenge. It says, let's pretend 
that we can solve our problems by cutting domestic spending alone.
  No rational human being believes that's the case. No cuts to 
Republicans' favored programs, no elimination of tax loopholes for oil 
companies or anybody else, no increases in revenue by asking the 
wealthiest to contribute a little more to setting our country on a 
sound path.
  We're collecting the lowest amount of revenues we've collected in 70 
years in this country, and we haven't cut spending, and we increased 
spending in the last administration very substantially. By the way, a 
greater percentage than this administration has increased the deficits: 
86 percent versus 41 percent. Check the figures.
  What we need, Madam Speaker, is pragmatism, principle, and serious 
governing. We need to be honest with the American people. Both 
bipartisan commissions that explored that issue concluded that the best 
solution is a balanced approach that addresses revenues, entitlements, 
and targeted cuts to domestic and defense spending. To achieve such a 
balanced solution, we need something that is sorely lacking in this 
House: courage, and a willingness to compromise, to come together, to 
reason together, and to make tough decisions together.
  Sequester is the direct result of Republican policies and is a part 
of the Republican strategy to cut spending.
  You keep saying, well, it's the Democrats. This is not a Democratic 
policy. It's an irrational policy, but it's in your bills and in your 
rules.
  Now, instead of working with Democrats to turn off the sequester, 
Republicans are trying to paint the sequester as a Democratic 
initiative. That is false, untrue.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield the gentleman another minute.
  Mr. HOYER. The Republican cut, cap and balance bill enforces its cuts 
and its caps. How? Through sequestration. That's what you voted for.
  After the agreement was reached on the Budget Control Act that put 
the sequester in place, Speaker Boehner said, ``I got 98 percent of 
what I wanted.'' Now our Republican colleagues are attempting to undo 
the sequester in a way that let's them off the hook politically but 
puts America at risk financially.
  Democrats have an alternative--Mr. Van Hollen just spoke of it--that 
would repeal the sequester for a year by asking that the wealthiest in 
our country, why, because they can help a little more, not because 
they're bad. God bless them. And by the way, we're most of those as 
well, folks.
  I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle, who I know are as 
deeply concerned about our deficits and debt as I am, will join 
Democrats in defeating this bill and sending a message that only by 
working together can we find the solutions we need. America expects 
that of us.
  Mr. GARRETT. Madam Speaker, at this time I yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford).
  Mr. LANKFORD. Madam Speaker, let's review. We have $16 trillion in 
debt, and it's climbing every single day. We have no budget from the 
Senate for the last 3 years. The President's budget got exactly zero 
votes in the House and in the Senate. And the Federal Government has 
dramatically increased spending, which has led to this spending-driven 
crisis.
  Let me show you what I mean by that. Five years ago, in 2007, the 
Federal Treasury received in $2.5 trillion in revenue, the same amount 
that's estimated to come in this year in revenue, $2.5 trillion 5 years 
ago, $2.5 trillion now.
  Five years ago, total spent by the Federal Government, $2.7 trillion, 
now $3.7 trillion. That almost looks like a $1 trillion difference in 
spending, which equals the same amount as our deficit.
  It's amazing to me. When we process through this, the problem is 
crystal clear. It's just the solution that seems to evade us in this 
process.
  Now, some would say, tell you what we need to do. We've increased 
spending $1 trillion, let's just increase taxes as well and that will 
solve the issue.
  I would say, why are we spending money we don't have?
  Last summer, we agreed that we would cut some spending and put a

[[Page H5964]]

group of people together in a room and let them work out a plan to find 
$1 trillion in cuts. The back-up, the emergency back-up plan was that 
we would cut across the board if a solution wasn't found, 10 percent 
for security, 8 percent for everything else.
  Now, no one wants across-the-board cuts that are that huge. A 1 
percent cut in agencies would be no big deal. I can't imagine any 
agency couldn't handle 1 percent. Two percent, no big deal. Maybe even 
3 percent. But you start to climb up, and it really begins to cut into 
some agencies that are actually very efficient. Other agencies, you 
could do a 50 percent cut and it would be fine.
  The problem is an across-the-board cut becomes a very big issue for 
us. Treating every line item the same is a mistake. Every part is not 
the same in our budget.
  Let me give you an example. At my house, on a Saturday afternoon, 
I'll open up a Dr. Pepper can at my house and my very cute, red-headed 
12-year-old daughter will walk up and say, Daddy, can we split that? I 
will almost always smile at her and say, sure, I'll take the liquid, 
you take the can and we'll split it even. To which she says to me, 
that's not really fair.
  But it again comes back to the same point: not all parts are the 
same. If we do across-the-board cuts in every area, that is not the 
best way to do it.
  Now, I guarantee you, you allow this House to go item by item through 
this budget, we will find $100 billion in cuts next year. I guarantee 
you. But doing across-the-board cuts into FBI, it cuts into our 
defense, it cuts into Border Patrol, it cuts into the basics and the 
heart of what we're doing; and we cannot do that.
  The House passed a very specific plan for dealing with this last May. 
It is complete for us. Now it's time for the Senate to actually do 
their job, and it's time for the President to send that over to us.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. GARRETT. Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Calvert).
  Mr. CALVERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support, obviously, of H.R. 6365, 
the National Security and Job Protection Act.
  Do we need any more evidence than recent events in Egypt and Libya to 
oppose these devastating cuts and what it would do to our Nation 
security? I don't think so.
  If sequestration occurs, it would cut the military to its smallest 
size since before World War II. All the while, we're still a Nation at 
war in Afghanistan, facing unrest and aggression in the Middle East, 
increased threats from Iran, China, and North Korea.
  In addition to the 10 percent cut to defense, our domestic programs 
would have, such as health, science, research, education, border 
security, an additional 8 percent cut.
  In May, this House passed the only plan that's been presented thus 
far to prevent and replace sequestration, last May, by providing and 
making commonsense reforms to our fast-growing government that's on 
auto pilot spending programs and to avert the spending-driven economic 
crisis that's before us.
  Well, we've seen no signs of leadership from the White House or the 
Senate. But the House will act again today with H.R. 6365, the National 
Security and Job Protection Act. The House will lead, where others have 
not.
  This legislation sends a clear statement that the House is ready to 
carry out our budgetary responsibilities. We just need willing 
partners. The President, the Senate, House Republicans and Democrats, 
we all agree on a common goal: replace the sequester to protect 
important domestic programs, our fragile economy, our national security 
and our troops.
  This bill is a path to that solution. Make no mistake, if 
sequestration goes into effect, America will compromise a legacy of 
superiority on the land, on the sea, and in the air and potentially 
send our economy spiraling back into a recession.
  I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this bill, and I would hope 
that we could pass this with a large number and get on with it.

                              {time}  1640

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I now yield 1 minute to the distinguished Democratic 
leader, the gentlelady from California (Ms. Pelosi).
  Ms. PELOSI. As we come to the floor this afternoon to talk about this 
sequester issue, the clock is ticking. Every moment we delay in dealing 
with the budget issue is a moment of time that does not increase 
confidence in our economy, that does not bring more certainty to our 
economic situation, and that does not reduce the deficit.
  I heard the previous speaker say that this legislation that is on the 
floor would end sequestration. It does not. That is one of the major 
differences between it and the Democratic proposal put forth by Mr. Van 
Hollen. Unfortunately, afraid of debate on the floor, the Republicans 
on the Rules Committee did not allow Mr. Van Hollen's proposal to come 
to the floor today so that we could have a vote on it; but even with 
that, we can have a debate on it.
  The debate is about fairness. It's about balance. It's about living 
up to our responsibilities. It's about saying, yes, we all have to 
compromise--there will be cuts; we need revenue; we want growth. That's 
what Mr. Van Hollen's proposal does. It does, indeed, replace the 
sequestration. It is a better plan. It actually does end sequestration, 
as I mentioned, through a mix of cuts and revenues.
  The reason we have a problem here is that our Republican colleagues 
have refused to have one red cent from the wealthiest people in our 
country contribute to resolving this fiscal crisis, this budget 
crisis--not one red cent. If they cared as much about defense as they 
say, 1 year ago they would have agreed to a plan with fairness and 
balance, where we would have had growth on the table, making decisions 
about revenue and about cuts to produce growth and not getting into a 
situation that called for across-the-board cuts in defense and in our 
domestic budget.
  This is really silly. It's really silly. It's not serious. It's a 
charade, this bill that they have on the floor today. It just keeps 
making matters worse as the clock keeps ticking. So I urge my 
colleagues to reject this mirage of a bill that poses as a suggestion 
and to support, instead, ideas that are being advanced by Mr. Van 
Hollen. I don't like everything about it. We've cut over $1 trillion. 
That's how we got through last year--all cuts, no revenue.
  You need only see how we differ by just looking at the Ryan-Romney 
Republican budget. Their blueprint says we're going to end Medicare; 
we're going to make seniors pay $6,000 more as we end Medicare; and 
we're going to give tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country. 
That's not fair and that's not balanced, but that is what would happen 
if the Republican bill were to become law. It would enact the Ryan 
bill. So I urge my colleagues to think very seriously about this, 
because people sent us here to find solutions. We must resolve this.
  When the Speaker of the House says, I'm not confident we can do this, 
we are confident we can do anything we set our minds to, and we 
certainly have to be confident that we can honor our responsibilities 
to the American people. We all have to go to the table and be willing 
to yield, willing to compromise. We had to do it with President Bush, 
Senior, and with President Bush on his recovery package for our 
country. Democrats cooperated with both of those Presidents when we 
were in the majority.
  Why is it that the Republicans in the House see no reason to 
compromise even at the risk of the full faith and credit of the United 
States of America? even at the expense of the health of our economy? 
even at the expense of jobs for the American people?
  Vote ``no'' on this mirage. Support what Mr. Van Hollen is putting 
forth. Let's get moving because the clock is ticking.
  Mr. GARRETT. I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina 
(Mr. Mulvaney).
  Mr. MULVANEY. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey.
  I saw the gentleman from Maryland this morning on television. It was 
the first time I had heard, Madam Speaker, of his proposal. So I had a 
chance to take a look at it today, and I also had a chance to look at 
the CBO report that was performed on it. I saw some interesting things 
that I don't know if we've discussed fully here today.

[[Page H5965]]

  It raises taxes by $85 billion over the 10-year window. According to 
the CBO, it raises spending by almost $80 billion. This is a refrain 
that I used to hear a lot when I was younger--taxes and spending, taxes 
and spending, raise taxes and increase spending. I thought it was gone 
from today's party across the aisle, but evidently, here it is--alive 
and well--in Mr. Van Hollen's substitute offering, raising taxes by $85 
billion and raising spending by $80 billion, which is a net reduction 
of the deficit of $5 billion over 10 years. According to the CBO, it 
actually increases the deficit by $55 billion in the first year.
  It does that, by the way, in part and parcel by offering what they 
call the Buffett rule. The last time I came to this well, I believe the 
gentleman from Maryland and I had a nice exchange about whether or not 
my amendment was a gimmick. It was the amendment regarding the 
President's budget. I seem to remember someone else calling the Buffett 
rule a gimmick. In my research in coming over here today, I found out 
that it was, in fact, the President of the United States who called the 
Buffett rule a gimmick. So I'm wondering now if the President believes 
that part of the gentleman from Maryland's offering is, in fact, a 
gimmick because it encompasses the Buffett rule in its entirety.
  I compare all of this, Madam Speaker, to the offering that we have 
before you with our bill. That bill reduces the deficit by at least 
$237 billion over the same 10 years. Theirs reduces it by $5 billion--
raising taxes. According to the CBO, ours reduces the deficit by at 
least $237 billion. That's the smallest number the CBO gives us. It 
also gives us four times as much in deficit reduction in the first year 
as does the BCA that it seeks to replace. Again, theirs increases the 
deficit by $55 billion in the first year. Ours decreases it by more 
than the BCA it seeks to replace. Our offering does that without asking 
anybody to pay more money to the government. People pay enough money to 
the government. We spend their money improperly. It's not that we don't 
take enough from them. We take enough money from our citizens. We spend 
it improperly.
  So, when I finished looking at this, I thought to myself, I think it 
would be great to have this come up for a vote. I'm disappointed that 
the Rules Committee did not give Mr. Van Hollen the chance to bring it 
to the floor. It has happened to me before, and for that, I am 
sympathetic. At the same time, I know that he has a chance to do that 
still. We are going to finish this debate here in a few minutes; and 
before we vote, there is going to be a motion to recommit. The 
gentleman from Maryland could easily offer his amendment as the motion 
to recommit. In fact, I would welcome the opportunity to see that 
debate. I would welcome the opportunity here, 60 days before an 
election, to have my colleagues across the aisle come over and say, We 
want to raise your taxes. Would you please reelect us. I want that on 
the floor. I'm disappointed the Rules Committee did not bring it. I 
would love to see if that's really what our colleagues across the aisle 
stand for.
  I heard it described by the gentlelady from California a few minutes 
ago as a better plan. I think we are doing a disservice by not allowing 
a vote on this particular bill, because it is not a better plan, and I 
think the vote here would bear that out, not just on our side of the 
aisle. I would be curious to see if that's what our colleagues stand 
for--more taxes, more spending here 60 days before an election.
  I encourage folks to support our bill. Our bill cuts spending, lets 
people keep their money, and still allows us to end the sequester.

                              {time}  1650

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, I wish Mr. Mulvaney were more 
persuasive with his colleagues because we agree. I wish we had a vote 
on this. We're happy to have that debate. In fact, that's what we've 
been having on the floor today.
  We heard a lot from our colleagues about the devastating impact of 
these cuts on defense and other things, and we agree, which is why we 
think it's appropriate to ask people who earn more than a $1 million a 
year to help contribute a little bit more to our deficit so that we 
don't have to see these consequences.
  I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Nadler).
  Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, addressing our debt is a critical long-
term goal, but it's not our immediate problem. Right now, our immediate 
problem is high unemployment, and our economy needs efforts to spur job 
growth. The expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts, particularly those 
targeted toward the middle class, and the start of unparalleled across-
the-board $1.2 trillion spending cuts mandated by the Budget Control 
Act sequestration provision, threatened further job growth.
  Looking just at sequestration, there is rare agreement. Not the 
President, not the Congress, not anyone ever wanted or expected the 
sequestration measures to take effect. Why? Because we have a jobs 
problem, and the spending cuts demanded by sequestration are a huge 
jobs killer.
  Republicans argue that this steep cut would risk defense-related 
jobs, and they're right. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 
these cuts would kill 1.3 million defense jobs in the first 3 years. 
But the Republicans completely ignore that the domestic spending cuts 
will also kill an estimated 1.3 million jobs in the same timeframe. Put 
another way, sequestration will kill 2.6 million American jobs in just 
3 years. We simply must stop the sequestration-mandated spending cuts 
disaster, but this bill won't do that.
  This bill mandates draining tens of billions of dollars of Federal 
spending next year, reducing the already draconian domestic spending 
caps, and doing all of this without adding a single dollar of 
additional revenue. The outcome is virtually the same. This Republican 
bill will still kill a couple of million American jobs. Talk about 
driving off a cliff.
  Basic economics tells us that during good times, with low 
unemployment, government should reduce the national debt, but that to 
support job growth, government must not reduce spending during 
recessions. Now when we suffer from high unemployment, the proposed 
spending cuts, particularly those of the magnitude Republicans are 
proposing, would be disastrous. When we get to 5 percent unemployment, 
then we should start worrying about spending cuts. Right now, jobs are 
the issue.
  Madam Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on H.R. 6365.
  Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 6365.
  While there is wide bipartisan agreement that getting control of our 
debt is a critical long-term goal, there is also agreement that 
unemployment is unacceptably high and that our economy remains in need 
of major efforts to spur job growth.
  As we grapple with these issues, there are two significant events 
approaching at the end of the year that many have argued could send our 
economy careening off the so-called fiscal cliff: (1) expiration of the 
Bush-era tax cuts, particularly those targeted toward the middle class, 
and (2) the start of unparalleled, across-the-board $1.2 trillion 
spending cuts mandated by last summer's Budget Control Act 
sequestration provision.
  On the tax question, we are where we've remained for years now--the 
President and Democrats agree that we can't afford to foot the bill for 
tax breaks for the wealthiest among us, while the Republicans continue 
to be beholden to the don't-tax-even-millionaires-and-billionaires 
plan.
  But on sequestration, there is rare agreement. The simple truth is 
that no one--not the president, not the Congress, not anyone--ever 
wanted or expected the sequestration to take affect. Why? Because we 
have a jobs problem, and the spending cuts demanded by mandatory 
sequestration are a huge jobs killer.
  In 2013 alone, sequestration would require that defense and 
discretionary domestic programs each incur an across-the-board $54.7 
billion cut. Republicans have been spending a lot of time talking about 
the effects this steep cut would have on defense-related jobs. And they 
are right. According to the Economic Policy Institute, these cuts would 
result in the loss of 1.3 million defense jobs in just the first three 
years.
  But, Madam Speaker, that is not the end of the story. The Republicans 
completely ignore the almost identical job loss from the mandated 
domestic spending cuts--also about 1.3 million jobs lost in three 
years, according to EPI.

  Put another way, if we don't stop it, sequestration will be 
responsible for killing 2.6 million American jobs.
  So we simply must stop the sequestration mandated spending cuts.

[[Page H5966]]

  But this bill won't do that--at least, not really. H.R. 6365 still 
mandates (1) draining tens of billions of dollars of federal spending 
next year, (2) reducing the already draconian spending caps as outlined 
in the BCA, and (3) doing all this without adding one single dollar of 
additional revenue. So the outcome is the same--the Republicans would 
still kill a couple of million American jobs.
  Talk about driving off a cliff.
  But we won't hear about that from the Republicans, as they are too 
busy dancing as fast as they can to rewrite their role in setting up 
this self-made disaster in the first place.
  During last summer's debt ceiling debate--another game of chicken 
where Republicans held our economy hostage--Republicans demanded a 
dollar-for-dollar spending cut in order to raise the debt limit so our 
nation wouldn't, for the first time ever, default on our debts. Sure, 
there was the charade of reaching compromise through the so-called 
super committee. But it should come as no surprise to anyone in this 
Chamber that we are where we are today. Republicans wanted deep cuts 
that would kill millions of jobs, and we now stand on the brink of 
implementing them.
  Basic economics tells us that, if you want to support jobs and build 
the economy, government must not reduce spending during recessions. In 
good times, when unemployment is low, government should build surpluses 
to pay down the debt. In bad times, when unemployment is high, 
government should run deficits to make up for slowed private sector 
spending and to spur job growth. That is why what President Clinton did 
in the 90s--balancing the budget and beginning to pay down the national 
debt during a good economic time--was so good, and why what President 
Bush did--enacting huge tax cuts and running large deficits during a 
time of low unemployment, when he should have been paying down the 
national debt--was so devastating. Now, when we suffer from high 
unemployment, proposed spending cuts--particularly those of the 
magnitude Republicans are proposing--would be disastrous. When 
unemployment is down to five percent, then we can think about spending 
cuts. Now we must spur employment, and not enact these job-killing 
spending cuts.
  Madam Speaker, it is imperative that we stop the misguided and self-
made disaster that sequestration, or equivalent spending cuts, will 
bring. But H.R. 6365 won't do it. I urge a no vote.
  Mr. GARRETT. Madam Speaker, I advise my colleague from Maryland that 
I have no further speakers at this time, and I reserve the balance of 
my time.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. May I ask how much time remains on each side.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Maryland has 3 minutes 
remaining, and the gentleman from New Jersey has 5 minutes remaining.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished lady from 
Texas, Ms. Sheila Jackson Lee.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. Thank you very much to the ranking member 
of the Budget Committee.
  Madam Speaker, we rise today to try to bring some logic and sense, 
because as Americans debate sequestration, they throw their hands up 
and say, What is that? What is that in the minds of children and the 
elderly? What does that mean in a real rational way of coming together 
and saying there are some cuts and there are some revenue increases to 
be able to invest in the American public?
  In order to create jobs, you expend dollars, you invest in research 
and development, you help to create opportunities for small businesses, 
you help to promote manufacturing. That's how you create jobs.
  But let me tell you what the underlying bill says. This bill will 
only take effect one year later. It has no opportunity, no desire, and 
no rationale to raise revenue. Every thinking economist says that we 
must raise revenue in order to reduce the deficit and continue to spend 
dollars to invest in the American public.
  Do you want your military families to be on food stamps? Do you want 
50 million Americans to suffer food insecurity? Do you want these 
Americans to suffer? That would include seniors on Meals on Wheels, 
home care, adult protective services. Millions of children, one-third 
of them, depend on these social service block grants, child protective 
services, foster care and child care. This also includes 1 million 
disabled, respite care or transportation. Do you want to, as I said, 
continue the food insecurity for 60 million children?
  All I can say is that this bill not only kicks the can down the road; 
it kicks the mountain down the road. Let's vote against this bill. 
Let's sit down at the table, boost revenue, and invest in the American 
people.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the gentleman 
from Vermont (Mr. Welch).
  Mr. WELCH. Madam Speaker, we have a very serious debt problem in this 
country. We have a very serious jobs problem in this country. Both of 
those serious problems are solvable. The impediment is political.
  This is exhibit A of a dysfunctional Congress. The supercommittee 
failed this Congress when the leadership on the Republican side 
implemented these sequester cuts. We all know they make no sense from 
an economic standpoint, but it puts the burden back on us to come up 
with the balanced approach that every American knows is the only way 
forward, a balance of revenues, a balance with entitlement reform, and 
the Pentagon making a contribution to solve our problems. That is what 
is going to create jobs, and that is what is going to create fiscal 
stability.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of my 
time.
  Madam Speaker, the issue all afternoon has not been whether we should 
replace the sequester. Yes, we should. The issue has been how we do 
that.
  We've heard our Republican colleagues talk about the devastating 
impact of the sequester on defense and nondefense. We agree. That's why 
we put forward a plan to replace the sequester in the balanced way that 
has been recommended by bipartisan groups through a combination of 
cuts, but also revenues generated by things like closing the tax 
loopholes for big oil companies. Our Republican colleagues have just 
doubled down on the position that it's more important to protect tax 
breaks for big oil companies and very wealthy individuals than it is to 
protect our investment in spending in defense or other important 
national priorities. That's what this debate is all about.
  I hope we will reject this proposal and adopt a more balanced one.
  With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. GARRETT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Madam Speaker, I began this day being interviewed by a group of 
southern college students, and the primary question that they asked was 
why can't Congress seem to work in a more bipartisan manner, work 
across the aisle, work with the other Chamber. I had to explain to them 
what was about to occur here on the floor; that one of the most seminal 
issues that we have to deal with in this country is fiscal matters and 
also our defense matters that this House, led by Republicans, have done 
everything we possibly could to make sure that this country stands 
strong fiscally and stands strong in a defense posture, as well. We've 
reached across the aisle, and we've reached across to the Senate in a 
bipartisan manner to effectuate that.
  We have passed a budget out of this House only to find that bill go 
to the Senate where as they say ``all good bills go to die,'' and not 
have anything come back. We've communicated to the President of the 
United States that we want to work with him on a budget, only to see 
his own budget come to the Senate and fail 97-0, and come to this House 
and fail 414-0, not getting any Democrat or Republican support for that 
bill, as well.
  We have reached across the aisle. We have tried to work on the fiscal 
matters and the defense matters when it comes to the sequester. We 
recognize the devastating impact that this will have on our defense 
posture in this country. As other Members have already come to the 
floor, in light of all the past circumstances that have come across 
this country in the last decade, in light of the memorial services that 
we just held, all of us, in a bipartisan manner out on those steps just 
days ago on September 11, in light of what has just been in the 
newspaper in the last several days of our embassies being attacked and 
Americans killed on American soil, we realize the important 
significance of making sure that we have a strong defense at this point 
in time.
  I ask anyone who considers this legislation to vote ``yes'' in favor 
of this legislation, and anyone who would stand and vote ``no'' against 
trying to make sure that we're strong fiscally

[[Page H5967]]

and trying to make sure that we are strong in the defense posture as 
well, anyone who would vote ``no,'' I would ask them how do they when 
they go through the airport leaving here or coming to Washington, look 
anyone in uniform in the eye and say that they voted against a bill to 
make sure that there would not be the defense cuts here.

                              {time}  1700

  The other side of the aisle has no answer for that. Their only answer 
today, and as it's been ever since I've been here in Congress, is to 
say the solution to all problems is what? Raising taxes. As I said 
before, they want to raise $3 in taxes for every $1 in spending cuts.
  We do not have a revenue problem in this country; we have a spending 
problem in this country. You know, there is an old saying that goes, if 
there is a dime left on the table in Washington, someone, primarily 
from the other side of the aisle I would suggest, will find a dollar's 
worth of use for spending it, and I think that's the case here. If they 
raise the taxes 3 to 1, they will find $30 worth of spending to 
increase.
  As the gentleman from California pointed out, that was the example 
every single time in the Budget Committee. Every single time it was 
suggested for spending cuts, they were opposed. They would always use 
the same spending cuts to further increase spending elsewhere.
  The gentleman from California makes the reference to spending a 
dollar every time for--what was it?--for breath mints, I think it was. 
Well, quite candidly, after listening to this debate, and after 
listening to the debate continuously in Budget Committee over years, I 
always leave there, as I will leave here tonight, with a sour taste in 
my mouth if the other side of the aisle does not agree to begin to work 
with us in a bipartisan manner to make sure that this country is strong 
fiscally, to make sure that this country is strong in a defense posture 
as well.
  I would urge all of my colleagues from both sides of this aisle to 
vote ``yea'' on this legislation.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. All time for debate has expired.
  Pursuant to House Resolution 778, the previous question is ordered.
  The question is on the engrossment and third reading of the bill.
  The bill was ordered to be engrossed and read a third time, and was 
read the third time.

                           Motion to Recommit

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the 
desk.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is the gentleman opposed to the bill?
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, I am opposed.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion to 
recommit.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Mr. Van Hollen moves to recommit the bill H.R. 6365 to the 
     Committee on the Budget with instructions to report the same 
     back to the House forthwith, with the following amendment:
       Strike sections 3 and 4 and insert the following:

     SEC. 3. BALANCED DEFICIT REDUCTION THAT PROTECTS MIDDLE CLASS 
                   TAX CUTS AND REQUIRES EVERYONE TO PAY THEIR 
                   FAIR SHARE.

       (a) Conditional Elimination of Sequestration.--Sections 
     251A(7) through 251A(11) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency 
     Deficit Control Act of 1985 shall have no force or effect 
     upon enactment of subsequent deficit reduction legislation 
     containing savings over 10 years that meet or exceed the 
     outlay changes that would have resulted from those 
     provisions.
       (b) Requirements of Deficit Reduction Legislation.--Deficit 
     reduction legislation enacted pursuant to subsection (a) 
     shall--
       (1) require upper income taxpayers to pay their fair share 
     by instituting a ``Buffett rule'';
       (2) extend middle class tax cuts while allowing components 
     of the tax extensions that benefit upper income beneficiaries 
     to expire as scheduled under current law; and
       (3) include targeted spending cuts.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Maryland is recognized for 5 minutes in support of his motion.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chair, let's just flash back to a year ago when 
we were working on the Budget Control Act, and it's, I think, worth 
reminding everybody what the Speaker of the House, Mr. Boehner, said at 
that time:

       I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I'm pretty happy.

  That's what the Speaker of the House said about the Budget Control 
Act.
  We now find ourselves here trying to find a way to prevent these 
across-the-board meat-ax cuts from taking place in the defense budget 
and the non-defense budget. There is agreement that that would be a 
stupid way to deal with our deficit, so there's no dispute there.
  The issue is: What do we do to replace the sequester, to achieve 
deficit reduction, but do it in a reasonable and credible way?
  That's where the rub is.
  What Democrats have said is we need to do it in the way that 
bipartisan groups have proposed that we do it, through a combination of 
additional cuts in a targeted way, not in a meat-ax, across-the-board 
way.
  But, yes, we also have to ask the very wealthiest Americans to 
contribute more to reducing the deficit, because the math is pretty 
simple. If you don't ask very wealthy people to contribute one more 
penny to reducing the deficit, then you have to hit everybody else much 
harder. You have to hit seniors on Medicare harder. You have to reduce 
dramatically our investment in our kids' education. You have to cut 
investments in infrastructure, our roads and bridges. Those are the 
consequences of not taking a balanced approach.
  So we say, when it comes to the sequester, we should avoid all the 
terrible things our colleagues have said and which we agree with. Let's 
take a balanced approach to do doing it.
  You know what? The President submitted a plan to do just that, more 
than a year ago. It's not that he doesn't have a plan; it's our 
Republican colleagues don't like the plan. Why? Because he says we 
don't need to provide these big taxpayer giveaways to the Big Oil 
companies anymore. We don't need to cut dramatically into things like 
Medicaid and Medicare when we should be asking seniors to pay a little 
bit more. Let's ask them to pay what they were paying when President 
Clinton was President. That's the last time we balanced our budget.
  The question is: How do we do it?
  The President submitted a proposal. As I said earlier, I took a 
proposal yesterday to the Rules Committee that would have done this in 
a balanced approach. Our colleagues say they want an open, democratic 
process. We haven't had a vote on that.
  Instead, we're going to have a vote on something that actually, even 
if it passes the House and the Senate and is signed by the President, 
doesn't do anything to eliminate the sequester, doesn't do a thing. It 
just says that the President has to come up with a plan. But they tell 
him what it has to do. They say it cannot be balanced. It cannot 
include any revenue. It has to be across the board in cuts.
  Now let's talk a minute about taxes.
  The President has called upon this Congress to immediately enact tax 
relief to 98 percent of the American people, let's do it now before 
they expire at the end of this year, and our Republican colleagues say, 
No, no. Nobody gets tax relief unless very wealthy people get a bonus 
tax break, because everybody on the President's proposal gets tax 
relief on the first $250,000 of their income. Our Republican colleagues 
say, No; unless people like Mitt Romney get an extra tax break, nobody 
gets tax relief.
  You know what? The President's proposal provides tax relief to 97 
percent of all pass-through businesses. The Republican colleagues say, 
No; unless you're going to give businesses like Bain Capital a bonus 
tax break, we can't ask them to contribute one more penny to reducing 
the deficit.
  Let's talk about jobs. It was really interesting to hear our 
Republican colleagues talk today about the fact that, if you allow 
these budget cuts to take place, it will have devastating impacts on 
the jobs in this country.
  You know what? A year ago this month, the President submitted a 
proposal to this Congress, a jobs initiative. It called for investing 
more in our infrastructure, in our roads and in our bridges, to help 
put more persons back to work. We have 14 percent unemployment in the 
construction industry.
  So here are our Republican colleagues saying, Well, we can't allow 
any of these cuts to take place because people who were building tanks 
will

[[Page H5968]]

lose their jobs. And we agree; spending that money on defense has 
consequences. But how is it that spending money on roads and bridges 
and infrastructure doesn't also put people back to work? That's what 
the President proposed a year ago. Not a single vote on the President's 
jobs bill. There were 37 votes to repeal ObamaCare, but not one vote on 
the President's jobs bill.
  So, Madam Speaker, whether it's acting on the jobs bill, which has 
been sitting here for more than a year, or acting on the President's 
proposal to immediately extend tax relief to 97 percent of the American 
people, or whether it's taking a responsible balanced approach to 
replacing the sequester, let's do what bipartisan groups have 
recommended and take that balanced way to build our economy and reduce 
our deficit.
  I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. GARRETT. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from New Jersey is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GARRETT. The seminal question, I think, to those who are watching 
deliberations here on the floor tonight, they are asking themselves the 
question: Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?
  When you look at the economy, you have to answer that question with a 
resounding, ``No.'' Poverty is continuously up year after year after 
year, at the highest levels in this country we have seen since back in 
1995, when one out of seven people in this country now find themselves, 
unfortunately, on food stamps.

                              {time}  1710

  Forty-seven million of our friends and neighbors find themselves in 
that situation. One out of six Americans will be on Medicaid. Are you 
better off today than you were in the past? Absolutely not. And that's 
why it's astonishing as I stand here to listen to the other side of the 
aisle and the proposals that they presented so far and that they have 
over the years.
  For the last hour of the debate, the gentleman from Maryland has been 
saying one or two basic things, but one primary thing is that he went 
to Rules last night, that he had a plan. He pulled out his plan and he 
said, This is what the solution is. This is how we solve the problem. 
But the problem was that that mean old Rules Committee just wouldn't 
allow him to have it come down to the floor tonight.
  Well, my friend and colleague from South Carolina made the 
recommendation to him: Take that proposal. If that is truly the answer 
in your heart, it's the right answer, that is truly the way to go, and 
lay it out. If you really do believe that the solution to the problem 
is by raising taxes to the tune of $85 billion and cutting spending to 
the extent that there's only a net reduction of $5 billion; if you 
truly do believe, as you said for the last hour, that the way to 
resolve the issue of sequester is by raising taxes by $3 for every $1 
in cuts; if you truly believe, and for the last hour, as he has said, 
that is the solution to the problem, then he could have come here and 
presented an alternative in this format. But he has not done so.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Will the gentleman yield?
  That's just not true. We asked the Parliamentarian, and they said we 
couldn't bring it in that format because of the rule.
  Mr. GARRETT. Reclaiming my time, what we have here before us is a 
lack of direction, a lack of leadership that America is so looking for 
out of Washington. The American public is looking for leadership from 
Washington. They're not seeing it from the President, who has failed to 
present a budget that would get any single vote in either the House or 
the Senate--97-0, 414-0. They're looking for the Senate to demonstrate 
some degree of vision, some degree of leadership by taking any of the 
bills that we send over to them, whether it's the budget or the 
sequester legislation, and showing that they can pass that legislation. 
They're looking for some degree of vision from the other side of the 
aisle in the House as well on these matters to make sure that we can 
stand up fiscally and a strong defense, and they're seeing a lack of 
vision here by the other side of the House as well.
  We know what writings tell us: A Nation without vision leads to a 
people that will perish. Well, Madam Speaker, I can tell you this: that 
the route these last 2 years, this Republican-controlled Congress has 
shown vision with our strong budget, with our sequester bill, and now 
with this bill as well to present the option to the other side, to the 
Senate, and to the President to make sure that we can defend this 
Nation strong militarily and fiscally as well.
  I would encourage all my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this motion to 
recommit, and I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the previous question is 
ordered on the motion to recommit.
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to recommit.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the noes appeared to have it.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  THE SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 9 of rule XX, the Chair 
will reduce to 5 minutes the minimum time for any electronic vote on 
the question of passage.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 170, 
nays 247, not voting 12, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 576]

                               YEAS--170

     Ackerman
     Andrews
     Baca
     Baldwin
     Barber
     Bass (CA)
     Becerra
     Berkley
     Berman
     Bishop (GA)
     Bishop (NY)
     Bonamici
     Boswell
     Brady (PA)
     Braley (IA)
     Brown (FL)
     Butterfield
     Capps
     Capuano
     Carnahan
     Carney
     Carson (IN)
     Castor (FL)
     Chu
     Cicilline
     Clarke (MI)
     Clarke (NY)
     Clay
     Cleaver
     Clyburn
     Cohen
     Connolly (VA)
     Conyers
     Cooper
     Costa
     Costello
     Courtney
     Crowley
     Cuellar
     Cummings
     Davis (CA)
     Davis (IL)
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     DeLauro
     Deutch
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Doggett
     Doyle
     Edwards
     Ellison
     Engel
     Eshoo
     Farr
     Fattah
     Filner
     Frank (MA)
     Fudge
     Gonzalez
     Green, Al
     Green, Gene
     Grijalva
     Gutierrez
     Hahn
     Hanabusa
     Hastings (FL)
     Heinrich
     Higgins
     Himes
     Hinchey
     Hinojosa
     Hirono
     Hochul
     Holden
     Holt
     Honda
     Hoyer
     Israel
     Jackson Lee (TX)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Kaptur
     Keating
     Kildee
     Kind
     Kucinich
     Langevin
     Larsen (WA)
     Larson (CT)
     Lee (CA)
     Levin
     Lewis (GA)
     Loebsack
     Lofgren, Zoe
     Lowey
     LujaAE1n
     Lynch
     Maloney
     Markey
     Matsui
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCollum
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McNerney
     Meeks
     Michaud
     Miller (NC)
     Miller, George
     Moore
     Moran
     Murphy (CT)
     Nadler
     Napolitano
     Neal
     Olver
     Owens
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Pastor (AZ)
     Pelosi
     Perlmutter
     Polis
     Price (NC)
     Quigley
     Rahall
     Rangel
     Reyes
     Richardson
     Richmond
     Rothman (NJ)
     Roybal-Allard
     Ruppersberger
     Rush
     Ryan (OH)
     Sanchez, Linda T.
     Sanchez, Loretta
     Sarbanes
     Schakowsky
     Schiff
     Schrader
     Schwartz
     Scott (VA)
     Scott, David
     Serrano
     Sewell
     Sherman
     Sires
     Slaughter
     Smith (WA)
     Speier
     Stark
     Sutton
     Thompson (CA)
     Thompson (MS)
     Tierney
     Tonko
     Tsongas
     Van Hollen
     Velazquez
     Visclosky
     Walz (MN)
     Wasserman Schultz
     Waters
     Watt
     Waxman
     Welch
     Wilson (FL)
     Woolsey
     Yarmuth

                               NAYS--247

     Adams
     Aderholt
     Alexander
     Altmire
     Amash
     Amodei
     Austria
     Bachmann
     Barletta
     Barrow
     Bartlett
     Barton (TX)
     Bass (NH)
     Benishek
     Berg
     Biggert
     Bilbray
     Bilirakis
     Bishop (UT)
     Black
     Blackburn
     Bonner
     Bono Mack
     Boren
     Boustany
     Brady (TX)
     Brooks
     Buchanan
     Bucshon
     Buerkle
     Burgess
     Burton (IN)
     Calvert
     Camp
     Campbell
     Canseco
     Cantor
     Capito
     Carter
     Cassidy
     Chabot
     Chaffetz
     Chandler
     Coble
     Coffman (CO)
     Cole
     Conaway
     Cravaack
     Crawford
     Crenshaw
     Culberson
     Denham
     Dent
     DesJarlais
     Diaz-Balart
     Dold
     Donnelly (IN)
     Dreier
     Duffy
     Duncan (SC)
     Duncan (TN)
     Ellmers
     Emerson
     Farenthold
     Fincher
     Fitzpatrick
     Flake
     Fleischmann
     Fleming
     Flores
     Forbes
     Fortenberry
     Foxx
     Franks (AZ)
     Frelinghuysen
     Gallegly
     Gardner
     Garrett
     Gerlach
     Gibbs
     Gibson
     Gingrey (GA)
     Gohmert
     Goodlatte
     Gosar
     Gowdy
     Granger
     Graves (GA)
     Graves (MO)
     Griffin (AR)
     Griffith (VA)
     Grimm
     Guinta
     Guthrie
     Hall
     Hanna
     Harper
     Harris
     Hartzler
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayworth
     Heck
     Hensarling
     Herrera Beutler
     Huelskamp
     Huizenga (MI)
     Hultgren
     Hunter

[[Page H5969]]

     Hurt
     Issa
     Jenkins
     Johnson (IL)
     Johnson (OH)
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones
     Jordan
     Kelly
     King (IA)
     Kingston
     Kinzinger (IL)
     Kissell
     Kline
     Labrador
     Lamborn
     Lance
     Landry
     Lankford
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Latta
     Lewis (CA)
     Lipinski
     LoBiondo
     Long
     Lucas
     Luetkemeyer
     Lummis
     Lungren, Daniel E.
     Mack
     Manzullo
     Marchant
     Marino
     Matheson
     McCarthy (CA)
     McCaul
     McClintock
     McHenry
     McIntyre
     McKeon
     McKinley
     McMorris Rodgers
     Meehan
     Mica
     Miller (FL)
     Miller (MI)
     Miller, Gary
     Mulvaney
     Murphy (PA)
     Myrick
     Neugebauer
     Noem
     Nugent
     Nunes
     Nunnelee
     Olson
     Palazzo
     Paul
     Paulsen
     Pearce
     Pence
     Peters
     Peterson
     Petri
     Pingree (ME)
     Pitts
     Platts
     Poe (TX)
     Pompeo
     Posey
     Price (GA)
     Quayle
     Reed
     Rehberg
     Reichert
     Renacci
     Ribble
     Rigell
     Rivera
     Roby
     Roe (TN)
     Rogers (AL)
     Rogers (KY)
     Rogers (MI)
     Rohrabacher
     Rokita
     Rooney
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Roskam
     Ross (FL)
     Royce
     Runyan
     Ryan (WI)
     Scalise
     Schilling
     Schmidt
     Schock
     Schweikert
     Scott (SC)
     Scott, Austin
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shimkus
     Shuler
     Shuster
     Simpson
     Smith (NE)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Southerland
     Stearns
     Stivers
     Stutzman
     Sullivan
     Terry
     Thompson (PA)
     Thornberry
     Tiberi
     Tipton
     Turner (NY)
     Turner (OH)
     Upton
     Walberg
     Walden
     Walsh (IL)
     Webster
     West
     Westmoreland
     Whitfield
     Wilson (SC)
     Wittman
     Wolf
     Womack
     Woodall
     Yoder
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)
     Young (IN)

                             NOT VOTING--12

     Akin
     Bachus
     Blumenauer
     Broun (GA)
     Critz
     Garamendi
     Herger
     Jackson (IL)
     Johnson (GA)
     King (NY)
     Ross (AR)
     Towns

                              {time}  1733

  Messrs. KISSELL, FORTENBERRY and LIPINSKI changed their vote from 
``yea'' to ``nay.''
  Mr. BERMAN changed his vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
  So the motion to recommit was rejected.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the passage of the bill.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the noes appeared to have it.

                             Recorded Vote

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
  A recorded vote was ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. This will be a 5-minute vote.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 223, 
noes 196, not voting 10, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 577]

                               AYES--223

     Adams
     Aderholt
     Alexander
     Amodei
     Austria
     Bachmann
     Bachus
     Barletta
     Bartlett
     Benishek
     Berg
     Biggert
     Bilbray
     Bilirakis
     Bishop (UT)
     Black
     Blackburn
     Bonner
     Bono Mack
     Boustany
     Brady (TX)
     Brooks
     Buchanan
     Bucshon
     Buerkle
     Burgess
     Calvert
     Camp
     Campbell
     Canseco
     Cantor
     Capito
     Carter
     Cassidy
     Chabot
     Chaffetz
     Coble
     Coffman (CO)
     Cole
     Conaway
     Cravaack
     Crawford
     Crenshaw
     Culberson
     Denham
     Dent
     DesJarlais
     Diaz-Balart
     Dold
     Donnelly (IN)
     Dreier
     Duffy
     Duncan (SC)
     Ellmers
     Emerson
     Farenthold
     Fincher
     Fitzpatrick
     Flake
     Fleischmann
     Fleming
     Flores
     Forbes
     Fortenberry
     Foxx
     Franks (AZ)
     Frelinghuysen
     Gallegly
     Gardner
     Garrett
     Gerlach
     Gibbs
     Gibson
     Gingrey (GA)
     Gohmert
     Goodlatte
     Gosar
     Gowdy
     Granger
     Graves (GA)
     Graves (MO)
     Griffin (AR)
     Griffith (VA)
     Grimm
     Guinta
     Guthrie
     Hall
     Hanna
     Harper
     Harris
     Hartzler
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayworth
     Heck
     Hensarling
     Huelskamp
     Huizenga (MI)
     Hultgren
     Hunter
     Hurt
     Issa
     Jenkins
     Johnson (OH)
     Johnson, Sam
     Jordan
     Kelly
     King (IA)
     Kingston
     Kinzinger (IL)
     Kline
     Lamborn
     Lance
     Landry
     Lankford
     Latham
     Latta
     Lewis (CA)
     LoBiondo
     Long
     Lucas
     Luetkemeyer
     Lummis
     Lungren, Daniel E.
     Mack
     Manzullo
     Marchant
     Marino
     McCarthy (CA)
     McCaul
     McHenry
     McKeon
     McKinley
     McMorris Rodgers
     Meehan
     Mica
     Miller (FL)
     Miller (MI)
     Miller, Gary
     Mulvaney
     Murphy (PA)
     Myrick
     Neugebauer
     Noem
     Nugent
     Nunes
     Nunnelee
     Olson
     Palazzo
     Paulsen
     Pearce
     Pence
     Petri
     Pitts
     Platts
     Poe (TX)
     Pompeo
     Posey
     Price (GA)
     Quayle
     Reed
     Rehberg
     Reichert
     Renacci
     Ribble
     Rigell
     Rivera
     Roby
     Roe (TN)
     Rogers (AL)
     Rogers (KY)
     Rogers (MI)
     Rohrabacher
     Rokita
     Rooney
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Roskam
     Ross (FL)
     Royce
     Runyan
     Ryan (WI)
     Scalise
     Schilling
     Schmidt
     Schock
     Schweikert
     Scott (SC)
     Scott, Austin
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shimkus
     Shuster
     Simpson
     Smith (NE)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Southerland
     Stearns
     Stivers
     Stutzman
     Sullivan
     Terry
     Thompson (PA)
     Thornberry
     Tiberi
     Tipton
     Turner (NY)
     Turner (OH)
     Upton
     Walberg
     Walden
     Walsh (IL)
     Webster
     West
     Westmoreland
     Whitfield
     Wilson (SC)
     Wittman
     Womack
     Woodall
     Yoder
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)
     Young (IN)

                               NOES--196

     Ackerman
     Altmire
     Amash
     Andrews
     Baca
     Baldwin
     Barber
     Barrow
     Barton (TX)
     Bass (CA)
     Bass (NH)
     Becerra
     Berkley
     Berman
     Bishop (GA)
     Bishop (NY)
     Bonamici
     Boren
     Boswell
     Brady (PA)
     Braley (IA)
     Brown (FL)
     Butterfield
     Capps
     Capuano
     Carnahan
     Carney
     Carson (IN)
     Castor (FL)
     Chandler
     Chu
     Cicilline
     Clarke (MI)
     Clarke (NY)
     Clay
     Cleaver
     Clyburn
     Cohen
     Connolly (VA)
     Conyers
     Cooper
     Costa
     Costello
     Courtney
     Critz
     Crowley
     Cuellar
     Cummings
     Davis (CA)
     Davis (IL)
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     DeLauro
     Deutch
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Doggett
     Doyle
     Duncan (TN)
     Edwards
     Ellison
     Engel
     Eshoo
     Farr
     Fattah
     Filner
     Frank (MA)
     Fudge
     Gonzalez
     Green, Al
     Green, Gene
     Grijalva
     Gutierrez
     Hahn
     Hanabusa
     Hastings (FL)
     Heinrich
     Herrera Beutler
     Higgins
     Himes
     Hinchey
     Hinojosa
     Hirono
     Hochul
     Holden
     Holt
     Honda
     Hoyer
     Israel
     Jackson Lee (TX)
     Johnson (GA)
     Johnson (IL)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Jones
     Kaptur
     Keating
     Kildee
     Kind
     Kissell
     Kucinich
     Labrador
     Langevin
     Larsen (WA)
     Larson (CT)
     LaTourette
     Lee (CA)
     Levin
     Lewis (GA)
     Lipinski
     Loebsack
     Lofgren, Zoe
     Lowey
     Lujan
     Lynch
     Maloney
     Markey
     Matheson
     Matsui
     McCarthy (NY)
     McClintock
     McCollum
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McIntyre
     McNerney
     Meeks
     Michaud
     Miller (NC)
     Miller, George
     Moore
     Moran
     Murphy (CT)
     Nadler
     Napolitano
     Neal
     Olver
     Owens
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Pastor (AZ)
     Paul
     Pelosi
     Perlmutter
     Peters
     Peterson
     Pingree (ME)
     Polis
     Price (NC)
     Quigley
     Rahall
     Rangel
     Reyes
     Richardson
     Richmond
     Rothman (NJ)
     Roybal-Allard
     Ruppersberger
     Rush
     Ryan (OH)
     Sanchez, Linda T.
     Sanchez, Loretta
     Sarbanes
     Schakowsky
     Schiff
     Schrader
     Schwartz
     Scott (VA)
     Scott, David
     Serrano
     Sewell
     Sherman
     Shuler
     Sires
     Slaughter
     Smith (WA)
     Speier
     Stark
     Sutton
     Thompson (CA)
     Thompson (MS)
     Tierney
     Tonko
     Tsongas
     Van Hollen
     Velazquez
     Visclosky
     Walz (MN)
     Wasserman Schultz
     Waters
     Watt
     Waxman
     Welch
     Wilson (FL)
     Wolf
     Woolsey
     Yarmuth

                             NOT VOTING--10

     Akin
     Blumenauer
     Broun (GA)
     Burton (IN)
     Garamendi
     Herger
     Jackson (IL)
     King (NY)
     Ross (AR)
     Towns

                              {time}  1742

  Mrs. SCHMIDT and Mr. GOWDY changed their vote from ``no'' to ``aye.''
  So the bill was passed.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________
```