Date: 2012-09-19
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker. it may be a voluntary checkoff. but the money is not voluntary. It is part of the income tax you are required to pay. While we all do support government. I would wonder. if you made the income tax entirely voluntary. whether we could get anything close to what we do now. It is. in fact. the tax that you must pay. So that part is not voluntary. Secondly. Im surprised that one would not want to attribute this to reducing the deficit even though its only $36 million. as suggested by the other side. If we cant even do this here. what confidence can the American people have that we would deal with the tougher issues and larger amounts? If $36 million is too difficult for us to use to somehow reduce the deficit. what hope is there that we can do anything seriously in this Congress or Congresses in the future? I must respond to the repeated suggestion that we have done nothing in this Congress. The Obama administration would be surprised. since they said that the FISA amendments. which we passed on this floor with 301 positive votes. were the number one priority for the administration in the area of intelligence. In the aftermath of what happened just a couple of weeks ago. one would think that we would understand the seriousness of intelligence. And that which is the greatest tool. according to the DNI currently and previous DNIs. that tool. which got strong bipartisan support. was indeed an important thing for us to do here. We had three free trade agreements that we finally approved. They have been waiting around for a number of years. The consensus is they create jobs in this economy and give us a fair playing field in which our workers can compete. We had a transportation bill that we passed. We dealt with the interest paid on student loans. And I would just say. for 2 years in a row. we have. in fact. spent less on discretionary spending than we did the preceding year. I think thats the first time weve done that in a generation. There are other things that I could talk about. It is a shame that the other body has not acted on the nearly 30 bills weve sent over there that deal with jobs. Oh. yes. we also had my bill. H.R. 4. which repealed that section of the Presidents health care bill that placed an inordinate paperwork burden on small business. and that was the number one priority of the small business community in the country. I wish we would do more. I wish we would have the cooperation of the other body. Its very difficult to negotiate when the other party wont come to the table or even articulate what their position is. but. nonetheless. I would suggest that those things I have spoken about are not unimportant. But. of course. thats a digression because thats not talking about the bill before us. The bill before us is a simple bill. All it does is say that the partys over. The taxpayer will no longer pay with taxpayer dollars for the conventions of the two national parties. Doesnt stop them from having their conventions. doesnt denigrate their conventions. doesnt take them off television. it just says the American taxpayer will not pay for it. Were going to save $36 million. Fairly straight forward. fairly simple. I would hope that we would have a strong bipartisan vote for this. because it is truly a bipartisan problem and timely. because many of our constituents. at least when I was home in the district. said. Why are you in the Congress voting to put taxpayer dollars for these conventions? That was a tough question to answer. We can answer that question here in a very bipartisan way by passing this bill. With that. I would ask my colleagues to support H.R. 5912. and I yield back the balance of my time.