Xavier Becerra

let me mention one other provision within this amendment that does cause some concern, and that is a change again that was made to what came out of committee, the Committee on the Judiciary, in the immigration bill. That is a change that…

I would like to spend the remainder of the time that we have on this side to engage the chairman of the subcommittee in a colloquy and also discuss some aspects of this bill that are of concern. First, before we engage in the colloquy, I…

I must, unfortunately, still say I oppose the bill for a number of reasons. I do not believe, unfortunately, that what we have before us is a bill that really does reform, in a meaningful way, legal immigration. And I believe that we have…

But the bill itself no longer has that tester section. It was taken out of the bill, before the bill was coming to the House.

In fact, as the gentleman from California knows, under the Democratic watch 2 years ago and with a Democratic President, for the first time in the history of this country we got a President who was willing to give moneys to States to…

I just am wondering why we do it for some groups and not others, and it seems to me that this legislation, I hope, is going to be meaningful reform. We have another amendment that is part of the en bloc, which I see here would require the…

Mr. Chairman, this bill goes the final step and says, ``If we catch you, you can never return.'' It takes into account not one bit what the circumstances may have been for that individual who was in the country. If that individual happened…

Mr. Speaker, first let us all agree that what happened a week ago that took the lives of several Americans was regrettable and should not have happened, but it is always bad policy when you try to achieve political ends through economic…

Mr. Chairman, I was listening to the debate and watching the debate from my office when I was compelled to come here, because, as I remember, during the debate on the appropriations bill dealing with education programs, with programs for…

let us not forget that the Ma Bell operating company, AT&T was broken up because the company used its control of local telephone companies to frustrate long-distance competition. It was the Justice Department that pursued the case against…

here in today's newspaper, USA Today, ``Nation rates average in school reform,''. Only ``average''. Yet today we will debate a bill that cuts education dramatically. It cuts the money that we provide schools to help kids who need help…

we hear in this debate that we are being told that some programs have to be trimmed, we have to trim this tree; Head Start, for example, is being penalized because some programs apparently did not run or were not managed as well as they…

Mr. Chairman, my father has never skied in his life, my father has never played tennis in his life. I doubt he even wore a pair of skis or touched a tennis racquet in his life. But for more than 50 years he did work with a pick and shovel…

we have just provided to the privileged few in this Nation, the opportunity to have massive tax cuts. I would like to have an opportunity to go through a few of the things that we have just heard discussed over the last several hours of…

there is nothing wrong with tax cuts. Obviously, it is great if we can give the American people a tax cut. Two questions we have to ask, though, are: Is it being done equitably and can we afford to pay for the tax cuts, because somewhere…

So the schools will have to do with a little bit more money, but with more kids and inflation on top of that.

I want to quote something that was said by the new chairman of the Committee on the Budget, Mr. John Kasich, who said this about deficit reduction. ``I do not think that Republican special interest programs ought to be spared. I think we…

So in other words, the Republican proposals do increase from this current fiscal year what will be allotted next year, but they do not cover the true costs because they do not take into account the growth in the number of kids in the…

I would say that the majority is not just denying the four of us, the majority of this House is now denying the American people the chance to express itself and that must change.

we should give some detail because the gentleman who spoke earlier about this and said we are actually increasing the budgets over the next several years for those school, those child nutrition programs wants to leave the impression that…

Mr. Becerra deserves particular praise because this may be the only discussion we have an opportunity to have about priorities under the way this bill is going to be brought to the floor, and I want to speak for just a few minutes about…

I consider myself someone who is the fruits of much of the work of people like the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Lewis], and I think it is only a tribute to the folks like him that we have a chance to come before here, and speak and say how…

There are estimates it might be over $250 billion over 5 years. The capital gains program alone will cost about $55 billion the first 5 years. There are some estimates that after 10 years that goes up to about $210 billion.

It seems to be absurd. We are talking so much these days about reforming welfare, and we always seem to forget that welfare comes in many shapes and in many sizes and in some cases big sizes. When you take a look at the fact that welfare…

That is correct. These are the same folks, too, who are saying we cannot afford to increase the minimum wage from $4.25 an hour.