Chris Van Hollen: “I thank my colleague, Mr. Levin. As the gentleman from Washington knows, these issues come up every year as to whether…”

“I thank my colleague, Mr. Levin. As the gentleman from Washington knows, these issues come up every year as to whether or not we should extend certain tax provisions, in this case the business tax provision, earlier the R&D tax provision. Those are provisions that we support, but we support doing them in a fiscally responsible way. In fact, the motion to recommit we will have will also say we should extend them for one more year while we get our act together here, Mr. Speaker, and do it in a way that doesn't run up the credit card by $600 billion, which is what the Ways and Means Committee has done in a period of 2 weeks--2 weeks--after spending days on the floor of this house a few months ago saying that the biggest threat to economic growth in the future was our budget deficit. {time} 1000 They say that 2 months ago, and then they waive their own rules to bring up these bills that increase our credit card debt to the tune of $600 billion total from what came out of the Ways and Means Committee, in violation of your own budget. That is what I object to.”