Chris Van Hollen

May I inquire as to how much time remains on both sides. The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from Maryland has 2\1/2\ minutes remaining, and the gentleman from Georgia has 15 seconds remaining.

It's true that our Republican colleagues are not going to have a partner for a totally lopsided, unbalanced approach, that, once again, minimizes the responsibility of the wealthiest of the country at the expense of everybody else. I yield…

I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Waters), and I congratulate her on becoming the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee.

A couple of points here. First, the chairman of the Budget Committee said that the President hadn't put any specific spending cuts on the table. That's just not true. His proposal has been available to the public for well over a year now…

Reserving the right to object, I just want to understand. Is this an amendment to the whistleblower bill or this is the whistleblower bill?

Reserving the right to object--and I will not object--I think the bill's good. We just passed by unanimous consent important measures, and I strongly support the whistleblower protection bill which will protect Federal employees against…

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…

I now yield 1 minute to the distinguished Democratic leader, the gentlelady from California (Ms. Pelosi).

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…

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…

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…

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…

I just would ask the gentleman, and I would yield to him for an answer, whether he means Bain Capital is a small business.

We tried trickle-down. We lived it; we saw a net job loss. But who picked up the tab? The rest of the country because it drove a huge hole in our deficit; and in order to deal with that, if we don't ask folks at the top to pay a little bit…

May I inquire as to how much time we have left. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Marchant). The gentleman from Maryland has 8 minutes remaining.

There was one other gentleman who said he was on his way. He's not here yet. If he is not here by the time you finish, we will close.

We have saved or created over three million jobs.

The recovery bill, the stimulus bill, helped the economy relative to not doing a stimulus, and the answer from CBO and 80 percent of economists is that it helped the economy.

The Republican budget that he supports would require a $5.2 trillion dollar increase in the debt ceiling.

I do think it is grossly irresponsible for anybody to threaten that the United States will not meet its obligations unless we enact somebody else's version of how to best reduce the budget.

I want to get back to fact we in the Democratic alternative budget proposed a balanced approach that combines needed cuts.

While it may somewhat reduce the amount of reduce the amount of risk and cost shift to seniors, it does not eliminate that problem.

My recollection is that the CBO analysis showed that it really just shifted a lot of the rising health care costs off the Medicare program and on to seniors, is that not right?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just pick up first where the chairman left off with some of his hypotheticals.

It's time for the GOP to put the needs of all American families ahead of millionaires and Big Oil companies.