And, Mr. Speaker, of course the lobbyists that come in, they would prefer that it be mandatory spending; so some of these programs, if they can write it in law that if they meet certain qualifications, they automatically get it and it does…

so there we come to the popular criticism that it is a tax cut for the rich, but because of the fact that that 50 percent of the population pay essentially very little of the income tax, when we have any kind of a tax cut, it tends to go…

today I am going to discuss what Congress is doing in the last several weeks and the next several months, and that is appropriating money. A week or so ago, most of the people in the United States were completing their tax bills. This is…

this pie chart shows that currently the interest that we are paying on the debt, servicing the debt, the interest is $240 billion a year. This represents 14 percent of the budget. Yet interest rates are almost at record low levels, and so…

Members are pretending that our problems today are so important that it justifies taking the money that our kids and grandkids have not even earned yet. It is sort of like breaking into their piggy bank and saying I will try and pay you…

our forefathers thought they were putting a little safeguard on it when they said if you ever increase the debt limit of this country, you have to vote in the House and the Senate, and it has to be signed by the President. They thought…

Mr. Speaker, the ranking member makes a good point, and maybe it is an opportune time to explain some of what goes into developing legislation. A lot of work from staff, Democrat staff and Republican staff on our committee. Kara Haas…

I think that the people of Hawaii are still wide awake and listening to this debate. Mr. Speaker, I am going to comment tonight not only on Social Security but what I consider a huge challenge for this country, and that is going deeper…

yes, we have had many conversations about Social Security including the stealing of the extra trust fund surplus that has been coming in. We have never been quite square with the American people.

this bill has several problems. The people of Michigan get even less money for their dollar than they did before. Currently, Michigan taxpayers get 88 cents back for every gas tax dollar that we pay to Washington for highway funding. Under…

this is a good budget we passed out of this House and sent to conference. I am hoping that the kind of frugal budget that we sent to conference is going to come back to this House for a final budget of the House and the Senate. One thing…

last week the actuaries of the Social Security Administration and the Medicare came up with their estimates of the predicament that we are facing in those two programs in terms of having less revenue, less money coming in than is needed to…

this year we celebrate Abraham Lincoln's 195th birthday. In his famous address at Gettysburg, he noted that ``our fathers brought forth on this continent a new Nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are…

a couple very important events are happening today that significantly impact our kids and our grandkids. One is the budget that we are passing. Although it is the best budget, the leanest budget, that we have passed since 1996, this budget…

I would think our goal in this war on terror is to have a safer and better place in America and the rest of the world. I would suggest that we are moving ahead in that direction. Let me just read the resolution: ``Commends the Iraqi people…

let me commend the Committee on Rules and certainly the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw) for initiating these kinds of needed changes. My suggestion is, let us start dealing with some of the real problems of Social Security and move this…

with regard to the original bill that came over from the Senate, the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Baldwin) and I, have introduced, cosponsored, about six bills either to make the Chapter 12 permanent or to at least extend it. I would…

first let me thank Chairman Dreier, certainly Chairman Rohrabacher and the rest of the cosponsors of the bill. Let me also thank the scientists at JPL, at Cal Tech, at Cornell that not only have a tremendous amount of knowledge but a…

Our forests in this country are one of our strong resources that not only help us economically but also help the environment, and conserving the environment is important. Our forests certainly are an important part of Michigan, but they…

Nanotechnology is the science of the very small, and I thought I might use a visual aid today. So if my colleagues would take a hair out of their heads and pretend that it is hollow, they could fit 100,000 strands of nano-technology inside…

Actually, ``may'' is the exact language of the amendment. So it is a decision of the Federal Prison System whether they do the sole source contracting for their own use. So it still leaves flexibility, but it allows the prison system to…

part of our goal is to keep prisoners working, especially if they are working to take care of themselves. This amendment simply provides that the law would stay as it is now for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Federal Prison System…

I rise to support H. Res. 414. Recently, I met with a delegation of Chinese parliamentarians. China is undergoing huge changes that will alter relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China for decades to come…

I have got three simple reasons that I think the Pence amendment is good. First I would like to suggest, after serving 5 years in the Nixon administration, the wisdom and common sense in this body is just as good as it is in the Department…

I am going to talk for a little while about another dilemma facing this country, and that is the problem of keeping Social Security solvent. We developed a program back in 1934 that provided that existing workers pay in their taxes, and…