Roy Blunt

I thank the committee for bringing this bill to the floor. I think the fundamental point here is that no school district has to lose money or will lose money under this bill. This is not about school districts losing money. This is about…

today we took the first vote in what may be a series of votes on how we deal with our constitutional responsibility. It was an important vote, because it was a vote to be fully inclusive, not only of every Member of the House, but to be as…

I also am glad to hear the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) say what he had to say about the Virginia law. Mr. Chairman, this just simply includes children in the chain of responsibility. It does not exclude the ability to hold others…

Let me also say that I think this is essentially the same kind of campaign reform that the House voted for on February 12, a bill that the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) introduced, a bill that the chief election official from…

If I heard the previous speaker correctly, and Shays-Meehan already allows this in all probability, why do we not just be specific about it? This really just says that you can contact, you can encourage others to contact a Member of the…

if the gentleman would help me here for a minute, figure this out, if you cannot mention the name of a Member of Congress on anything you pay for, including a postcard, within 60 days of the election, how do you alert others who feel the…

I think there are viable laws that do come into effect here. The Doolittle amendment specifically talks about voter guides. If the voter guide that some group sends out is untruthful, there is recourse in that. I think for the Congress to…

I would also say that when we put the word ``reasonable'' in the law itself, we really create a barrier to groups who do not want to throw their money away; to groups who clearly cannot spend all their time in court, and who see…

I think it is clear that the job of the Congress is not to be comfortable. The job of a Member of Congress is to represent the people of their district and for that, the way they do that, to be an item of public debate. Certainly, if…

The Shays-Meehan bill is an attempt by incumbents, incumbents, to decide what you say is the truth, not the courts. They want this Congress to decide and set up regulations to regulate people's participation in the process. We want to get…

I do not think we can have campaign finance reform outside of the context of election reform. There are certainly those in this House who would like to talk about only one element of what is wrong with our campaigns. This rule allows more…

it is time to scrap the Tax Code. ``Scrap the Code'' has been a slogan for tax reformers for years now, but today we have an opportunity to take the first step toward its realization. Today on the House floor is an opportunity to vote the…

Then if the Congress later decides that they want to limit the speech of the news media, why could you not do that? Why could you not limit the coverage that news organizations give in the last days of the campaign? Why could you not…

today we have really started what can be a great debate in this House. We are often frustrated by how long the Senate takes to talk about the ideas that they talk about. We are also often frustrated by the fact that we do not have the time…

As I understand it, the community seal does not look like this anymore. The community seal still has these three reflections of community, but this is now a blank spot.

It is hard to think of anything else that 98 percent of all Americans would believe in that we would have to eradicate from our discussion, from our symbols, from our public places of assembly. In fact, I am not sure there is anything else…

There is a blank spot. So where there was faith, there is now a blank spot. Where the community used to say we are a community based on faith, there is now a blank spot. We have got a community in my district in southwest Missouri, the…

So our research here indicates this is a universal kind of symbol that reflects faith, religion, not exclusive, but reflective of something that that community would think was important.

everything seems to be protected in our society except those things that relate to faith. In Edmond, Oklahoma, this cross was a symbol of faith. I do not think they came up with anything that was acceptable to replace that symbol so far as…

Every poll I see, if the gentleman would yield, indicates that 98 percent of Americans believe in God.

for 40 years, as Americans watched the Tax Code grow to 5.5 million words, special interests were gaining power at the expense of working families, families who formed the backbone of America, who work hard, play by the rules, and pay more…

next week we have a chance to give taxpayers some tax relief simply by spending their tax dollars the way they were supposed to be spent. We are going to be dealing in the House with a highway bill that has the potential to take the…

in spite of the fact that the United States has the most advanced health care system in the world, 3 percent of our children are born with birth defects. Approximately 150,000 babies are born each year in this country with a serious birth…

Let me say in that regard, the President, I think yesterday, started right down the path that we all should anticipate in the fight to sunset the Tax Code. The President said, if we sunset the Tax Code, we would not have mortgage…

we did get good news yesterday, and that good news was that for the first time in 30 years, the Federal Government is about to pay its bills. For the first time in 30 years, we are about to run a surplus, not a deficit. But we also need to…