Jason Chaffetz: “Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the spirit in which that is asked. I would hope the gentleman would join me in…”

“Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the spirit in which that is asked. I would hope the gentleman would join me in cosponsoring H.R. 1564, the Members of Congress Tax Accountability Act. There are constitutional reasons why we can't include them in this provision, but this bill has been referred to the Committee on House Administration, and I would encourage all Members to get behind this because there should be a higher standard for Members of Congress. That should be more readily available to the public. You should have to disclose that liability. Right now, you don't. So I introduced that bill as well. I would also argue that Federal employees taking taxpayer dollars have a high standard and that the evidence that we have--and I have said it repeatedly, and I know the gentleman has heard this--Mr. Speaker, Mr. Hoyer voted in favor of this same bill years ago, and it has worked. I have never heard anybody say, ``This is a problem. We have got to change this. We have got to take it out.'' I have never heard anybody offer an amendment. In fact, we accepted 100 percent, every amendment that was offered by the Democrats. We accepted them. We accepted them. I want to tackle a couple other things.”