Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1473, Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011; Providing for Consideration of H. Con. Res. 35, Correcting the Enrollment of H.R. 1473; And Providing for Consideration of H. Con. Res. 36,

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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I thank the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee for the time here. And I thank him for the diligent work that he continues to do as chair of the Rules Committee, the sort of traffic cop for the bills that reach this floor.

I want to expand a bit, Madam Speaker, on a point that Chairman Dreier alluded to earlier, and that is the historic nature of the bill that we will be considering on the floor. As the chairman pointed out, under Speaker Pelosi, discretionary spending in those 2 years increased by 82 percent--a record. With this bill, we not only are arresting that growth, but we are receding actual discretionary spending by a record amount, nearly $40 billion in actual cuts in spending. That has not ever been accomplished by this body in its history, in the history of the country. The cuts in this bill exceed anything ever passed by the House. It's the largest cut ever--by four times. The largest previous single cut was in 1995, when we cut around $9 billion. With this bill, you cut almost $40 billion.

Now I don't understand sometimes my friends on the other side of the aisle when they criticize this bill. It's being supported by your President. He says, pass the bill. It's what we agreed upon. It's being supported by Senator Reid, the leader on the Senate side. It's being supported by the Speaker of the House. And it's being supported by an overwhelming number of Members on this side of the aisle, and I predict a great number of Democrats likewise support the bill.

Now on the Defense portion of this bill, let me briefly refer to it. The provisions in this bill about the Defense budget are much like they were when all parties last December on both sides of the aisle in this body and on both sides of the aisle in the Senate body agreed to the expenditures for the Department of Defense. We simply lifted those agreed-upon provisions for the Defense Department and dropped them into this bill.

There are two people in this body that know more about Defense spending than any of the rest of us, and that's the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee on Appropriations, Bill Young of Florida, and my good friend, NORMAN DICKS, the ranking member of that subcommittee and the ranking member on the full Appropriations Committee. He worked long and hard with Bill Young for these provisions. And I salute him for it. It's good work. It does the right things. It cuts back on the President's request for Defense. It does increase in real dollars, about $5 billion, over the current spending rate. But we're in three wars. And there's no reason at all for us to shirk from the responsibility to provide adequate funding for our troops in combat. And that's the reason why, one of the big reasons why we support this bill, why the President supports the bill, and why Senator Reid and the Senate supports the bill.

And so let's focus on actual cuts in spending. We all profess that we want to cut back on the deficit for the year and for the ensuing years. The deficit this year, $1.4 trillion in just 1 year, the largest in history, adding to a debt that exceeds all of our fears of some $14.2 or $14.3 trillion. We all say, let's cut back on spending. Here is your chance. Here is your opportunity.

If you profess to be a fiscally responsible Member of this House, you have a chance, yea, an obligation, to vote for this bill and support it. It's historic. We've never been here before. We've reached a pinnacle and a great opportunity for us to show to the rest of the country that we're serious about controlling the free-spending nature of this body. This is your chance. Don't miss it.

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