mr. speaker , i yield myself 13 minutes . 
mr. speaker , i do not know quite what to say about this continuing resolution . 
i have a lot of notes here , most of which i will not use , but let me simply note that this is another case of the failure to effectively govern by the republican president and the republican majority in this congress . 
we are here facing an end of the fiscal year situation 3 days from now . 
we have failed in the basic test of governing , and i think it is important to understand why . 
throughout the year , we on the democratic side of the aisle , in the minority , have worked with the majority on every possible procedural issue and cooperated with them procedurally at every juncture so that we could enable this house to pass the 10 appropriation bills that are necessary to pass , even though we disagreed in most instances with the content of those bills . 
when i was asked by numerous members of my caucus and a number of members of the press why we were cooperating procedurally when we opposed the substance of many of the bills , i made it clear . 
i said we were cooperating because i wanted the record to show at the end of the year , when the republican majority failed to pass its appropriation bills by the end of the year , i wanted the record to show clearly why . 
now we are here and in spite of our procedural cooperation , the republican majority has managed to pass only two of the 10 appropriation bills under our responsibility . 
why ? 
in my view it is because the majority caucus has such a fundamental disrespect for the basic functions of government that it has sacrificed and squeezed so many education and health and veterans and other programs in order to pay for huge , supersize tax cuts for the most wealthy among us , that , in the end , they have not been able to convince their senate colleagues to go along and go on record and endorse those cuts . 
so now we are faced with a stopgap funding bill which is brought to the house floor by the gentleman from california . 
normally , if congress fails to pass its appropriation bills , then it continues funding at the existing rate until congress can get its act together . 
instead , this bill does something quite different . 
it says that for the time period under the continuing resolution , we will be spending at the lower of either last year or the house-passed bill or the senate-passed bill . 
that results in a number of , i think , extremely inequitable realities . 
it , for instance , means that we are effectively cutting in health care , it means that we are cutting maternal and child health care , and we are cutting rural health outreach programs . 
it means that we are cutting the community service block grant , a program which deals with the needs of the poorest people in this society by 50 percent . 
it means that we are eliminating the 10 percent increase that this house had planned for veterans health care . 
it means that we are cutting the fbi by $ 616 million below the house-passed bill . 
it means that we are freezing low-income heating assistance at a time when the cost of home heating for low-income americans is going to rise by 40 to 50 percent . 
but it leaves intact , it leaves intact the huge , supersize tax cuts for the top 1 percent of earners in this society , people who make more than $ 400 , 000 a year . 
and it leaves in place the president 's edict , his unilateral edict in the wake of hurricane katrina , that the workers in the afflicted area who are trying to put that area back together are not even going to be allowed to get a decent prevailing wage that they would otherwise be guaranteed under davis-bacon . 
and yet while it is chiseling on the wages of those workers , it is saying to the persons who make over $ 400 , 000 a year , on average you are going to get a $ 32 , 000 tax cut . 
mr. speaker , $ 32 , 000 is a lot more than a lot of people in this country make in a year . 
a huge percentage of my district makes less than that $ 32 , 000 . 
but we are going to give an average $ 32 , 000 tax cut to the people in this society who need it least . 
the bill also assures the death of one part of the farm bill that was passed 3 years ago . 
it makes sure that the only major farm bill that is going to expire is the program that is given some financial support to the smallest farmers in this country , the milc program . 
now , the question is being asked in this town , `` how are we going to pay for hurricane katrina ? 
`` in my judgment , mr. speaker , that is the wrong question . 
katrina , no matter what the eventual cost is and it is going to be large . 
it is going to be somewhere between $ 100 billion and $ 200 billion , i expect . 
let us say it is $ 100 billion . 
that is a huge amount of money . 
but this economy is large enough to handle that because it is essentially a one-time bubble . 
even though it will be spent out over the next 3 or 4 years , it is a one-time event , and this economy is always big enough to handle that . 
but the right question to be asking is not how are we going to pay for katrina ? 
the right question is : `` how are we going to be able to pay for the decisions already made by the republican majority of this congress and the white house to give away to the wealthiest people in this society , the top 1 percent , over $ 1 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade ? 
`` we are going to give away , in tax cuts to the top 1 percent , ten times as much as katrina is being estimated to cost . 
so the right question to ask is : `` what are we going to do so that we can afford to pay for the katrinas that come along and the iraqi war , where we have a war of choice driven by a president who misled us into that war by giving us false and misleading information ? 
`` so if the members vote for this continuing resolution today , they are voting to keep those giant tax cuts in place . 
they are voting to do not one blessed thing to deal with the long-term fiscal impact that they have on the country and , yes , will be chiseling on some of the programs that i just mentioned . 
mr. speaker , i am going to offer a motion to recommit , which does a number of things . 
i am going to offer a motion to recommit , which , number one , would provide that the funding levels in this bill be at the current rate rather than the three-headed rate spelled out by the gentleman , so that we do not , even for a month , cut back on what we are doing on job training or community service block grants or low-income heating assistance or other programs like that . 
second , it will ask that we treat all farm programs the same . 
third , it will restore davis-bacon prevailing wages . 
it will countermand the president 's unilateral edict . 
and that is basically what i will be asking the house to do . 
under the rules of the house , as they have been jury-rigged , under the rule of the house , if a member of the house lodges a point of order , this motion to recommit will not be allowed to obtain a vote . 
but if persons on the majority side of the aisle refrain from lodging a point of order , then the house would be allowed to vote on a measure which restores equity to the farm programs , on a measure which restores equity to funding levels for all programs , and it would restore davis-bacon protections for workers as well . 
and it would also , i should add , instruct the congress to come back with a change in the tax code so that we limit the size of the tax cuts for people who make over $ 400 , 000 to the size received by persons in the top 5 percent of the economy . 
that means they still get at least a $ 9 , 000 tax cut on average . 
that is not bad . 
to those in the majority side of the aisle who say that we should not be doing that , i would say that does not surprise me because that represents the economic philosophy of the majority party . 
to those on the democratic side of the aisle who might find it a little nerve-racking to vote to scale back tax cuts even for those well-off folks , my suggestion is if they can not even stand up and do that , they might as well go and cross the aisle . 
