Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

We all know that the American people are hurting. We have a protracted unemployment problem that has gone on for an extended period of time, the longest period of time since the Great Depression, and it's important for us to realize the reasons for this.

One of the very important reasons for this is that we have seen a dramatic expansion of the size and scope and reach of government. During the 4 years that my friends on the other side of the aisle were in the majority, we witnessed an 82 percent increase in non-defense discretionary spending.

We now have a $15 trillion national debt, and I think Democrats and Republicans alike acknowledge that that cannot be sustained.

As I've been saying throughout this week, our job is jobs. Right now our job is jobs. We need to have a laser-like focus on creating job opportunities for our fellow Americans, people who are so frustrated they've given up the effort to look for work.

So that's why the things that we're dealing with today are so critically important to address those needs.

Now, since there has been bipartisan recognition that we can't continue down the road with an 82 percent increase in non-defense discretionary spending which we witnessed over the past several years, it's important for us to come together, and that's exactly what's happened.

This is Norm Dicks' birthday, and we're very happy about that. We're happy that on his birthday we're going to see a bipartisan agreement that will bring about a $95 billion reduction in non-defense discretionary spending. And that's what this work product does, Mr. Speaker.

And again, bipartisan recognition and even bicameral recognition, and even recognition from down Pennsylvania Avenue with the second branch [Page: H9820] of government, that we are right now altering the course that we had been on of dramatically increasing spending. And we're doing it, Mr. Speaker, in a very fair and balanced and open way.

[Time: 11:00] I don't like the process that got us to where we are right now. I said earlier that I believe that this multi-thousand-page package was available on Monday; it was agreed to on Monday; but it wasn't made available until early Thursday morning. Yet we are where we are, and there was an agreement. Mr. Inouye and Mr. Rogers came to this agreement on Monday.

We could have done this earlier, but we know that our friends in the other body chose--and as I said, I wasn't going to say it earlier, but it has been characterized in the media as having held hostage this very important appropriations bill. We also dealt with the threat of a government shutdown that would take place 13 hours from now. We are not going to see that happen. We are not going to see that happen because Mr. Dicks and Mr. Rogers and other members of the Appropriations Committees in both bodies--and the leadership--came together to ensure that that doesn't happen.

We still have a long way to go. We still have much work that needs to be done. But by the passage of this measure today, Mr. Speaker, we are going to do exactly what is necessary. We are going to finally have a clean slate. We've all commiserated over the fact that we've had this mess to clean up of the past. It's been ugly and it's been difficult; but we have, in fact, by virtue of this agreement cleaned it up so that we can continue to work down this path towards balancing the budget, getting our fiscal house in order, and doing what we need to do--our jobs, which is to create jobs.

I think we have a chance to do that.

So, Mr. Speaker, I urge support of this rule, and I urge support of the previous question so that we can move ahead and make sure that we have what's necessary to meet this very important deadline by midnight.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.