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I thank the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Woodall, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. I ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

M. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this rule. It is totally closed and it denies Democrats - led by Mr. Van Hollen - a substitute. We are not asking for dozens of amendments or for something that hasn't been done in the past in regards to reconciliation bills.

All we are asking for is one vote on our substitute, on what we believe is a better alternative to the Republican bill. Last night in the Rules Committee, every single Republican voted to deny Democrats that opportunity.

M. Speaker, as one who doesn't believe in arbitrary and thoughtless across-the-board cuts as a way to balance our budget - I want to support Mr. Van Hollen's substitute in order to avoid the implementation of the Budget Control Act's sequester. To allow sequester to go into full effect would be bad for the country.

We are here, in this awful mess, because the so-called Super Committee failed to reach agreement last fall on a comprehensive and balanced deficit reduction plan - due, in very large measure, to the absolute refusal of Republicans to put revenues on the table.

Bowles-Simpson, Rivlin-Domenici, and the Gang of Six all had deficit reduction proposals that sought to be balanced with both spending cuts and revenues. They realized that you can't solve our long-term fiscal problems by slashing and burning the last century of social progress in America.

But today, my Republican friends have brought to the floor a reconciliation bill that make sequestration look good.

What's going on here is very simple. Very troubling, but very simple.

They are protecting the massive Pentagon budget with all its waste - by exempting it from sequestration - and finding even deeper cuts in programs that benefit the people of this country. This bill before us would create a government where there is no conscience; where the wealthy and well connected are protected and enriched - and the middle class, the poor, and the vulnerable are essentially forgotten.

I've never seen anything like this. It's outrageous.

It takes my breath away.

My Republican friends won't cut the billions in subsidies for big oil, at a time when oil companies are making record profits and gouging Americans at the pump. They won't address the inequities in the tax code which allows billionaire Warren Buffett to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. The revenues from fixing these two unjust policies would result in billions and billions of dollars in deficit reduction. But the Republicans have protected big oil and billionaires.

However, my Republican friends take a meat axe to SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps. This is a program to help poor people afford food.

My friends on the other side of the aisle should heed the words of President John F. Kennedy, quote -if a free society will not help the many who are poor, they cannot save the few who are rich- end quote.

M. Speaker, we are one country. We should care about one another - especially those who are most vulnerable.

That's not a weakness or something we should be ashamed of. Rather, it's something that makes us strong and great.

As my friends know, I've spent a lot of time and effort in Congress on the issues of hunger, food insecurity and nutrition. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens don't have enough to eat - and every single one of us, Democrats and Republicans alike, should be ashamed.

That's why I am so outraged by the $36 billion in SNAP cuts.

This notion that SNAP promotes a culture of dependency, that SNAP is a golden ticket to prosperity, is just wrong. Some on the Republican side have even claimed that SNAP enslaves Americans. Give me a break.

In fact, even in 2010, even when unemployment was close to 10% and jobs were scarce, the majority of SNAP households with a non-disabled working-age adult were working households.

Working families are trying to earn more. No one wakes up in the morning dreaming to be on SNAP, but these are tough economic times. Some people have no choice. But we know that SNAP enrollment - and spending on SNAP - will go down as the economy improves, as families see their incomes rise and no longer need SNAP to feed their families. Don't take my word for it; this is directly from the Congressional Budget Office.

Of course, last night in the Rules Committee we heard the tired line that there's a lot of abuse in the SNAP program. We heard that there are countless numbers of people receiving benefits who do not deserve them. That, M. Speaker, is simply not true.

It's a common and unfortunate misconception that SNAP is rife with fraud, waste and abuse. Many have decried SNAP as a handout that can be sold or traded for alcohol and other items that shouldn't be purchased with taxpayer funds. It cannot. SNAP is both effective and efficient. In fact, the error rate for SNAP is not only at an all-time low; it has among the lowest - if not the lowest - error rate of any federal program.

Last night, we also heard a lot about Categorical Eligibility, a process in which a low-income person is automatically eligible for food stamps if they are already enrolled in another low-income assistance program. Categorical Eligibility makes it easier for poor people - those who are already approved for other low-income assistance programs - to receive SNAP benefits. But it also makes it easier on the states that have to administer these programs. This saves time and money because people who are already eligible for similarly-administered benefits do not have to reapply for SNAP and states do not have to waste valuable worker hours processing paperwork for people who are already eligible based on their incomes. Categorical Eligibility does not mean that people who don't qualify for SNAP get those benefits. To the contrary, people still have to qualify for the program to receive food. Any claim that this is a fraudulent practice or that it is rife with abuse is just another falsehood and smear against one of the most efficient federal programs.

Cutting $33 billion means that more than 22 million households will see a cut in their benefit. This means 22 million families will have less food tomorrow than they do today. In fact, 2 million people would be cut from SNAP altogether. And 280,000 kids would lose access to free school meals. My friends on the other side of the aisle don't like to hear this, but sometimes the truth hurts: If the bill before us becomes law, it will take food out of the mouths of children in America - all in the name of protecting tax cuts for the wealthy and increased defense spending.

The Republican reconciliation bill threatens Medicare, children's programs, education, infrastructure - in short, it threatens our economy as a whole.

But the bill not only protects the Pentagon budget, it increases it by billions of dollars. Does anyone here believe there's not a single dollar to be saved anywhere in the Pentagon?

We have - and we will continue to have - the greatest, strongest military on the face of the earth. But at some point, national security means more than throwing billions of dollars at pie-in-the-sky Star Wars programs that will never actually materialize. It means taking care of our own people. It means educating our children. It means an infrastructure that isn't crumbling around us. It means clean air and clean water and a health care system that works.

Those should be our priorities. Those are not the priorities in the bill before us today.

Of course, Senator Reid says this bill is dead in the water in the Senate. In a press conference yesterday, the Senate Majority Leader said, quote, -As long as Republicans refuse to consider a more reasonable approach - one that asks every American to pay his fair share while making difficult choices to reduce spending - the sequester is the only path forward- end quote. That's a pretty clear statement that the Senate will not consider this bill.

And that's the right thing to do. A reasonable approach is what the American people want. Yes, they want us to get our fiscal house in order. They want us to reduce the deficit in a fair way, so that the very wealthiest among us pay their fair share. But mostly the American people want jobs - something the House Republican leadership continues to ignore. They want the economy to improve. They want their lives to get better. This bill doesn't do that.

M. Speaker, let me conclude by quoting President Dwight Eisenhower in a speech he made in 1953. Quote - -Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed- - end quote.

I'm afraid that President Eisenhower wouldn't recognize today's Republican Party. We should reject this rule and the underlying bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.