mr. hensarling. mr. hensarling: mr. speaker, i'm very pleased now to yield four minutes to the chief republican sponsor of the swaps regulatory improvement act, which again passed our committee on a strong bipartisan basis of 53-6, i would like to yield four minutes to the gentleman from illinois, mr. hultgren. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from illinois is recognized for four minutes. mr. hultgren: thank you, mr. chairman. mr. speaker, i come to the floor today with tremendous pride not because the bill we are debating is my own but because we have the chance to help main street businesses and roll back one of the unintended consequences of dodd-frank. from its first addition, the lincoln amendment also called the swaps pushout or spinoff provision, has been hotly debated. section 716 of dodd-frank initially printed all swaps activities. however the conference process yielded some measure of compromise by exempting foreign exchange and interest rate swaps back in. by doing this the conferees ack

mr. hensarling: mr. speaker, it's my pleasure now to yield two minutes to the distinguished chairman of the committee on education and work force, the gentleman from minnesota, mr. kline. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from minnesota is recognized for two minutes. mr. kline: thank you, mr. speaker. i thank the gentleman for yielding. mr. speaker, it's been four years since the recession ended, yet economic growth is still anemic, job creation remains sluggish and wages are flat. with each passing day, countless americans feel they're falling further behind and in these difficult times, working families shouldn't need to fear yet another regulatory scheme that will make it more difficult to rebuild their retirement savings. that is why i support the retail investor protection act, legislation that will force the department of labor to hit the brakes on sweeping changes to the way workers save for retirement. for many americans, investing in a retirement plan can be confusing and frankly intimidati

mr. jeb hensarling. you still have an uphill fight on this including the front page stories, the daily news, depicting republicans as obstructionists. it is weighing on some of your colleagues. is it waiting on you? >> what i know is that we have made one offer to the democrats, we have made a third offer and a fourth offer and we don't get tired of negotiating but we do get tired of negotiating with ourselves. and yet we have a president who says that he will negotiate with the iranians and syrians and russians and he won't negotiate with americans happen to be republicans. what the house republicans wanted was to grow the economy to see what we could do to try to keep the harm from obamacare going throughout this. >> they say, well, you can quibble all you want but we will not renegotiate a law that is now the law. elections have consequences, 2012 its consequences and you have to move on. in the court of public opinion, which you say quite rightly that it doesn't matter, it does matter as some of your

mr. hensarling: i thank the gentleman for yielding and i thank the chairman from the rules committee for his leadership in trying to get america back to work to take us off the road to bankruptcy and to ensure that there is fairness for all americans, because you know, mr. speaker, as i listen to this debate i'm sure the americans on perhaps a little bit more western time zone hopefully are still following this, but if they aren't, i could understand they could get con tuesdayed. we are down to debating two different matters here. should the bosses in america get a better deal than their employees in obamacare? that's what we are debating here. and more importantly, mr. speaker, should members of congress get a better deal than every other american in house republicans say no. that's not fair. that's not equal protection under the law. our friends on the other side of the aisle are now saying no. no. no. they are going to protect this sweetheart deal. it's not in the law. ladies and gentlemen, they want to protect this sweetheart deal and people wonder why there is skepticism about congr

mr. hensarling: i thank the gentlelady for yielding. i especially thank her for her leadership on this special order . and her leadership on behalf of all of our men and women who serve in uniform. many in her district, and she's well respected within this institution for what she has done. for our military. well, madam speaker, i know the american people occasionally get somewhat confused about what is going on in congress. here's what's easy to understand. house republicans have put not one offer on the table, not two, not three, but four. four different offers to negotiate with the president and the democrats. what do we hear from the president? what do we hear from harry reid? no negotiations. you know, i still recall vividly my mother-in-law who has a saying, the least you can do in life is show up. president barack obama and harry reid have not shown up. now, i know that the president says at one time in his life he taught constitutional law. some of us find that somewhat eye robic. because -- ironic. because if the president actu