mr. mcdermott: are you -- mr. brady: we are prepared to close. mr. mcdermott: i yield one minute to mr. blumenauer to close our arguments. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for one minute, the gentleman from oregon. mr. blumenauer: thank you very much. let's be clear, this is not about the integrity of the tax system. there are any number of areas where we rely far more on discretion individual taxpayers, and there is no appetite actually to move in those areas. my republican friends are not interested in providing adequate resources to the i.r.s. to be able to appropriately enforce the tax law right now. and we have hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes that aren't collected. but this is part of a mean-spirited and shortsighted effort to sabotage the health care reform effort. bear in mind what's going on in states around the country. in missouri the republican legislature has been on a rampage that will even make it illegal for state employees to tell missourians what they are entitled to under state law. this is a new low in, i think, political malpractice. the

mr. mcdermott: mr. speaker, as we approach the first of october when everyone in this country is going to have an opportunity to have health insurance, you know that there are some people who always like the status quo and they will say anything and do anything. the public today is being subjected to a propaganda campaign, the likes of which we have never seen in this country , against obamacare. somehow it is the worst thing that ever happened. the sky is going to fall. the world is going to end as we have known it. we should run and pray that in the latter days we will be saved. now, the fact is that obamacare is going to go into effect. the supreme court's looked at it, said it's constitutional, going to happen, folks. will there be a few problems? of course. you can't make a change in bringing 30 million people into a program without having a problem here and there. some of the complaints i hear on the other side are from people saying, oh, it's going to do this, it's going to do that, it's going to

mr. mcdermott, for five minutes. mr. mcdermott: i ask unanimous consent to revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. speaker, although this hall is empty, there are a lot of people watching it. i wonder how many of them have actually gone hungry. how many of the people watching this that had to get -- give away meals so their kids could eat or wonder how to get through a summer without subsidized school lunches? it's easy to talk about pulling yourself up by your boot straps when you had designer shoes on your whole life. tomorrow we'll be voting on whether or not to cut $40 billion from snap. that's the nutrition program for people who do not have access to adequate nutrition. it's a program that helps one out of seven americans to put food on the table. if this seems familiar, it's because it is familiar. republicans tried just exactly this before the august recess couple months ago and not surprisingly, the most unproductive congress in decades, this bill had to be pulled at the last minute because of lack of support. even some of the republicans th

mr. putten. >> congressman mcdermott from washington state, thank you for talking with us. >>> putin called secretary john kerry a liar. he made the charge for what kerry had to say about al-qaida's presence in syria. >> i have watched debates in strong. the congressman asked mr. kerry. is there al-qaida? people say they have got an stronger. kerry said no. they know about this. it was not pleasant for me to see this. we communicate with them and assume that they are decent people. he lies openly that he knows that he lies. this is sad. >> well, that attack on john kerry came hours after president obama arrived at the g-20 summit. al jazeera's barnaby phillips has more on the already icy relationship between the two leaders. >> well, leaders arrive in st. petersburg for the summit that might highlight the glaring dinnerses between thedifferencee issues of the day. putin does not look like a man ready to compromise with the united states over syria. >> i have watched the debates in congress, and when they asked secretary kerry if there is al-qaida in syria, i say no, and they are not there. i don't li