Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 2920) to reinstitute and update the Pay-As-You-Go requirement of budget neutrality on new tax and mandatory spending legislation, enforced by the threat of annual, automatic sequestration.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 4 minutes to myself.

Mr. Speaker, I wish the Budget Committee had an opportunity to mark up this bill; however, the decision was made to bypass the Budget Committee and go straight to the floor.

This bill is not a simple extension of current law. It bypasses the deliberate and transparent process, and we are rushing legislation to the floor. It's an ongoing trend of a disturbing trend, which is write legislation in the leadership offices, rush it to floor, ram it through Congress without legislators legislating. We have one of the most talented chairmen of the Budget Committee who knows more than anybody else how these laws work, Mr. Spratt. It should have gone through his committee. Unfortunately, written in leadership, rushed to the floor, out it goes. That is a disturbing trend with how this Congress is working.

But let me talk about the need for fiscal restraint and fiscal discipline.

We concur, we agree that we have got to do some things to get our fiscal house in order. We need to equip Congress with more and better tools to get this budget under control. Unfortunately, this isn't the tool. This tool does not work. Let's look at PAYGO's track record thus far.

Since PAYGO was instituted as a rule here, the budget deficit under the last Republican budget was $161 billion. The budget today, the deficit is at $1.8 trillion, more than a tenfold increase.

Let me show you how much spending last year in increases were subject to PAYGO for this year's spending. Two percent. Two percent of the spending that has gone out the door this year was subject to PAYGO, 98 percent was not. That's $870 billion of new spending not subject to

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Jordan.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to simply comment on the last speaker's points.

He is right in saying the last majority did spend too much money. A number of us criticized that. A number of us, Mr. Hensarling and I in particular, came to the floor with budget enforcement legislation. A minority of the majority at the time voted against it, and all but a few in the then-minority voted against it, supplied the votes to say ``no'' to any kind of budget enforcement. But more to the point, spending did grow by too much in the prior 8 years. But look at it now, Mr. Speaker. If you thought spending was fast then, holy cow, it is really fast now.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. McHenry.

Yielding myself 10 seconds, Mr. Speaker, I will simply say that the majority just passed a budget resolution under the current PAYGO regime that doubles the national debt in 5\1/2\ years and triples it in 10\1/2\ years.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis).

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time remains between the two sides?

Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 2 minutes to the senior member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Garrett from New Jersey.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Let me simply say I misspoke earlier when I had said that a few Democrats voted for the Budget Control Act. I was wrong. No Democrats voted for the Budget Control Act when we had it here on the floor. Not a single Democrat voted in 2004 when we had the opportunity to pass real budget reform.

Unfortunately, some members of my party at the time voted ``no'' as well, and that's why it didn't pass.

Mr. Speaker, this is a fiscal facade. Nothing can change the fact that what this bill does is it basically is a situation where we commit all the fiscal crimes, then we outlaw them after they've been committed.

I yield myself an additional 10 seconds to say we simply sweep under the rug $410 billion in spending, a $1 trillion stimulus, a new cap-and-tax system, pass this facade, and then a brand new $1 trillion health care bill.

This is a bitter pill to swallow for the American taxpayer, and we shouldn't swallow it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield).

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell), a member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield myself 3 minutes.

Let me recap what's happening here, Mr. Speaker. This bill has good intentions. The gentleman bringing the bill to the floor has the best of intentions. He's a good man. This bill, however, Mr. Speaker, is a fiscal facade. It doesn't work. It's not like the bill that occurred back in the 1990s.

This bill has no spending caps, for example. This bill exempts 40 percent of all the spending we have in place today. How can you say that this makes the Federal Government work just like the family budget when you get to exempt 40 percent of the budget? Families don't get to do that.

If a family is already living beyond its means, if a family is spending on credit card money, if a family is spending more than it takes in, that's an unsustainable budget. This does nothing to change that.

The Federal Government is already living beyond its means. The Federal Government already is on an unsustainable fiscal course. The Federal Government already has a $1.8 trillion deficit this year. It's passing an 11 percent increase in all domestic agency spending. The Federal Government already has a $62 trillion debt unfunded liability. What does this PAYGO do about it? Nothing. Not a single thing about all of those fiscal problems.

This is not a bill to get Congress to live within its means. This is a bill to give Congress men and women an ability to put a press release out to make it look like they're being fiscally responsible in the most fiscally irresponsible Congress of all time.

Next week, Congress is going to create a new entitlement, a new unfunded entitlement that the Congressional Budget Office tells us will grow a lot faster than any spending cuts or revenue increases. We're going to create a new entitlement next week for health care on top of the other ones we already have, which are about $58 trillion in debt. We're going to do this bill after

we've already spent an 11 percent increase on domestic spending programs, after we borrowed $1.1 trillion for a stimulus, after we passed a $410 billion bloated omnibus appropriations bill.

This is PR politics. This is press release. This is not fiscal conservatism, fiscal responsibility; and what's so unfortunate about this, Mr. Speaker, is I'd like to think we could have had a bipartisan agreement to fix this. If we had actually brought the Blue Dog bill to the floor, which included spending caps like we're going to be proposing, we could have had something that we could have all supported. Unfortunately, the leadership bypassed the committee, as is usual these days, ran this thing to the floor so they can get their press releases out before they create a brand-new entitlement next week.

It's sad, it's cynical, it's wrong, and the American people aren't buying it, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the chairman as to how many speakers he has remaining, as we have just one left.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), the vice ranking member of the committee, the rest of our time.

Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. Speaker, as we mentioned earlier in the debate, we're offering better ideas. We think it's incumbent upon us on the big issues of the day, if we don't think the majority is going in the right direction, if we don't think they're offering the right ideas, it's not just enough for us to criticize and say we're against

what they're doing. We owe it to our employers, the American people, our constituents, to offer an alternative. That's what we're doing right here today.

And I want to first say thank you to the majority leader and to the chairman for making it such that we can offer this alternative. Normally, in the minority one would naturally expect to offer a substitute. Unfortunately, that is not the norm these days, and I appreciate the fact that the majority leader and the chairman were true to their word and made it so that the minority could offer a substitute so that we, too, can say we think we have a better way forward.

Let me explain what our bill does, three basic components to our substitute bill. Caps on spending. So what we think ought to happen here is let's fix the problem. Let's focus on the problem. And what is the problem, Mr. Speaker? Spending, deficits, and debt are out of control.

First off, we propose caps on discretionary spending. Yes, caps on discretionary spending. When this was combined with PAYGO in the 1990s, it worked. It helped pave the way for surpluses. It's an idea that has enjoyed bipartisan support, until now.

So if you take a look at who really controls the deficits, the deficits under our substitute or the deficits under the majority's plan, our deficits are far lower. Still higher than I would like, but our deficits take this deficit down to no more than 3 percent of gross domestic product, which is what all economists say is a minimum. If your deficits are above 3 percent, then the debt spirals out of control. Unfortunately, under the Democrats' plan, their PAYGO bill, the deficits always stay above 3 percent, spiraling out of control, according to any economists if you ask them.

Second, we think we ought to have caps on total spending. Let's keep in mind just how big the Federal Government is relative to our constituents and the economy's ability to pay it.

So we propose a cap to keep the size of the Federal Government relative to where it has been in history, and no larger, meaning don't let the government grow faster than the economy. Don't let the government grow faster than our constituents have an ability to pay for it. Don't let the Federal budget grow faster than the family budget. And so what we also do is we have a cap on Federal spending as a percentage of GDP, gross domestic product.

What we are showing here is, yes, spending not only goes down and then stays in control, we keep spending historically where it has been, slightly above 20 percent of gross domestic product.

What does the Democratic PAYGO bill do? Nothing. It allows spending to grow far in excess of where it has been before, meaning what this Democratic PAYGO plan does is it locks in place the growth of the Federal Government so that it will grow faster and higher than it ever has in the history of this Republic.

What does the future look like under their version of fiscal control versus our version of fiscal control? Here's what the Federal Government looks like. Under the Democratic PAYGO bill, the Federal Government keeps growing forever and ever and ever.

Look at the moment in the middle of this chart. That's the moment when my three children who are 4, 6, and 7 years old are my age. And what the Democrat PAYGO bill says is the government will literally be twice as big as it is today for them at that time. Under our bill, we put the Federal Government on the pathway of sustainability.

It's really about this. The question is: Are we going to fulfill the American legacy or not? Are we going to face up to the challenges confronting this generation so that we can make the next generation better off? That is, after all, the lessons we were taught as Americans. We own up to the challenges confronting us so that our children and our grandchildren can have a better tomorrow.

Unfortunately, under the Democratic PAYGO bill, that's not the case. The Democratic PAYGO bill severs that tie. It breaks the American legacy. Here's what I mean when I say that.

Here's what I mean when I say that: For the last 40 years, the size of our government has been relatively the same in that it's been consistent. About 20 percent of GDP has gone to the government. About 20 cents out of every dollar made in America has been spent by the Federal Government to run the Federal Government. Well, by the time my kids are my age, according to the current plan that we are on, 40 cents of every single dollar made must go to the Federal Government just to keep this government going for my kids at that age.

I asked the Congressional Budget Office, what would the tax rates on my three children, who are 4, 6 and 7 years old, have to be when they are my age, in their late thirties, if they are going to have to pay taxes to pay for all of this government we're consigning them to? Here's what the Congressional Budget Office said. They said the lowest tax bracket, the low-income Americans that pay 10 percent bracket, must go up to 25 percent. They said the middle-income tax brackets that middle-income Americans pay will have to go to 66 percent. And they said the top income tax bracket in America, the one that all the small businesses pay, the one that all the job creators pay, would go to 88 percent.

If we don't fix this problem these are the tax rates that will have to occur for the next generation. These are the tax rates that will occur on the next generation if you pass the Democratic PAYGO bill. If you pass the Republican substitute, we are putting the kinds of tools, the kinds of tools in place, the kind of enforcement and discipline in place to make sure that doesn't happen, to make Congress face up and fix these problems. We have three different spending caps enforced by sequesterers to make sure it actually happens, belts and suspenders to make sure Congress actually fixes this fiscal train wreck.

The question before us, Mr. Speaker, is: Will this generation, will the people right now elected by Americans face up to this reality? And this is the key question, Mr. Speaker. The sooner we do it, the better off everybody in America is. The sooner we tackle the spending that's out of control, the sooner we take ourselves off the reliance of debt purchases by China, India, Japan and everybody else, the sooner Americans can be in control of their own destiny and their own economy. The sooner we reform government and the entitlement programs that are presenting us with this $62 trillion unfunded liability, the more likely we can prevent those people in and near these programs, depending and counting on these programs, will not have severe disruption in their lives.

The more likely the kinds of changes that must happen can be phased in gradually. But every year we delay, every year we punt, every year we pass bills like this Democratic PAYGO bill, the more likely people will see severe disruption in their lives, the more likely you will have crushing tax increases, massive borrowing, unsustainable deficits, the more likely we will not be able to sell our bonds, the more likely our interest rates will go up, the more likely our tax rates will go up, the more likely we lose jobs and competitiveness.

Every year we delay fixing just the entitlement problem, we add about $4 trillion of debt to our children and grandchildren. So we are saying, let's fix what's broken; and what is broken is spending. What is broken is that spending is out of control. Both parties contribute to that. Let's face up to that. Both parties should come together to fix it, and that's what we are proposing to do.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Would the chairman yield just for a quick clarification?

I will just be quick and brief. Three caps: The discretionary cap is set at inflation; the percent of GDP cap brings us back to trend historical growth and the size of our government; and the deficit targets bring our deficits down to being no higher than 3 percent of GDP, and that is the result of what you are reading.

That's correct. We think this is better than PAYGO. We think instead of having a PAYGO system in place, which puts the bias in favor of raising taxes, we ought to have the bias in favor of controlling and cutting spending. That is just the difference we have between the two of us.

If the gentleman will continue to yield, we believe we need to have a tough enforcement regime so that a simple majority cannot waive these kinds of spending caps.

May I inquire as to how much time remains?

Mr. Speaker, I will yield myself 1 minute just to continue this dialogue.

The reason we have a super-majority vote in Congress to break these caps is because we want to make it very difficult--you can never fully tie the hands of a future Congress. We want to make it very difficult for Congress to avoid this budget discipline. We want to make sure that we put a system in place with binding caps that are tough to circumvent, that are backed up with sequesters so that, you know what, Congress actually makes the tough choices; Congress actually prioritizes spending and that we live within our means and that we have a process in place that forces us to focus on the problem.

The problem is, spending is out of control; deficits are out of control; borrowing is out of control. We do not want a process, which we believe your PAYGO system does, to simply always go to raising taxes. The American people are taxed too much. The American people are paying more taxes than they have in the history of this country. We don't need to raise their taxes any more. We will sacrifice our economic livelihood. We will make ourselves less competitive to foreign countries if we keep raising taxes. Spending is a problem. That's why our substitute focuses on spending.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

May I inquire as to how much time remains between the two sides.

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess).

I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the House Republican Conference chairman, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence).

(Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield at this time 3 minutes to the vice ranking member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Hensarling of Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, our distinguished Speaker of the House came to the floor 1 minute ago and gave a nice speech and said with passage of this PAYGO bill, the deficit won't go up any more. Wow. Let me just simply say that is not true. Here is what the deficit path is by the Democratic budget that passed earlier. It is up to $1.8 trillion now, and that admittedly is for some unforeseen circumstances, the TARP and the financial crisis and other things. It goes back down, and then just like a rubber band, it springs right back up. And under the deficit path that the majority passed with their own budget resolution, the deficit goes right back up to over $1 trillion, a huge, huge increase in the deficit, to the point where the deficit stays above 3 percent of our economy the entire time, above $600 billion.

Unsustainable deficits, unsustainable borrowing. Here is the problem, Mr. Speaker. One of these days, we are not going to be able to keep borrowing all this money. One of these days, our bond financiers, 48 percent of whom, these days, are foreign governments, China, Japan and India, one of these days they are not going to keep lending us all this money because we are not getting our fiscal house in order. We already have a $62 trillion unfunded liability. That means we are making promises to spend $62 trillion for people in this country today that we don't have.

And so when people lend us money--this year, we are borrowing half of our budget. Borrowing. I went to the Bureau of Public Debt last week, and I watched a bond auction. I watched the Treasury Department borrow $40 billion in about 4 minutes. We had very talented people sitting around a room of flat-screened TVs and laptop computers sipping coffee as if it were just another day at the office. Forty billion dollars, forty minutes.

We are doing something like this every day these days. Two trillion dollars of our $4 trillion budget, effectively, is being borrowed just this year. There is going to come a moment when they are not going to keep lending us all this money. There is going to come a moment when we may not be able to have an auction succeed. There is going to come a moment when we are going to have to pay these people, these governments, a lot more money to lend us their money. That moment is a fiscal day of reckoning for America. That moment is a moment when our interest rates go up. That moment will happen faster, sooner, rather than later, if we don't fix these problems.

What is the problem? Spending is the problem. Spending in excess of what we tax is what creates deficits. It is what is creating this unprecedented level of debt. And so what does this PAYGO bill do? It just says raise taxes, effectively, if we want to build more programs, if we want to spend more money. What are we proposing? Let's cut spending. Let's control spending. Let's cap spending. Let's make the American Federal budget work like a family budget so that we actually control and cap how much money we spend. I know around here that sounds like a novel idea, but it isn't. Every American family inevitably must do this.

If you live beyond your means, sooner or later you are going to have to make up for that fact. The question is whether this Congress will do that so that the next generation doesn't get hit with this tab, so that the next generation doesn't have this inferior standard of living that we know quantifiably, irrefutably and demonstrably we are consigning to the next generation.

I yield myself 1 additional minute only to say, Mr. Speaker, we have real solutions here that have real spending control so we get to real deficit reduction, so we really get on to the process of paying off our debt by reforming how much money we spend.

That is not what the Democrats are doing. They are passing a fiscal facade so that they can do so with the right hand while in the left hand they pass more spending out the door. A trillion-dollar cap-and- trade bill a couple of weeks ago, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations bill, a trillion-dollar stimulus package, next week a $1 trillion new health care entitlement, which even the Congressional Budget Office is telling us is going to grow at unsustainable rates, faster than even Medicare and Medicaid.

Let's stop this fiscal insanity. Let's pass real spending control. Let's pass the Republican substitute that actually controls and caps spending.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the chairman how many more speakers he has remaining?

So the chairman and the majority leader are remaining?

I will reserve the balance of my time.

How much time do I have remaining, Mr. Speaker?

I yield myself the remainder of our time. The gentleman from South Carolina rightfully says that our substitute would involve rewriting the budget resolution. Yes. We think we should rewrite the budget resolution. What does the incumbent budget resolution the majority passed do? It doubles the national debt held by the public in 5\1/2\ years, triples it in 10\1/2\ years. It raises taxes by $1.5 trillion. It chases ever-higher spending with ever-higher taxes, and those tax increases never catch up with the spending increases, thus an unprecedented level in debt increases.

So, yes, we think we should go do something else and go a different path. What are we proposing? We're proposing instead of the system in place that ignores discretionary spending, instead of putting a system in place that ignores the current unsustainable trajectory of entitlement spending, instead of putting a system in place that will inevitably lead to higher taxes, we want spending discipline. We want to cap spending.

And here is what our bill accomplishes that the majority bill does not. Under our bill, the deficits go down. Under the majority's bill, the deficits go up. Under our bill, for future generations, we keep the size of our government in check so that we can give the next generation a higher standard of living so that we don't send to them an unsustainable burden of debt and taxes.

Under the majority's bill they don't do that. They increase debt. They increase taxes. They increase spending. They decrease the standard of living for the next generation.

Now, I find it fairly ironic, and almost comical that the gentleman from Massachusetts just came through here and filed an appropriations bill. The appropriations bill, TTHUD, increases

this year, this year, by 25.1 percent. So during this debate on PAYGO, during this debate on fiscal responsibility, this fiscal facade press release debate we're having right now, they just filed a bill to increase discretionary spending on one bill for just 1 year by 25 percent. You know what? PAYGO doesn't apply to that. PAYGO has nothing to do with that. So we can bring a bill here to increase spending on these few government agencies in this bill by 25 percent, and this PAYGO has nothing to do with it. You know why, Mr. Speaker? Because 40 percent of the budget, including where this spending comes from, is exempt from PAYGO. We just don't think that's the right way to go.

And I've heard all these talks about the 1990s and how successful they were, and yes, there were absolutely periods of success. You know why? Because we had spending caps. We had discretionary caps in place that the Blue Dogs themselves have been advocating, time and again, which we agree with, which we're going to be advocating later in this debate that were part of the reason for that success. Success in 1997 was because Republicans and Democrats came together and put together a budget agreement which led to those surpluses. Wouldn't it be nice to get back to those kinds of days where we come together, not bypassing committees, rushing bills to the floor, cramming things through Congress and actually came together for real fiscal discipline? Unfortunately, the PAYGO bill the majority is offering is a fig leaf. It's not true. It's not real. It doesn't work. It doesn't even affect discretionary spending. It doesn't even deal with the unsustainable pathway of our current entitlement programs which, right now, give us a $62 trillion unfunded liability. We say, let's tackle those problems. You need to have, unfortunately, artificial budget enforcement on Congress. I would love to see that Congress, under our own discipline, would be able to control spending, but you know what? We can't. Both parties can't. That's why you need artificial discipline. That's why you need spending caps. That's why you should pass the Republican substitute.

Working in the Budget Committee to make sure that the war was inside of the budget, not outside of the budget, as the Bush OMB was proposing. We were proposing that that funding be done within the budget, not outside the budget.

Would the gentleman like me to respond?

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

I am.

Mr. Speaker, the Republican motion to recommit adds three germane provisions from the Fiscal Honesty and Accountability Act of 2009, which is the Blue Dog PAYGO bill introduced by Mr. Hill and 53 Democratic cosponsors. It adds this to the underlying bill. This motion to recommit does not strike or amend any provision in the underlying bill. The three provisions taken verbatim from the House Blue Dog bill and added to the underlying PAYGO bill are: Number one, discretionary caps from FY 2011 through FY 2013 at the very levels the Blue Dogs set out in their bill; number two, a requirement that CBO report the interest costs of legislation; number three, a requirement that CBO score conference reports.

Let me read from the minority views of the Spending Control Act of 2004 presented by then the minority ranking member Mr. Spratt on behalf of House Democrats with respect to discretionary spending caps: ``Democrats believe that a set of discretionary spending caps arrived through bipartisan negotiation is an important part of an effective budget enforcement.''

``If discretionary spending caps are to work effectively, they must be established as part of a bipartisan negotiation that also includes a balanced PAYGO provision encompassing both mandatory spending levels and revenues. This balanced approach worked in the 1990s, and it should serve as a model for efforts to reform the budget process today.''

Well, we agree. We agree that this bill will be far more effective if discretionary spending caps were added to it. So given that this bill was bypassed from committee, we want to offer our colleagues yet one more chance at bipartisan success here. We are saying to those who are here who call themselves Blue Dogs, we want to work with you. You hold the keys. You control the fate of not only this provision, but you will also hold the keys of next week's provision, which will create a new unfunded liability in health care. Messrs. Adler, Arcuri, Barrow, Bishop, Boswell, Bright, Carney, Childers, Cooper, Cuellar, Donnelly, Fattah, Gordon, Ms. Harman, Messrs. Holden, Marshall, McIntyre, Michaud, Mitchell, Murphy, Peterson, Ross, Ms. Sanchez, Messrs. Scott, Space, Taylor, Wilson, Altmire, Baca, Berry, Boren, Boyd, Cardoza, Chandler, Connolly, Costa, Davis, Ellsworth, Ms. Giffords, Mr. Griffith, Ms. Herseth-Sandlin, Messrs. Kratovil, Matheson, Melancon, Minnick, Moore, Nye, Pomeroy, Salazar, Schiff, Shuler, Tanner and Thompson.

All we're asking you to do is to vote for the bill you cosponsored. That's all this does. Vote for what you've cosponsored. Put your votes where your cosponsors are. We can make this bill better. We can make it bipartisan. We will help you deliver the margin of victory. Let's do this together. Let's have that vote.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 665, I call up the bill (H.R. 2920) to reinstitute and update the Pay-As-You-Go requirement of budget neutrality on new tax and mandatory spending legislation, enforced by the threat of annual, automatic sequestration, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, at this point I would also like to ask unanimous consent that Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend and insert material relevant to the consideration of H.R. 2920 in the record.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2009. To understand this bill, it's important and useful to understand its short history.

At the outset of the 1990s, Congress passed the Budget Enforcement Act to ensure that the Budget Summit Agreement would be carried out. Among these provisions was a rule called pay-as-you-go, PAYGO for short. At the time, critics distained and belittled our resort to budget process. They accused us of dodging the hard choices we had to make if we were going to wipe out the end of the deficit. But by the end of the 1990s, the budget was in surplus for the first time in 30 years, and it was clear that PAYGO had played an important part in our success.

In 2002, the Budget Enforcement Act was allowed to expire, and the President, President Bush, and the majority, the Republicans at that time, chose not to reinstate PAYGO. Without the process rule in place, the budget plunged from a surplus of $236 billion in the year 2000 to a deficit of $413 billion in the year 2004.

In April of 2005, in his congressional testimony, Alan Greenspan said, ``One of the real problems we had was allowing PAYGO to lapse in September of 2002, and were we to still be under a PAYGO regime, which I thought worked very well, I think we would have a lot fewer problems now.''

When Democrats took back the House, the reinstatement of PAYGO was at the top of our agenda. To expedite its passage, PAYGO was made a rule of the House the day we convened. Without support of the Bush administration, there was no prospect of getting statutory PAYGO enacted in law, but now with the support of the Obama administration, indeed, the underlying legislation we are pushing and advancing today was originally sent to us for filing by request from the President, Mr. Obama.

With the support of the Obama administration, we're in a position now to take a longer stride towards budget discipline by enacting statutory PAYGO into law. The Obama administration has inherited a colossal deficit swollen to accommodate massive recovery measures. As these measures pull us up out of the slump, we must focus attention on our longer-term fiscal fate.

By themselves, budget process rules cannot convert deficits into surpluses, but as in the 1990s, they can play a vital role. Statutory PAYGO works by reining in both new entitlement spending and new tax cuts. Both tend to be long lasting. They are easy to pass and hard to repeal. And by insisting in deficit neutrality for these new policies, PAYGO buffers the bottom line, holds it constant. Its terms are complex, but at its core, it's a commonsense rule that everybody can understand: When you are in deficit, don't make it worse. When you want to spend a dollar, save a dollar. Everybody can understand the commonsense logic of this bill.

I would add that PAYGO has not only been a commonsense idea that found its way into the rules of the House and the statute books, but it has traditionally received bipartisan report. Originally, it was enacted in 1990 under a Republican President and Democratic Congress. In 1997, it was extended under a Democratic President and a Republican Congress.

This is not a panacea--I wouldn't hold it out as that--but it is a significant step in the right direction. It was proven to work in the 1990s, and it needs to be reinstated for that purpose now.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas, a member of the committee, Mr. Doggett.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California, who claims paternity of this bill, having first introduced the legislation calling for the PAYGO rule, Mr. Miller.

(Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) who has been a prime mover behind this bill and is the originator of the idea that it should not be a 5 or 10-year bill, but a permanent law.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen).

Let me simply respond by saying, I'm glad to bring this to the floor. I voted for it in the past, saw it work, and I think it's going to work again. As I said, it's not a panacea, but it's a useful device to have in our arsenal of weapons to deal with the recession we're in.

By the way, the recession that we're in, which has caused us to suffer a huge swelling in the deficit, started in December of 2007, on the Bush watch. Wall Street fell apart in September of 2008. The TARP program was initiated in response to that. That too happened during the Bush watch. We're in the backwash of many fiscal policies and economic policies which happened on their watch, and we're now suffering the consequences of them.

I now yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bishop).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd).

I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz), the vice chairman of our committee.

We have one more speaker, and then I will close.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Let me respond to some arguments that have been made and not responded to during the course of this argument.

First of all, the sequestration base, the programs which are subject to across-the-board cuts or abatement in the event that there is a deficit on the scorecard, why is that a narrow selection of programs? Because it's a cross section of programs purposely intended to reach a number of different constituent groups so that we will not use sequestration. Neither the President nor the Congress would want to use a meat cleaver like that.

We've said, knowing that it could happen if we defaulted in doing anything else, young people, old people, farmers, miners, a huge cross section of our constituencies are represented in that sequestration base to make it certain, clear that we would never resort to that particular base for making across-the-board cuts to put PAYGO back in balance.

Secondly, there's been repeated talk about, You passed PAYGO in the last Congress and look what happened. The truth of the matter is our Republican colleagues have never wanted to vote for PAYGO because it was always double-edged the way we proposed it. Double-edged meant yes, it would apply to mandatory spending increases, but it would also apply to tax cuts, because both have an adverse impact on the deficit bottom line.

They would never vote for the second edge, the double-edged sword, and consequently they have to come up with another explanation as to why they do not support it.

So they fall back on the economy itself. Look what happened to the economy after the adoption of the PAYGO rule in the 110th Congress. But, come on. This is a case where we have a coincidence, maybe, but not a correlation. The PAYGO rule had nothing to do with what happened to the economy. The Bush administration's economic and fiscal policies had a lot to do with what happened to the economy.

The fact that the Bush administration inherited a projected surplus of $565.6 trillion and turned it into a projected deficit of $3 trillion had an impact on the economy. The addition of $5 trillion to $6 trillion to our national debt had an impact on our economy. And don't forget the recession officially started during the Bush administration, December 2007. That's when it started.

And when it really got bad, when Wall Street nearly went under in September and October of 2008, that, too, was the Bush administration. And we voted up the TARP, and that's one of the reasons--the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a $700 billion program. When we voted that up, the Bush administration was still in office.

So there's the answer to the charge that somehow or another the PAYGO rule didn't do anything to affect the economic situation we find ourselves in.

The reason we are seeing the largest deficits in the history is we're in the longest recession since the Great Depression. It's had a profound impact on us. The incubation of those conditions occurred during the Bush administration.

So, Mr. Speaker, the facts stand. All during the 1990s, when we had the budget process rules in place, they contributed mightily. We had a good budget and the convergence of a good economy, and we put the budget back in balance by the year 1998.

The facts speak for themselves, and facts are stubborn things. The budget process rules worked before. They will work again, if we vote for the statutory PAYGO.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment and yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, so that everyone will understand, what the gentleman is proposing is that we rewrite the budget resolution, which we wrote and passed in both the House and Senate months ago, to go back to square one and basically begin all over again because we will have to change 302(a) and all the work we've done to get the appropriation bills passed by the end of July. We would have to go back and take at least $48 billion out of all those bills to comply with the numbers that Mr. Ryan proposes in his alternative budget resolution today.

I will have to say that when I told Mr. Ryan we were not going to have a hearing, that we were not going to have a markup, we were going to bring this matter straight to the floor, I also told him out of a sense of fairness that he could have a substitute, that I would support a substitute. He deserves one. I had no idea that he would offer a brand-new budget resolution as a substitute. I thought it would be a substitute, maybe a cap on discretionary spending. So this came as a surprise. There is a cap on discretionary spending here; but as I read it, there is no cap, there is no PAYGO provision. He has left it out of there completely. That's the way we read over here. I can't find anything in there.

In addition, I thought ours was pretty dense; and then I read some of your draftsmanship, if I can share with everyone. Try this on: The percentage required to produce a spending reduction, as ordered by a spending reduction order, shall be calculated by OMB by adding all budgetary resources of the government, and reducing that amount by an amount sufficient to reduce the total amount of outlays of the government to equal, or lower, a level of outlays than the amount set forth in the guideline period.

If we are dense, this is turgid, I am telling you. I'm not quite sure what this says, except that it does propose a new budget resolution. It would become a statutory budget resolution if we passed it as part of this particular bill because this is----

I will.

It is similar to the PAYGO rule here.

You set levels for all of those things and then also provide--I believe if they turn out to be wrong, if we had a downturn in the economy and wanted to change those numbers, you would have to have a two-thirds vote in each House in order to do that.

That loads some cumbersome conditions on the House or the Senate if we find ourselves faced with economic reversal.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Schrader).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Baron Hill.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to yield to the Speaker of the House, the gentlewoman from California, Madam Speaker (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Massachusetts (Ms. Tsongas).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes).

I plan to use the time left, and Mr. Hoyer will speak as well and share part of the time.

If I may inquire of the Chair, how much time is remaining?

I yield myself 6 minutes. Mr. Speaker, let me make everyone aware of what is at stake here. What the minority has proposed is to take this resolution, this bill, and add to it a budget resolution for 2010 and years thereafter, way outside of the established procedure of the House to do at this point in time. We have strived mightily to finish up all of the appropriations bills by the time we adjourn for the August vacation. And it looks as though we are going to be successful in our pursuit. And I think we all deserve credit for having accomplished that.

Were we to adopt this resolution, we would have a completely different set of numbers. At least $48 billion would have to be reallocated within section 302(a), because there is a cut immediately in discretionary spending. If you hold constant and inflate the amount of money provided for overseas contingency operations, military operations, the amount of money that would have to be extracted from other programs that has basically already been distributed, already been allocated, already been cut, would be around $70 billion.

That is a lot of work that would have to be done again. We would have to basically go back to square one and start over again. So that is the first problem we have with this bill. And that basically is enough reason for anyone who is concerned with finishing timely business here in the House for the summer before adjourning, that is enough to vote against the substitute that the gentleman is offering.

But if that's not enough for you, read onward. Get a copy of this resolution and read the language to see what is being proposed here, because what the gentleman proposes to do is to fix spending, total spending, discretionary spending and deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product for a period of 5 years, after which it will be fixed at the levels it reaches at the end of the 5-year period of time. This would have profound consequences for the budget. We have never budgeted like that, not over that period of time.

Furthermore, the gentleman says we are going to put these in place-- this is a resolution that he understandably, under the circumstances, has cobbled together in a few days--he is going to impose something that would be binding for 5 years. And if there were a reversal in the economy for the worse, and we needed to engage in countercyclical economic intervention, this would be a huge stumbling block, because two-thirds of the House would have to agree to any deviation from the spending limits that this resolution or this substitute would impose, two-thirds of the House. A determined minority of one-third could block any kind of salutary action we wanted to take.

That's not good policy. It's not good policymaking. We have never done it before. It would be a mistake to do it now. So for those reasons, I would say to all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, read the resolution, read the substitute, and I think you will see this is something we do not want to do at this particular point in time. We don't want to go back to square one and do the appropriations bills all over again. We don't want to cast a rigid cast around the budget resolution so that if we do have a downturn in the economy the budget resolution itself would actually be, the budget would actually be procyclical. We try to have countercyclical economic policies built into our budget. This budget resolution, this budget substitute would actually be procyclical. It would worsen the downturn in the economy if it were to take that turn at this point in time.

So for all of these reasons, I would urge Members on both sides of the aisle, mine particularly, but the other side as well, to look carefully before you cast this vote and vote ``no'' on the substitute that has been offered by Mr. Ryan.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, one question to the distinguished ranking member. Where were you when we had, first, Iraq and then Afghanistan, and it came to paying for those endeavors which account for by far the biggest growth in spending in the discretionary accounts. There were no spending caps at that particular point in time.

I yield for a brief response.

I now yield 1 minute to the distinguished majority leader, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

I would say once again, Mr. Speaker, using the balance of my time, that every Member in voting on this substitute should understand its consequences. Its consequences would be to undo completely the bill that we're trying to move now that a lot of us believe is a useful measure, useful tool in disciplining our budget. It will be a shame to see us come this far only to falter on a resolution like the substitute offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin. It will not be consistent at all.

And it's interesting to note that while he makes elaborate provisions for limiting spending and limiting deficits, there's no provision whatsoever made for incorporation of the PAYGO rule, which has proved itself in the past to be successful.

So I say vote for the resolution, but vote first against the substitute that is being offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin because, if it is adopted, it will not adapt to, will not fit into the base bill before the House. Instead, it would undo its effectiveness altogether.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

This resolution is too clever by half. Our colleagues across the aisle have not had some sudden epiphany and decided this bill, after all, was something they could embrace. This is an effort not to push the bill across the finish line, but to kill it before it finally gets passed here from the House. We have worked for months to get statutory PAYGO to the point where we can now put it over the top and put it in the statute books of the United States of America. If we vote for the resolution, if we vote for the motion to recommit, we will put that at jeopardy because this is a procedural device to defeat a bill that they cannot defeat on the substance of the merits of the bill itself. We won the argument on the substantive merits. They want to take it back now by a procedural device. Their aim is to insert in this bill numbers that were inserted and used in a Blue Dog publication that was issued last January, 7 or 8 months ago. The numbers have changed. They're dramatically different from what they are in the conference report, the concurrent resolution we finally adopted.

As I said, we've been through an arduous budget process to determine these details. If we now begin undoing those details, everything will come unraveled, including the bill before us. So I would urge every Member on this side to stick together. We're on the verge of passing it.

I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill), who is one of the authors of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the distinguished majority leader, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. Speaker, let me begin by expressing my appreciation to my Rules Committee colleague for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I might consume.

Mr. Speaker, today is the 22nd of July. We are just over halfway through calendar year 2009, and the Federal deficit has exceeded $1 trillion. That's not with an M. That's not with a B. That's with a T; $1 trillion. It's so much money that we can't even fathom exactly how much it is. You know, I've spent a while here, and I can't imagine $1 trillion. It's the amount of money already that the Federal Government not has spent; it's the amount of money, Mr. Speaker, that the Federal Government has already overspent as we are just halfway through this year. At the rate that we're going, by the end of the year, the deficit will approach $2 trillion.

Now, Mr. Speaker, if you think about that, about the amount that we have overspent and that we have spent more than was actually taken in, then actually, based on this annual number, it quite possibly could be larger than the entire Federal budget was just a decade ago.

The American people are paying attention. They're paying attention, and they don't believe that such wantonly irresponsible spending is ever justified. They're particularly outraged that it's coming at a time when they are revamping their own budgets, are cutting out every penny of waste and are saving every penny that they possibly can.

Our economic challenges have fundamentally changed Americans' budgeting habits. They're spending less; they're saving more; they're paying off their debts; and they're asking themselves, Why is my government doing precisely the opposite?

Well, the American families are spending less; they are saving more, and they are paying down their debts. We here in Washington, D.C. are doing the opposite, and they can't understand why that's continuing to happen. During very difficult and challenging economic times, why is Congress spending trillions on bailouts and proposing new taxes that will burden our families even more? Why is it racking up so much debt that our kids, grandkids and great grandkids won't even be able to pay it off?

So much concern is mounting over the profligate spending of this Congress that it comes as absolutely no surprise that the Democratic leadership wants to give the appearance of an interest in fiscal responsibility. Quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, as I go through the analysis of this, and the American people are going to understand, we will find that this is simply dealing with the appearance of trying to be fiscally responsible.

The leadership on the other side of the aisle wants to be able to send out a press release to say that they care about this $1 trillion deficit spending that has taken place in the last 6 months and that they're doing something about it.

Unfortunately, rather than actually reining in the deficit, what has happened? They've proposed a bill that will do nothing to restore any semblance of responsibility and accountability to the Federal budget.

As any hardworking American knows, living within our means during tough economic times is painful, but it's not terribly complicated. You have to reduce your spending. It's very simple. The Democratic leadership will say that the bill before us today requires Congress to spend only what it can pay for, but this claim is not terribly accurate.

First of all, this bill does absolutely nothing to limit discretionary spending, which is 40 percent of the entire

Federal budget. Let me say that again, Mr. Speaker. If you think about a family who has to reduce its expenses and who has to rein in its own personal spending, this family doesn't have the luxury of saying, Oh, well, here is 40 percent that I will exempt. That is exactly what is happening with this measure.

This bill makes it virtually impossible for Congress to implement tax reforms that will get our economy growing again and that will increase Federal revenues. If the Democratic leadership were actually interested in reducing the deficit, they would simply implement spending caps, caps on spending. That's the way to do it. Instead, they have merely produced a fig leaf of a bill, a fig leaf so they can send out that press release and can then go right on spending this country into oblivion, which is exactly what has been happening. The proposal before us does nothing but mandate tax increases while leaving discretionary spending completely unchecked.

Now, Mr. Speaker, this is not a theoretical discussion that I am engaging in right now. We've been living under the Democratic leadership's so-called ``PAYGO rules'' for 2\1/2\ years. When they reinstated PAYGO at the start of the last Congress, they said it would eliminate deficit spending. Now what has actually happened? The deficit has skyrocketed from $162 billion in fiscal '07 to, as I said, this estimated $1.8 trillion. So from $162 billion in 2007 to $1.8 trillion. Again, that's just the deficit. That's a tenfold increase, and it all happened under this Democratic majority with these brilliant PAYGO rules that have been put into place.

This bill will not cut the deficit. This bill will not help to restore our economy. I will say quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, I am really quite concerned that some will believe, with the passage of this bill, that we have now addressed the problems and that it will lure many on the other side of the aisle to continue on the road that they've been going down for the past 2\1/2\ years.

The true purpose of this bill is a very, very unfortunate one. The first is to attempt to provide political cover for Members who want to have it both ways, carrying the mantle of fiscal responsibility while voting for trillion-dollar spending boondoggles.

The second is to make meaningful tax reform impossible to implement. If we abide by the plan that was laid out in this bill, we cannot offer tax relief to a single working American without raising one's taxes at the same time. This includes tax relief that has been proven to increase Federal revenues. We won't be able to do that under this measure. Tax relief that has proven to increase dramatically the flow of revenues of the Federal Treasury would not be allowed under this measure.

In 2003, we cut the capital gains tax rate by 5 percent. Guess what happened, Mr. Speaker? Capital gains tax revenues, that's revenues to the Federal Treasury. And we cut the capital gains rate by 5 percent, doubled in a 2-year period of time. This tax relief is set to expire next year. Guess what? Under this bill, we can't extend it without raising taxes.

So, if we double revenues by cutting the capital gains tax, it doesn't take a Ph.D. to guess what will happen if we are forced to raise taxes. This bill ties our hands where flexibility is necessary, and it fails to implement strict guidelines where accountability is desperately needed.

Even the Democratic leadership doesn't take this bill very seriously, adding in five pages of exemptions to an already worthless attempt at fiscal responsibility. I find it interesting that they would even bother with these exemptions, considering that they waive their own PAYGO rules all the time. In the last Congress alone, they waived these rules to allow for legislation that increased the deficit by $420 billion. Now, in this Congress, they continue to use procedural gimmicks to get around their own budget rules, which is why it comes as no surprise that we've already passed the trillion-dollar deficit spending mark here on July 22.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues: don't be fooled by what is clearly an attempt to cover up the worst spending pattern that we have seen in the history of the United States of America. The American people are figuring this out. They know what it takes to make ends meet; and while they are reining in their spending and are dealing with the economic challenges that they're facing at this time, they know that we are moving in the opposite direction. Reject this rule and the bill. Instead, we must demand true accountability for our constituents' tax dollars.

With that, I am pleased and privileged to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume to simply say to my good friend from Worcester, I absolutely look forward to the day when we will not be constantly looking backward and blaming the last Congress and President Bush for every ailment of society. We need to look forward. And the thing that's been happening in the last 6 months is we've seen this dramatic surge in spending and the idea of engaging in class warfare. Taxing those who are job creators, who have created opportunity for millions of working Americans, is, I don't believe, the best way to deal with the challenges that we have.

At this point, I'm happy to yield to our hardworking colleague from Jefferson, Louisiana (Mr. Scalise).

Mr. Speaker, I'm happy to yield my friend an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I thank my friend for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I would simply like to inquire of my friend as he talks about how great this PAYGO--

I thank my friend for yielding. I apologize profusely, Mr. Speaker, if I put words into my friend's mouth. He did not use the word ``great'' to describe it, but I will say--and this is probably not much of a stretch--that he is here propounding the benefits of this legislation that is before us.

And in light of that, I would like to ask my friend, Mr. Speaker, if, in fact, we were to see this statutory implementation of PAYGO, if it would have any way diminished the kinds of increases that we've seen in the appropriations process that have already taken place in the nine bills passed, one of which had a 22 percent increase in spending. And I'd appreciate it if my friend would respond as to whether or not this bill would in any way turn the corner on that spending that we've seen.

Mr. Speaker, my friend from Laredo is a very thoughtful Member and very good personal friend of mine, and I will say that the opening statement, I think, really gets right to this point, talking about how families have to deal with the economic challenges that we are facing today.

The thing that concerns me greatly is that when I engaged in a colloquy with my friend from Utica on whether or not the implementation of PAYGO would in any way reduce the appropriation levels that we've seen, one of which had a 22 percent increase, he responded by saying that I understood the process and knew that this would not in any way be able to actually take place. So I guess the answer to the question that I posed to my friend from Utica was ``no.''

So I would say to my friend from Laredo that I think that it's very important, Mr. Speaker, for us to realize that what we all want to----

Of course. I'd be happy to yield to my friend from Utica.

If I could reclaim my time, Mr. Speaker, I will say that I believe we need to have a cost-effective national defense. I believe that when we can bring about reductions in the level of expenditures when it comes to waste, fraud and abuse within the military, absolutely. I want to bring about those reductions. But when you, Mr. Speaker, look at the dramatic increases, the $1 trillion in deficit spending that has gone into a wide range of new areas into which the Federal Government has never ever been involved before, it is essential we recognize--

Yes, of course, I will yield.

If I can reclaim my time, Mr. Speaker, of course. I think that we have yet to deal, by the way, with the Department of Defense Appropriations bill. I know that it is going to be marked up. I anxiously look forward to seeing what this will consist of. But frankly, in the proposed budget I believe that that has, as an increase, one of the smallest levels of increases compared to the 22 percent increase that we saw on other appropriations bills.

The fact is there is a role for the Federal Government. The number one priority of the Federal Government happens to be the national security of the United States of America. And so to say that because we might have an increase in the level of defense expenditures, as we live in a very dangerous world, and that somehow justifies a multi--now what we are headed towards--a multitrillion-dollar increase in deficit spending is apples and oranges when one looks at what should happen.

So I would like to engage, if I might, with my friend from Laredo and say, as I look forward to yielding to him, that as we look at this challenge that families face when they are at the kitchen table, recognizing that with the difficult economic times that we have, they have to rein in their spending. They have to pay down their debts. They have to increase their level of savings. How is it that we, in this measure, can exempt 40 percent the discretionary spending level that is here? How is it that we can say that reducing rates on things like capital gains, which doubled the flow of revenues to the Federal Treasury when reduced by 5 percent, how is it that we can't do that any longer under this so-called PAYGO provision? And I would be happy to yield to my friend if he would like to respond.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for his thoughtful remarks. If I could reclaim my time, I would simply say that as we look at the discretionary spending caps that were put into place in the 1990s with the PAYGO provision that were there, they were thrown out the window in the package that my friend is touting today. And my argument is that families don't have the luxury of saying, Oh, we will just exempt--let's go and buy a new car, we are going to purchase a new car.

You know what, we don't need to worry about how much the purchase of that new car is going be to. Let's just think about maybe the cost of some addition to the house, and we have to be

concerned about that. Families don't have that luxury. And my argument, Mr. Speaker, is that as my friends on the other side of the aisle tout this PAYGO measure as somehow relating to the challenges that families are having to make today, it is preposterous to do that because there is no correlation with the ability of the Congress to simply waive these provisions and the necessity that families are facing today.

And with that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I think I will continue to reserve the balance of my time in light of the fact that there are other speakers on the other side. We have one other speaker, and then I plan to close.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I am very, very happy to yield 2 minutes to our good friend and hardworking colleague from Brentwood, Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).

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

Mr. Speaker, this has been an interesting debate. And I have to say that my fellow Angeleno, Ms. Harman and I, join in a desire to deal in a bipartisan way with our challenges. I will acknowledge from the get-go, that everyone, Democrat and Republican alike, decries deficit spending. I mean, we all regularly talk about the fact that we need to get our fiscal house in order. That was a plank of the platform that President Obama ran on. And it's the plank of the platform of virtually every candidate for public office. And I believe that we should work in a bipartisan way to get our fiscal house in order.

The problem that I have with the measure that's before us is that, to me, it is the quintessential example of the effort that we often see on legislation. Sometimes we tend to do what makes us feel good, rather than doing good.

The reason I say that is as I listened to the thoughtful remarks of my Blue Dog friends, they talked about exactly what I raise, that being the challenge that families are facing at the kitchen table; recognizing that because of difficult economic times, it is essential for them to reduce their spending, to increase their savings, and to pay down their debts. Those are the three things

that families across this country are doing today at the kitchen table.

And you know what, the notion of saying that the Federal Government is not going to expend dollars that it doesn't have, or able to offset, is something that does have a lot of appeal, and it makes us all feel very good. But that family sitting at the kitchen table, or a small business man or woman can't say, We're going to exempt 40 percent of our expenditures. Yes, we all want to get the auto industry going, but the idea of saying that we want to buy a nice new car, and we don't have to deal with any kind of offset for that.

It's essential for us to get the economy growing. And we know that, while it may sound counterintuitive, every shred of empirical evidence that we have going in recent history to John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan is that if we can bring about marginal rate reduction, we can increase the flow of revenues to the Federal Treasury. Most recently, it was done when we brought about that 5 percent reduction in capital gains.

Now I know that in the economy we're in, there are not many people who have capital gains today. But we know this, that if we were to bring about a reduction in the capital gains rate, we would have, as we've seen most recently, a doubling of the flow of revenues to the Federal Treasury. And yet, Mr. Speaker, under this measure, we're not able to do that.

So what we've got is an effort that can make us all feel good. And it is true. I mean, there have been a lot of great statements made juxtaposing the challenges that working families are facing and the challenges that we face here in Washington.

But implementation of this statutorily will in no way address the fact that, as of July 22, today, we have a Federal budget deficit that is $1 trillion. And we're headed towards 1.8, maybe even beyond that, meaning that the deficit, the Federal Government this year alone will spend more than has brought in, and that level will be higher than the entire Federal budget was just 10 years ago.

And so it's wonderful to say that we're going to work in a bipartisan way; and it's wonderful to say that we all decry deficit spending. But because the American people are hurting, and we need to get our economy growing, I do not believe that this measure before us will do one thing, other than make a lot of people feel very, very good.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I'm going to say that I believe we can get it better. This is not only not a step in the right direction, it is, in many ways, something that will create a climate whereby people will say, we've taken care of this. And I'm afraid that it will send the wrong message to the American people, and it will send the wrong message in our quest to get our economy going, to create jobs and more opportunity for the American people.

So I urge a ``no'' vote.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I thank the chairman for yielding. I also want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) for whom I have a great deal of respect. I said the other night that he was my friend, but friends have disagreements. And on this, on fiscal policy, we clearly have had a very significant disagreement.

I've heard a lot of speakers on this floor talk about how this bill doesn't get us to where we want to get. I've heard a lot of people talk about how we have four exceptions in this bill. Most of the people that have talked about the four exceptions in this bill have repeatedly talked, over the last 4 or 5 years, as to how this was current baseline spending, and certainly we didn't have to pay for current baseline spending, i.e., continuing tax cuts that were in place. Your side of the aisle has argued strenuously that that was current baseline funding and we didn't need to pay for it. We have taken the position that we needed to pay for it. In fact, we paid for the AMT through the House. We paid for the tax extenders through the House. Unfortunately, our brethren on the other side of the Capitol did not pay for them, sent them back. I voted against the AMT extension. I voted against the AMT extension, I was one of a small minority in the House, because it wasn't paid for. If we're going to have discipline, we need extrinsic discipline.

There's only one real discipline--having to pay for what you buy. During the nineties, we paid for what we bought. During the eighties we didn't. And during the 2000s we didn't. And there was an inevitable result; deficits exploded for the 20 years that Republican Presidents were in office, and we didn't pay for things. In fact, the gentleman talks about spending, and he talks about caps in his substitute. The gentleman knows full well that during the Clinton years, spending rose at about 3\1/2\ percent per year, on average, discretionary spending. The gentleman knows full well that for the 8 years of the Bush administration, it rose at the average of about 7 percent, or twice as high as it rose during the nineties. So, in terms of caps, spending, which are in the budget, we ought to have budget caps. We ought to stick with those budget caps. And, in fact, the Democrats, under the rule that he said we adopted, stuck with that rule, even when it had consequences that were tough for us. He remembers the District of Columbia vote. By adding a Member, it cost a little over $1 million; we had to pay for it, even though it caused us a problem, then opened it up for an MTR that was a problem.

But, let me speak to the substance of this bill. The gentleman is correct. Other Republicans are correct. We've incurred extraordinary debt during the first 6 months. Why? Because the economic program and the fiscal policies that were argued for by the Republicans and put in place by the Republicans, with little, if any, Democratic support--but they had the Presidency, they had the House, and they had the Senate-- led to the worst economy that this country has seen in 75 years. So, according to Mr. Bernanke and others, we had an economic crisis confronting our country; and if we did not act, we could possibly be in a depression, not just a severe recession. So, we inherited the worst recession in 75 years when we took office, having been urged by the Republican administration to put $700 billion on the fiscal tab in the last Congress, urged by the President, by Secretary Paulson and by Ben Bernanke. The gentleman and I voted together on that bill. It was a tough bill. Nobody wanted to vote for it. But we believed that there was a crisis and it was necessary.

So we find ourselves having passed, because we were still, and frankly, falling into a deeper recession in January and February of this year, and responding to that with the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and we borrowed $787 billion to do that. I believe it's been helpful. The stock market's up 1,000 points since the start of this administration. Housing starts have now been higher for the last 3 months. The Dow is up. NASDAQ is up very substantially. In addition, we've lost 200,000 less jobs per month, on average, over the last 3 months than we lost during the last 3 months of the Bush administration. Is that what we want? No. Is it progress? I suggest to you it is. It's 33 percent less loss of jobs than we had in the last 3 months of the Bush administration. Now, that's not where we want to be. We want to be at zero and growing.

The economic policies that were pursued by my friend and on the Republican side of the aisle created 4,240 jobs per month over a 96- month administration of the policies pursued by my friends on the other side of the aisle. The economic policies that were pursued in the nineties, with the opposition, to a person, of the Republicans, created an average of 216,000 jobs per month. That's a pretty stark difference. As a matter of fact, 2 million jobs created during the last year of the Clinton administration and 3 million jobs lost during the last year of the Bush administration. That's a 5 million turn around. Is there any wonder why there's so much stress among families and individuals?

Now, ladies and gentlemen, maybe you've heard the first rule of holes. When you're in one, stop digging. That's what this bill does. It says stop digging. The fact is that our Nation is in a deep hole. The deficit for this fiscal year is $1.7 trillion. That ought to be of great concern to every one of us. We differ on why we have that deficit. We believe we have it because the economic program supported by the Republicans was such a failure, demonstrably, factually, in terms of every indication. Our debt has never been higher. Unless we do something to remove ourselves from this hole, the future of

our children and grandchildren will be severely constrained, and interest payments will crowd out nearly all of the investment Americans know are vital to their future, from education to clean energy to health care.

The energy bill. There's no tax in the energy bill. There is no tax in the energy bill. But so many of you come and say there's a tax in this bill. That's not honest. You ought to know that. There's one thing to make a mistake. There's another thing to not tell the truth.

No. But I will yield to you if you want. But I am not particularly interested in your responding. If you, on your own time, want to say at some point in time that there is a tax in the bill, you can point it out to me. Are there consequential costs in actions we take? There are. The worst-case scenario, a fiscal meltdown, has a nightmare to offer both parties. For Republicans, the prospect that taxes will be forced through the roof, I understand that concern. I suggest to you there's a constraint on that: Voters throwing people out of office who do that to them. Hopefully, voters will return to office, however, people who have the honesty to say, you want us to buy something, then we will pay for it. You didn't do that. You didn't do it for the war. I understand that. I voted for that funding. For Democrats, the prospect that the programs we value will be slashed and that the weakest and least powerful will suffer most. But there is a way out, reclaiming the principles of responsibility that have served our country so well.

I fully believe that we are in this hole because the last administration set responsibility by the wayside. They waived PAYGO. It was inconvenient to pay for things, and you couldn't do your tax cut and pay for them. That's why we waived PAYGO, because you wanted to do something that you could not and would not and did not pay for. In fact, a recent New York Times analysis tells us that 90 percent of our deficit can be attributed to Bush administration policies, the extensions of those policies, and the economic crisis that the administration left behind.

But whatever we think brought us to this point, I'm confident that we can agree on a tried and tested plan for a new beginning. It is a simple one; the principle that from here on out, this country will pay for what it buys. It's called pay-as-you-go or PAYGO for short. It was a key part of turning deficits into surpluses once, and it can be a part of that objective again. Essentially, this PAYGO bill requires Congress to find savings, to balance out the dollars it spends so that all new policies that reduce revenues or expand entitlement spending are fully offset over five and 10 years, an improvement over the President's bill.

In 1990, a similar PAYGO rule was enacted as part of a budget agreement between a Republican President and a Democratic Congress. In other words, in a bipartisan agreement, we reached a consensus on paying as we go. What was the result? The result was an administration that, for the first time and only time in the lifetime of anybody in this Chamber, we had 4 years of surplus. Now, it wasn't the President alone. It wasn't Democrats alone, because in 1997, we reached another bipartisan agreement to extend this principle of PAYGO when Speaker Gingrich and President Clinton, which I voted for, reached agreement. And by forcing Congress to make difficult choices between taxes and spending, to scrutinize wasteful subsidies and loopholes, and to fully weigh the real cost of tax cuts, PAYGO was instrumental in creating a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion.

That was squandered. The economy that was supposed to grow so well under your economic policies didn't do so. It created less than 2 million jobs, less than 10 percent of what was created during the 1990s. Its repeal in 2002 paved the way for the fiscal excesses of the last administration.

On winning the congressional majority in 2006, as the ranking member has pointed out, Democrats made it part of the House rules; and today we have the chance to give PAYGO the force of law.

With this law in place, advocates of spending will have to find ways to offset the new costs. That's the discipline. That's the extrinsic constraint. Advocates of tax cuts will no longer be able to finance them with debt. Instead, they will have to tell us which programs they would cut. I make that statement knowing full well that if there's a crisis, if there's an emergency, if there's a war, if there's a Katrina, if there's an economic meltdown, yes, we will waive this, and we will borrow money to try to stem the existing crisis. However, generally speaking, we won't do that.

PAYGO won't make those debates go away and won't make those decisions for us. It means hard choices for all of us and for the citizens whom we represent, but continuing to shun hard choices is the road to fiscal ruin.

Exempted from this bill's PAYGO requirements are extensions of current policy on the alternative minimum tax, estate and middle class income tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2002, and Medicare payments to doctors. As a result, some have criticized this bill for not going far enough; but supporters of PAYGO, including President Obama, see exemption as a crucial concession to political reality and to the votes on your side of the aisle, by the way, who on at least three of those instances don't want to pay for them because they are current policy. You've made that argument over and over and over again. I've disagreed with it, but it is reality.

It is clear that there is bipartisan support in Congress for extending those current policies without offsetting savings. I've told my friend Senator Conrad that if he sends back from the Senate any one of those four bills paid for, I will fight for them. I will advocate for them being paid for. I hope he can do that.

That gives us two choices. On the one hand, we can pass an all- encompassing bill that is waived again and again, one that turns into what the nonpartisan Center on Budget Priorities calls ``a transparently phony fiscal responsibility promise,'' because we've waived them. I think that's unfortunate, but that's what we do. That's what we have done. A promise, I would add, that would weaken the cause of responsibility as a whole.

On the other hand, we can make a promise we are prepared to keep, and we're prepared to keep that to the extent that the Speaker and I have both indicated we will not put a bill on this floor coming out of conference on health care or any other issue dealing with those four unless statutory PAYGO is in the bill, statutory PAYGO has been passed, or it is paid for. The Speaker and I have both indicated we will not put a bill on this floor coming out of conference unless one of those three criteria is met.

In other words, we have the choice between a satisfying, but weak, statement of ideals or of action in the real world of politics. This bill takes the latter path. It draws a line before future budget busting plans, this far but no further.

Is that enough? No, Mr. Speaker, it is not nearly enough. Even if this bill is passed and signed, we will still be in our hole. There will still be years of hard work ahead of us. Hopefully, we can do that on a bipartisan basis. Before our heads can be above ground, we need to deal with entitlements further. We need to deal with spending further. We need to make sure that we have vigorous efforts to rid ourselves of waste, fraud and abuse in the Federal Government on spending and other efforts that we can take to put us on the path, again, of fiscal responsibility to once again get back to an era where we had Clinton surpluses and Clinton 216,000 job-per-month creation.

That's where we want to go. Does this bill get us there? It does not. Does this bill take a critical step towards that end? It does.

I urge my colleagues to reject the substitute, to pass this bill, and to put us once again on the road to fiscal responsibility.

I congratulate Mr. Spratt for his leadership. I want to thank Mr. Welch and Mr. Miller, who is one of the early leaders on PAYGO, and Mr. Baron Hill of the Blue Dogs for cosponsoring this, along with literally 180 or more Democrats supporting this important step.

I will tell my friends, I would hope this was bipartisan, but the economic program we adopted in 1993 was not bipartisan either, and it led to the best economy I have seen in my lifetime in

this country. The principal reason for that economic well-being in America was the chip, not government, the chip where the information technology age exploded and provided extraordinary revenues for our country.

It is the private sector that drives our economy. It is the private sector that will give us wealth and that creates jobs, not the government; but the government can create policies within which the private sector and particularly venture capitalists can have the confidence that we are managing our finances responsibly. That's what this bill does.

Vote for this important piece of legislation.

I thank the gentleman from South Carolina. I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit. This motion is designed, obviously, to kill the bill. Generally speaking, my

friends on that side of the aisle don't support the underlying bill. I understand that. It constrains you in cutting taxes because it makes you pay for that, just as it makes us pay for any increases. That's why this is so good, because it affects both sides of the proposition--the spending side and the revenue side. This constrains all of us. None of us like constraints; but if we don't have constraints, our grandchildren will look to us and say that we did not do a good job.

I want to say to Ed Lorenzen, who has worked with Charlie Stenholm on this proposition for over a decade, thank you for the work that you have done. I want to say to my Blue Dog friends, thank you for your leadership. And I want to say to my progressive friends, who understand the ramifications of spending deficits that adversely affect the most vulnerable in our country, vote against this MTR. Vote for this statutory PAYGO. Let us get back on the road of fiscal responsibility.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 665 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only.

General Leave

I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials into the Record.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a member of the Rules Committee and of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition and as a proud supporter of this rule and H.R. 2920, the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go bill.

When the 110th Congress convened in 2007, I strongly supported the reinstatement of the pay-as-you-go principles in the rules of the House. Today, we will take up the next step toward reinstating the statutory pay-as-you-go rule. These statutory requirements helped turn deficits into surpluses in the 1990s under the Clinton administration. When the previous statute expired, Mr. Speaker, the result was a return to unchecked deficit spending, which doubled the national debt in less than a decade. This is not a Democratic problem. This is not a Republican problem. Rather, this is a problem for all of us.

The American people deserve better. We in Congress must be forced to balance our spending the same way that every American family does. We should not spend what we cannot afford. In order to spend a dollar, we must find a dollar either in savings or in new revenue.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle may try to argue semantics and say that this is an imperfect bill. If this is the case, I would simply remind my colleagues that every journey is completed one step at a time. This bill is just a first step. It is part of a clearly delineated path toward fiscal responsibility.

To date, this Congress has passed critical pieces of legislation, like the expansion of the SCHIP, which provides health insurance to 11 million children, and we did so in a way that was completely paid for, showing our commitment to fiscal responsibility. Earlier this year, we adopted a budget resolution that placed the full cost of war spending on the books for the first time. These are steps in the right direction. This bill continues these important steps in the direction of fiscal responsibility.

This legislation will require that all new policies of reducing revenues or of expanding spending enacted during a session of Congress be offset over 5 and 10 years. It will require any future extension of upper-income tax cuts to be offset, and it will force a serious examination of wasteful subsidies in the budget and of tax loopholes that can be eliminated to offset more worthwhile programs.

Finally, the statute would not be complete without an enforcement mechanism. The Congressional Budget Office will continue to score legislation passed by Congress. The Office of Management and Budget will keep a running scorecard for all of the revenue generated in new spending enacted during a year. If we have not fully offset the legislation enacted during the session, it will trigger an automatic sequester of funds from mandatory spending programs.

Mr. Speaker, the American people have spoken, and they want a return to a fiscally responsible Congress that abides by pay-as-you-go principles. This is the legislation that will make that a reality. As a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, I have worked, since being elected to Congress, to reenact statutory PAYGO, and I strongly urge my fellow colleagues to vote for this rule on H.R. 2920.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts, a member of the Rules Committee (Mr. McGovern).

Methinks thou doth protest too much.

I listened to my friend from Louisiana, and all I hear are complaints about PAYGO. And then I see a sign that says, PAYGO equals tax increase, which actually means nothing at all, but it is a very nice sign. But, in fact, that's not at all what PAYGO is about. In fact, if PAYGO did nothing more than put a check on spending, I would say it's worth voting for. But my friend on the other side of the aisle says he doesn't support it.

You know, we see a lot of finger-pointing going on in Congress, everybody blames the other side, but the fact of the matter is, when they talk about spending, we are spending now because we are in the throes of a recession.

When the Republicans were in control of the House of Representatives, we see that they didn't reinstate PAYGO and they continued to spend. We have put the war on the books for the first time, which is a step in the right direction towards fiscal responsibility.

When I finish, I will be happy to yield.

When we hear my friend from Louisiana talk about PAYGO and talk about all of the problems with PAYGO, he doesn't acknowledge the fact that PAYGO does require that we spend only what we have. And if it did nothing else, he should support it. Yet he doesn't support it because it's more of the finger-pointing that we see in Congress.

I yield to the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time, I never said PAYGO was great. I said PAYGO is a step in the right direction. PAYGO is a step that we need to take, and that is what I said.

I would be happy to yield.

My friend knows full well what the purpose of PAYGO is. And the purpose of PAYGO is to ensure that whatever money we spend in the

future, we have a way of providing for, either by creating cuts or by raising revenues in other ways. That's what PAYGO is all about, and it's about doing it over a 5-year and a 10-year period.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Cuellar).

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Half of the nondiscretionary spending is on the military. Do you think that we should be cutting the amount of spending that we do for the military?

Will the gentleman yield?

Do you think that any increases in military spending that we have made should have been cut as well?

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from California for his comments. And I would just point out that we are in unprecedented times. We are in a time when we are conducting two wars overseas, one ending in Iraq and one continuing in Afghanistan. And that requires increases in military spending. It continues to require increases in veteran spending, which we have done. We have seen unprecedented natural disasters, which we have had to spend upon. We have seen an economy in a downturn. As a result of those things, it is necessary for spending to take place. I think my friend knows that.

With that, I will yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from South Dakota, a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, Ms. Herseth Sandlin.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Mrs. Dahlkemper).

Mr. Speaker, before I yield, I would just like to say to my colleague from Tennessee that if Katrina was not an emergency and did not merit emergency spending, then I cannot, in my wildest imagination, imagine what would. That is the reason why we have an emergency spending exception to any PAYGO requirement, to allow government to do that which the voters sent us here to do, and that is to ensure that when a catastrophe and when an emergency strikes, that we are there to do everything that we possibly can to help the people who have been injured by it.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee, a proud member of the Blue Dog Coalition, Mr. Tanner.

I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from California for his management of this rule.

Mr. Speaker, since the beginning of 2007, the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has shown a strong commitment to the pay-as-you-go rules, first, by reinstating the PAYGO rule in the rules of the House on the opening of the 110th Congress, and now, in working to bring this important legislation before the House. I applaud the Blue Dog Coalition, my colleagues there, for their outspoken leadership on PAYGO.

When I explain to folks back home what PAYGO is, I ask them the question, if they have to balance their own books each month, if they have to ensure that they have enough income coming in to cover their expenses; and of course they respond that they do. And I then ask, shouldn't the Federal Government operate in the same way when it involves spending your tax dollars? My constituents get it. The American people get it.

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, there are still some Members of Congress who are steadfastly against the idea of being fiscally responsible and balancing the Federal books, the same way that our constituents balance their checkbooks each and every week.

The legislation we will consider later today will require Congress to balance the books or face the harsh consequence of automatic cuts to offset the shortfall in our spending.

Now I certainly appreciate the born-again Republican commitment to fiscal responsibility. But the real question is why the Republicans allowed PAYGO to expire in the first place under the last administration. Not only did they not advance the cap discretionary spending, which they are criticizing us for not coupling with the PAYGO statute, but they wouldn't even renew the PAYGO provision, which we are now doing.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle criticize the majority for the increase in the deficit since the beginning of 2007. One of the reasons for this is that we have put the full cost of the war on the books for the first time. That is a hard thing to do, but it is the responsible thing to do. The Republicans kept this off their budget balance sheet, but the Democratic majority has taken the fiscally responsible approach and placed the entire cost of the war on the books, which adds nearly $1 trillion to the deficit.

So to say that we have single-handedly raised the deficit over $1 trillion since 2007 is disingenuous at best.

Furthermore, the budget adopted by Congress this year cuts the deficit by nearly two-thirds in 4 years and contains even deeper cuts in the deficit than were proposed by the President. Under the concurrent budget resolution adopted by the House and the Senate, the deficit will be cut by $1.7 trillion, or 12.3 percent of GDP, in 2009 to 3 percent of GDP in 2014.

I strongly believe that we in Congress must balance our own books and maintain fiscal responsibility similar to what is asked of all taxpayers in dealing with their own personal finances. I urge all members to vote ``yes'' on the previous question, ``yes'' on the rule, and to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 2920.

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

The previous question was ordered.