A bill to require the Secretary of the Army to calculate the aggregate withdrawals of non-Federal entities, and for other purposes.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

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

I want to begin by expressing my appreciation to my very good friend and debating partner, as he has just outlined from Worcester, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. And I want to begin by saying that it was very obvious from the moment that he stood up, Madam Speaker, that we have been debating over the last couple of days, and I wish him well in his recovery as he seeks to get his voice back as our debate proceeds.

I also want to say that as I listened to his account of his concern, that we all share, for those who are on food stamps, for those who are suffering during these difficult economic times. I want to congratulate him for his lifelong commitment to dealing with those who are suffering, and to say that I stand here with him committed to doing everything that we possibly can to ensure that those who truly are in need, those who are on food stamps, do not see the rug pulled out from under them. That is a commitment that we are proud to make, standing with him on that. And I will say that I don't believe for 1 minute that our budget would in any way undermine those who are facing the serious economic challenges that we have.

But I have to say, Madam Speaker, it is interesting to note that the budget that was sent here to this Congress was, interestingly enough, entitled, ``The New Era of Responsibility,'' proving once again that, in Washington, spin seems to trump reality every single time.

Slapping the moniker of ``responsibility'' on a disastrous budget is far easier than actually crafting a responsible budget. But now is not the time to be taking the easy way out and abandoning our duties to wisely and effectively spend the taxpayers' money.

We, as we all know, are facing the gravest economic crisis that we have faced in nearly three decades. If there was ever a time for true leadership, it is now. And, regrettably, my colleague's side of the aisle has chosen this very critical moment to shirk the responsibility for the great task that is before us.

The Democratic budget imposes new taxes, new taxes on small businesses,

increasing that burden on job creators. So that will mean more lost jobs, fewer capital investments, and greater strain on our credit markets.

It also increases taxes on every single American household across this country with new energy taxes. In fact, families will see their taxes on energy go up by as much as $3,100 a year.

Now, these are not--these are not, Madam Speaker, as we all know, tax increases on the super rich, which we regularly hear decried around here. These are regressive taxes that will hit every single family in this country. And, Madam Speaker, it is important to note this energy tax will hit the poorest of families in this country, because they need to turn the light switch on and turn the microwave on as well.

This budget will have immediate and very, very painful consequences. But as painful as the short-term impact will be, the long-term consequences are even more troubling. This budget more than quadruples the deficit. My friend talked about how this budget reduces the deficit. All one needs to do is look at the numbers, Madam Speaker. This budget more than quadruples the deficit. It pushes our national debt to a level that threatens the solvency of this country for years to come, in fact, for generations to come.

Now, some Americans may be wondering why the deficit should matter while so many families are struggling. Well, let me clarify exactly what it is that we are talking about here.

Republicans are not advocating a complete eradication of the deficit in 2009. We have had deficits over the past several years. We all acknowledge that. And while we are committed to reining in wasteful spending, this time of serious economic challenges is not the time for sudden or extreme austerity.

Our concern with this budget is not that there is any deficit at all; our concern is that the deficit itself is so catastrophically huge. It takes the largest deficit in the last 8 years and expands it exponentially by 450 percent in this year alone, a 450 percent increase in the size of the deficit this year alone.

It is either amusing or tragic, depending on how seriously one takes this issue, to hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle whine that they inherited deficits. They justify their enormously wasteful budget by saying Republicans ran deficits, too. Yes, there were budget deficits when Republicans controlled Congress. We all acknowledge that. We have been fighting two wars; and, yes, we did not go as far as we would have liked in trimming down wasteful spending. We acknowledge that.

But what twisted and contorted logic, Madam Speaker, is it to say: Republican deficits were bad, so we are responding by making them four times worse. Is this really the Democratic majority's justification for what it is that we are doing today? Do they really think anyone could be fooled by such preposterous reasoning? This argument is not just bizarre, it is downright dangerous. It fails to take seriously the impact of exponentially growing debt.

It also fails to take seriously the nature of our current economic crisis. Some debt is manageable, as any working family knows. Americans borrow money all the time to buy a new car or pay for college tuition. At reasonable levels, debt is manageable. But as we have learned very painfully, irresponsibly and dramatically increased debt can be catastrophic.

Our Nation's oldest, most prestigious financial institutions have collapsed under the weight of their irresponsible debts. And now the Democratic majority is careening down the path that led these institutions into ruin. Our current economic crisis has come as the result of irresponsible, unaccountable behavior. We all know that. We simply cannot begin our recovery unless and until we begin to learn from our mistakes. The Democratic budget simply repeats and expands on those mistakes.

But, Madam Speaker, we do have another choice. We, as Republicans, have put forth an alternative that heeds the lessons of our economic crisis and applies some common sense to our spending priorities. It also heeds the lessons of history and previous times of economic crisis. We have experienced great economic challenges before throughout our Nation's history. And what have those experiences taught us? Now if we go back to the recessions in the early 1980s and the early 1960s, we see very clearly a Democratic President and a Republican President. President Ronald Reagan and President John F. Kennedy quickly righted our economies with pro-growth policies that empowered America's job creators. Again, a Democratic President, John F. Kennedy, and a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, both put into place pro-growth policies that empowered the job creators here in the United States. John F. Kennedy, as I said, and Ronald Reagan after him, understood that all the government intervention in the world could never match the power of American entrepreneurship.

Madam Speaker, I am going to quote a Democratic President, President John F. Kennedy, who in 1962 said the following: ``To increase demand and lift the economy, the Federal Government's most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the incentives and opportunities for private expenditures.'' Madam Speaker, I'm going to repeat the words of the great Democratic President, John F. Kennedy. In 1962, as we were dealing with economic challenges, he said, ``To increase demand and lift the economy, the Federal Government's most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the incentives and opportunities for private expenditures.''

Madam Speaker, history proved John F. Kennedy right. His pro-growth reforms reversed the recession and put our economy back on the path to prosperity. We all know two decades later. My colleague, Mr. Lungren, and I were part of that ``Reagan Revolution.'' Reagan followed John F. Kennedy's lead and accomplished the same thing.

Now, Madam Speaker, today Republicans have proposed a budget built on the Kennedy-Reagan model, a budget that draws upon history's lessons and will allow our economy to grow once again. Our alternative also heeds the mistakes that led to our current crisis and rejects the Democratic majority's policy of massive, reckless new debt for the American people. This alternative will not eliminate the deficit immediately, but it responsibly funds our greatest needs while preventing the deficit from ballooning into an utterly unmanageable size.

It does not raise taxes on small businesses and working families, but, in fact, reduces the tax burden they face and empowers them to lead our economic recovery. It meets our needs as a Nation without condemning future generations to a mountain of crippling debt. It is the responsible solution that the American people are expecting. It is the only budget proposal before us today that will carry us through this economic crisis and begin the process of the recovery that I know we all seek in a bipartisan way.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I would be happy to yield my friend additional time if he would yield to me.

Do I have any other option at all to discuss anything else? Is that all I can discuss is the failure of the past? If my friend would yield, and I'm happy to yield my friend 1 additional minute, Madam Speaker.

I thank my friend for yielding. Let me just say that if we talk about the failure of the past, clearly the ideological baggage of the past has been the tax, spend and borrow policy which is being proposed here. Let me say I'm somewhat confused. I know that the President talked about reducing the deficit by half. Now, of course, if we run multitrillion-dollar deficits and you cut it down by a $1 trillion or $2 trillion, yeah, you can maybe cut it in half. But my friend has just said he is going to cut the deficit by two-thirds. I don't know where that comes from.

Let me just say from what it is now, based on the projections with all the spending that is in here, that will create deficits that are so extraordinarily high. That is the challenge that we have got here. When you dramatically increase the size of the deficits--I thank my friend for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I will yield myself such time as I may consume. And I'm happy to further engage my friend. And I will say that we have proposed a 10-year budget. This is a 5-year budget that my friend has. And I know that if you have multitrillion-dollar deficits that are going to be run, the dramatic increase in debt servicing is going to increase the size of those deficits.

I also have to say that it is very interesting, Madam Speaker, my friend said that I was able to talk about the Bush years. And yes, I'm very proud of the fact that in 2001 and 2003, dealing with the aftermath of September 11, an economic recession that existed in the early part of this decade and corporate scandals, that we were able, for 55 months, to have sustained economic growth. And I think that that is something of which we can be proud. But my point is, my arguments here were bipartisan. And John F. Kennedy was one of our greatest Presidents. And I'm very proud to say that we are standing on the shoulders of John F. Kennedy, if that will make my colleagues feel better. Mr. Lungren and I regularly argue that we are standing on the shoulders of Ronald Reagan.

I'm happy to yield to my friend.

If I can reclaim my time, we are standing on the shoulders of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to use policies that have historically been very, very successful and brought about economic recovery through difficult times in our Nation.

At this time, I would like to yield 4 minutes to my very good friend from Gold River, California, our former attorney general and my good friend, Mr. Lungren.

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank my friend for yielding. And Madam Speaker, I would simply say in response to the cap-and-tax issue about which my friend has just spoken, that we do share a concern about the poor.

And as I mentioned in my remarks earlier, there is a tax of up to $3,100 for every American family. That includes the working poor, it includes those who are impoverished who are still in their homes. And so the notion that we somehow are doing everything----

I yield my friend an additional minute. If the gentleman would further yield, the fact of the matter is, with this proposal that our colleagues have, they regularly point the finger of blame at us, that we somehow are trying to hurt the poor by cutting food stamps and nutrition programs, which is just plain wrong. But they fail to recognize that the tax burden, with this energy tax imposed on any family that turns the light switch on, is going to be overwhelmingly strong.

If the gentleman would further yield, I would simply say maybe it is perverse that we somehow believe that if a burden is imposed on a business, that it is something that is going to have to be passed on to the consumer. I mean, is that--maybe there's something wrong with that interpretation.

I thank my friend for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I was just handed a piece here which states that the distinguished chairman of the Agriculture Committee, our colleague, Mr. Peterson, the gentleman from Minnesota, has made it clear that he is not going to allow for a single cut in agricultural subsidies, a story that has just come out here.

If my friend would further yield, under your budget how do you propose to have the cuts in agriculture if you're going to maintain the food stamp and nutrition program and not bring about cuts in subsidies?

I thank my friend for yielding. And, Madam Speaker, I would simply say to my friend, how does he justify the $3,100 tax that is imposed on struggling families who are impoverished with the so- called tax?

I thank my friend for yielding. There are several different studies which show----

There are several different studies.

There are studies that show there's an increase. The highest I've seen is $3,100.

I thank my friend for yielding. It's not a page in the budget. It's the fact that there is, in fact, a tax increase that several studies have shown ranged from $1,600 to $3,100 for a working family in this country.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume.

I know that the time was limited on the other side, so I'd like to respond to my good friend from Oregon and say that there are a number of studies which have indicated what this cost will be. The highest that I saw was this $3,100 figure.

Now, my friend has just said, this will be worked out later. And in saying this will be worked out later, that creates a degree of uncertainty as to exactly what the tax will be on working families.

I am happy to yield to my friend.

If I could reclaim my time, I wanted to say that there are several studies. That is one study. And I don't have the other studies in front of me, Madam Speaker, but I would like to say that it stands to reason that if this structure is going to be put into place, the so-called cap-and-trade, talking about exchange of carbon taxes and the taxes that are out there, they are going to be passed on to consumers. And a number of studies, other than the MIT study, have indicated that this will increase the cost burden on working families throughout the United States of America, regardless of their economic standing.

Of course, I am happy to yield to my friend.

If I could reclaim my time, the fact is, Madam Speaker, there are several other studies which have talked about that tax burden which is going to be involved, not that single study. They range from roughly $1,600 to this $3,100 figure that we had in the past.

Of course. I am happy to yield.

What do I think happens to that money? I will tell you. Whatever the tax burden is, it is imposed on the families in this country who are on food stamps, who are on nutrition programs and who are struggling to make ends meet but still have to pay their energy bills.

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

If my friend would yield, the fact of the matter is it has not been put into place, and it's very, very clear that there is a $1 billion place holder there, which is what they're planning to utilize.

Madam Speaker, I am happy to yield 2 minutes to our very thoughtful new colleague from Buffalo, New York (Mr. Lee).

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to simply say to our new colleague from Oregon, who has just joined us, that it seems that this budget is dealing with what is little more than a 5-year fantasy land. We're dealing with a 10-year proposal here, and the notion of saying, ``within a 5-year period of time,'' these projections are not taking into reality the huge debt that is going to be existing beyond that 5 years.

I've asked my friend from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) to return, and I've been doing a little research. Our staff has looked into this, and we've found that the professor about whom my friend was speaking from MIT did, in fact, say that there would be this one hundred fortieth level, but it was based on the fact that we would see rebates to those families provided, and yet there is nothing in this budget that provides for those rebates.

In light of that----

Let me just finish my thought, and then I will yield to my friend.

The fact is, if you look at that $3,100 figure, it does stand because the budget does not have a penny for those rebates.

I'm happy to yield to my friend.

If I could reclaim my time, Madam Speaker, let me just-- --

Madam Speaker, who controls the time?

I think that I control all the time on our side, Madam Speaker, and I think that I've been yielded to.

Madam Speaker, if I may, what I said was I'm reclaiming my time. Did the Chair not hear me say that I was reclaiming my time from the gentleman?

Well, there was no amount of time yielded to him, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker, if I may----

Madam Speaker, may I be recognized?

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

I would simply like to state to the Chair that the gentleman said that there was nothing in this budget that specifically referred to that. When he made his point in response to my question, I asked you to allow me to reclaim my time. I said it three times loudly and with enthusiasm, so I don't believe that I was talking over the gentleman. I was asking to reclaim my time.

Am I wrong?

Madam Speaker, let me state very clearly again for the recording clerk: What I was saying was ``reclaiming my time.'' That was the statement that I was making as the gentleman was speaking.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

I would say to my friend that, as we look at this issue, there is nothing in this budget, but there is this $1 billion set-aside there. I would like to ask my friend if he could guarantee that that $1 billion will not be used for the so-called cap-and-trade or cap-and-tax plan, or that it will not be in the budget conference report that we have returning to us.

I'm happy to yield to my friend.

If I could reclaim my time, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, may I reclaim my time?

I reclaim my time to ask again as I just did of my friend: Can the gentleman provide a guarantee that that $1 billion will not be used for this so-called ``cap-and-trade program'' and that it will not be included in a conference report that comes back to the House?

I'm happy to further yield to my friend to respond.

Madam Speaker, if I could reclaim my time, I will say that the gentleman has made his point, and so he is not providing a guarantee that it is not going to be there, and I appreciate his recognizing that fact.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Madam Speaker, may I inquire of the Chair how much time is remaining on both sides?

I'd like to yield a minute and a half to our hardworking colleague from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

Madam Speaker, may I inquire of my friend if he has any further speakers.

If my friend from Worcester is prepared to close, I will yield myself the balance of our time.

Madam Speaker, we all know this has been an interesting debate, a fascinating one, and I think there is going to be a very clear choice that is before us.

The American people are hurting. The people whom I represent in California and people all across this country are suffering because of the economic downturn that we face today. It is a very serious and a challenging one, and I believe that every Democrat and every Republican wants to do what they believe is best to get our economy back on track.

I will tell you that I think that it's important for us to look at history. We need to look at the history of spending and what it has created, and we need to look at the history of what it is that gets our economy growing. Dramatically increasing spending, as study after study has shown, does nothing to get our economy back on track, to get it growing.

I believe that those words that were offered by President Kennedy, that I quoted earlier, in 1962 as he was dealing with a difficult economic time, when he said, ``to increase demand and lift the economy, the Federal Government's most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases and public expenditures but to expand the incentives and opportunities for private expenditures.''

Now, Madam Speaker, the reason that I point to John F. Kennedy is that at the beginning of this administration's term and at the beginning of this Congress, we heard Democrats talk about the need for us to work in a bipartisan way. So what we're using, Madam Speaker, is the model of a great Democrat, John F. Kennedy, who recognized that dramatically increasing spending is not the cure that we need to deal with this challenge. And history proved John F. Kennedy right.

We know that tax cuts create jobs and jobs create revenues. It's true that we have a debt and a deficit that need to be addressed. The way to do that is to grow our economy. Tax increases do not increase jobs. And so it is absolutely imperative that we put a pro-growth policy into place, and that's what we do. We grow the economy, we recognize that there are serious societal needs out there, whether it is nutrition, whether it is food stamps. We need to address those. And we do provide for that in our budget. And at the same time, we focus on future generations by saying we are going to responsibly take the debt that exists and we are going to take it on a downward slope.

Now, my colleagues continue to talk about the next 5 years. Our budget focus is on 10 years. Why? Because we know that the 5-year plan that they have where they talk about reducing the multitrillion-dollar deficits that we're going to have, that they skyrocket after that 5- year period of time based on the spending that they plan to have in their budget.

So, Madam Speaker, we're going to continue with this rigorous debate that's taken place over the past hour-plus. We will see it happen throughout the day, and then we're going to have a chance to determine whether or not we are going to put into place policies that stand on the shoulders of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to grow our economy, reducing the tax burden on working Americans so that they can create jobs and increase the flow of revenues to the Federal Treasury, or are we going to have a policy which taxes too much, spends too much, and borrows too much.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 316 and ask for its immediate consideration.

For the purpose 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 legislation 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.

Madam Speaker, the resolution provides for further consideration of the budget under a structured rule. It makes in order four substitute amendments.

First, let me once again thank Chairman Spratt and Ranking Member Ryan for all of their incredibly hard work. They obviously have very significant differences in philosophy, but they strive to make the Budget Committee a very fair and thoughtful place.

Madam Speaker, the rule before us today will allow Members of this House to make a very clear choice: Do you believe we should pass a budget that invests in the American people? Or, do you believe we should pass a budget that makes the same old mistakes of the past?

My friend from California (Mr. Dreier) and I had a very good debate on the floor and in the Rules Committee yesterday, and I know that many of our colleagues will voice their opinions today during the debate. But I would like to take a bit of time to talk about the choice that Members will make today.

In addition to the Democratic and Republican budgets, this rule makes in order proposals from the Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Republican Study Group. So a wide range of options will be presented today.

I will vote proudly for the Democratic budget. Our budget reduces the deficit, it cuts taxes for middle-class families, and it makes critical investments in health care, education, and clean energy.

We will hear a lot today about the deficit, so let's remember one thing: The Obama administration inherited an economy in a deep recession, with a projected annual deficit of over $1 trillion. This deficit didn't simply appear out of thin air. It was the direct result of the policies of the Bush administration, along with their Republican allies in Congress, who inherited a large surplus and then proceeded to squander it.

Now, my friends on the other side of the aisle will say, ``Don't talk about the administration, they are gone,'' as though 3 months ago is somehow ancient history. But we must talk about how we got into this mess. Those who ignore bad mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat it.

We believe that the best way, indeed, the only way to effectively reduce the deficit is to grow the economy, to create good-paying jobs for middle-class Americans, to improve the health and education of the American people, to invest in the cutting-edge green energy economy of the future.

By contrast, the Republican budget proposes slashes in health care and in nutrition for the most vulnerable Americans. It ignores the educational needs of our people. And it relies on the same dirty fossil fuels that threaten our environment and increase our dependence on foreign oil.

Now, I would like to talk for a moment about a specific difference between the two budgets on hunger and nutrition. Mr. Dreier got very upset with me yesterday, I believe he used the word ``shrill,'' when I suggested that the Republican budget would cut food stamps and other nutrition programs. He argued that of course Republicans care about hunger, and that to argue otherwise would be class warfare.

Well, what do you know, when you actually look at the Republican budget they do in fact cut food stamps. They rescind the food stamp increases included in the stimulus bill; in other words, cutting the program below current law by more than $20 billion over 2 years. And if that weren't bad enough, the Republican budget instructs the Agriculture Committee to cut an additional $38 billion over 10 years.

Now, where would that $38 billion come from? It can only come from a couple places, agricultural subsidies or nutrition programs, because that is what the Agriculture Committee does. And Mr. Ryan said in the Rules Committee yesterday that they weren't proposing to reopen the farm bill.

So that means it won't come from the agricultural subsidies; that means that the additional $38 billion would most likely come from reducing nutrition programs for the most vulnerable Americans.

Now, here is what that means to the people at home. Because of the recovery package that we passed a few weeks ago, a family in Massachusetts will see an increase in their food stamp benefits by around $39 a month. But the Republican budget eliminates that increase, literally taking food out of the mouths of Americans already struggling to make ends meet.

This increase averages out to a little more than $1 a day. Now, many of my colleagues spend three or four times that amount on a latte. Maybe $39 a month isn't a big deal to those in this Chamber, but it is a lot of money for people who have been adversely impacted by this lousy economy.

I believe it is wrong to cut food and nutrition programs for vulnerable people in order to pay for capital gains tax cuts for Wall Street traders.

Madam Speaker, we all talk about how bad things are on Main Street, and our budget should be designed to help the people who live on Main Street and on the side streets as well, whether that is in California or Massachusetts or somewhere in between. But let me tell you how bad things are out there, and let me tell you why the Republican budget will make things worse.

School districts across this country are facing budget shortfalls. Families are having hard times making ends meet. Unfortunately, some families don't even have enough money to pay for the school meals, and the schools are taking drastic measures in response, according to a February 25 Associated Press article.

According to the article, many schools are literally taking kids out of the lunch line because their parents can't afford to pay the cost of a reduced lunch and they are giving them a cheese sandwich, or, in some cases, giving them nothing simply because their parents can't afford to pay for the reduced-price school lunch.

According to this article, the School Nutrition Association recently found that half of the school districts from 38 States surveyed have seen an increase in the number of students charging meals, while 79 percent saw an increase in the number of free lunches served over the last year. This means that more families are relying on the Federally funded school lunch program to help feed their kids; yet, the Republican budget would basically cut school lunch funding from the budget, once again making it harder for our children to get the proper food and nutrition they need.

Now, my good friend from the other side of the aisle will probably say that this is class warfare, that the Democrats are demagoguing this issue. Well, let me tell my good friend from California that the Republican budget requires the Education and Labor Committee to cut almost $23 billion from programs in their jurisdiction. One of the biggest programs, if not the biggest program, is the school lunch program. And if the Republican Party isn't cutting school lunch, then I would like to hear where they are going to make these cuts. Student loans, special education, funding for basic education needs?

Let me be clear: A vote for the Republican budget is a vote to cut programs that are essential and that are helping Americans get through these tough times today, and it is a vote to ensure that people will not be able to improve their lives.

Madam Speaker, those of us in this Chamber earn a good salary. No matter what happens, we will all be fine; but there are a lot of people whom we represent who won't be, unless we provide some help. These are difficult times, and we need to rise to the occasion.

So again, Madam Speaker, Members will have the opportunity to make some very clear choices today. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the Democratic budget, to believe in the potential of the American people, to restore the American dream, and to leave a better America for future generations.

No Free Lunch: Schools Get Tough on Deadbeats

Albuquerque, N.M.--A cold cheese sandwich, fruit and a milk

carton might not seem like much of a meal--but that's what's

on the menu for students in New Mexico's largest school

district without their lunch money.

Faced with mounting unpaid lunch charges in the economic

downturn, Albuquerque Public Schools last month instituted a

``cheese sandwich policy,'' serving the alternative meals to

children whose parents fail to pick up their lunch tab.

Such policies have become a necessity for schools seeking

to keep budgets in the black while ensuring children don't go

hungry. School districts including those in Chula Vista,

Calif., Hillsborough County, Fla., and Lynnwood, Wash., have

also taken to serving cheese sandwiches to lunch debtors.

Critics argue the cold meals are a form of punishment for

children whose parents can't afford to pay.

``We've heard stories from moms coming in saying their

child was pulled out of the lunch line and given a cheese

sandwich,'' said Nancy Pope, director of the New Mexico

Collaborative to End Hunger. ``One woman said her daughter

never wants to go back to school.''

mixed reviews

Some Albuquerque parents have tearfully pleaded with school

board members to stop singling out their children because

they're poor, while others have flooded talk radio shows

thanking the district for imposing a policy that commands

parental responsibility.

Second-grader Danessa Vigil said she will never eat sliced

cheese again. She had to eat cheese sandwiches because her

mother couldn't afford to give her lunch money while her

application for free lunch was being processed.

``Every time I eat it, it makes me feel like I want to

throw up,'' the 7-year-old said.

Her mother, Darlene Vigil, said there are days she can't

spare lunch money for her two daughters.

``Some parents don't have even $1 sometimes,'' the 27-year-

old single mother said. ``If they do, it's for something

else, like milk at home. There are some families that just

don't have it and that's the reason they're not paying.''

The School Nutrition Association recently surveyed

nutrition directors from 38 states and found more than half

of school districts have seen an increase in the number of

students charging meals, while 79 percent saw an increase in

the number of free lunches served over the last year.

``families struggling''

In New Mexico, nearly 204,000 low-income students--about

three-fifths of public school students--received free or

reduced-price lunches at the beginning of the school year,

according to the state Public Education Department.

``What you are seeing is families struggling and having a

really hard time, and school districts are struggling as

well,'' said Crystal FitzSimons of the national Food Research

and Action Center.

In Albuquerque, unpaid lunch charges hovered around $55,000

in 2006. That jumped to $130,000 at the end of the 2007-08

school year. It was $140,000 through the first five months of

this school year.

Charges were on pace to reach $300,000 by the end of the

year. Mary Swift, director of Albuquerque's food and

nutrition services, said her department had no way to absorb

that debt as it had in the past.

``We can't use any federal lunch program money to pay what

they call bad debt. It has to come out of the general budget

and of course that takes it from some other department,''

Swift said.

``dignity and respect''

With the new policy, the school district has collected just

over $50,000 from parents since the beginning of the year. It

also identified 2,000 students eligible to receive free or

reduced-price lunches, and more children in the lunch program

means more federal dollars for the district.

School officials said the policy was under consideration

for some time and parents were notified last fall. Families

with unpaid charges are reminded with an automated phone call

each night and notes are sent home with children once a week.

Swift added that the cheese sandwiches--about 80 of the

46,000 meals the district serves daily--can be considered a

``courtesy meal,'' rather than an alternate meal.

Some districts, she noted, don't allow children without

money to eat anything.

Albuquerque Public Schools ``has historically gone above

and beyond as far as treating children with dignity and

respect and trying to do what's best with for the child and I

think this is just another example,'' Swift said.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, let me thank the gentleman from California for his concern for my voice. And I appreciate the fact that he admitted that the Bush deficits were a bad thing. That is the first important step toward a recovery. So I appreciate that. And he mentions the two wars we fought. I would remind him that they were always off budget. And the budget the Democrats present today is a more honest accounting of those expenditures.

At this time, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Andrews.

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

I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I'm not sure how pointing out that the Republican budget cuts nutrition is a personal attack. But I guess the truth stings a little bit.

The fact of the matter is that their substitute rescinds $20 billion in food stamp funding right off the top. I mean, that's just a fact.

I will be happy to yield to the gentleman.

So that means it's only food stamps. And the ranking member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Ryan, said that the farm bill was off the table. So there's a bipartisan, you know, I guess agreement that the farm bill is going to stand. But your budget----

I reclaim my time. Under our budget we do not rescind the $20 billion in food stamp funding. Beyond that, the Republican budget freezes all discretionary spending. That potentially cuts off nutrition assistance to between 500,000 and 1 million pregnant women, nursing mothers, infants and small children, including monies for the WIC program.

So, we can sit here and talk about abstractions all we want. The bottom line is that these programs that we're talking about, these cuts that are being proposed by the Republican budget, have a direct impact on real people. And maybe those aren't the people that come to Washington to lobby, but I'll tell you, the number of people who have fallen into poverty, the number of people who are still struggling just to hold on to the middle class, they're dwindling. And so your budget makes it much worse.

I yield to the gentleman.

I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.

I am happy to yield to the gentleman from California to tell me what page in our budget that figure comes from.

Madam Speaker, I reclaim my time.

I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.

I thank the gentleman.

We are really tight on time, Mr. Dreier.

I yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

(Mrs. MALONEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

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

Madam Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Etheridge.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Schrader.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire of how much time remains on both sides?

I'd like to yield 10 seconds to the gentleman from Oregon.

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

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

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania, the vice chair of the Budget Committee, Ms. Schwartz.

We have no further speakers.

Madam Speaker, this has been an interesting debate, but the fact is that Members will have a clear choice. And it's a choice of whether or not you want to stick to the same old-same old, or whether you want to go in a dramatically different direction.

If you have loved the last 8 years, then you should vote for the Republican budget because it's a continuation of the same thing.

If you want a different direction, a direction in which we invest in our economy, invest in our health care, invest in clean energy, invest in education and reduce our deficits, then you need to vote for the Democratic budget.

The fact of the matter is, Madam Speaker, the Republican budget, among other things, repeals most of the economic stimulus package that we passed, a stimulus package that is already helping our economy. In my district, a health IT company has already announced they are going to hire 500 more people because of the money for health IT in the economic stimulus package.

And what I find ironic is that so many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, you know, and who now will vote against it again by voting for the Republican budget, are going back to their districts and will be taking credit for all of this Federal money going to help the people in their communities.

Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have taken so many bows, they are humpbacked.

The fact of the matter is we have a problem not just 5 years from now and not just 10 years from now; we have a problem today. There are people in my district today who can't put food on the table. There are people in my district today who are losing their jobs who can't afford a college education for their kids.

We need to approve the Democratic budget because we need to understand if we're going to reduce our debt, we need to have our economy grow, and the only way to grow is by providing smart, sound, good investments. That's the choice.

And so I urge my colleagues to vote for the Democratic budget. I am proud to stand here in support of it. I have two kids, a 10-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter. I am voting for this budget because of them. I want to give them a better future. And that's what this debate is about.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and on the rule.

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

The previous question was ordered.

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I believe I will reserve the balance of my time and allow the gentleman from South Carolina to get started.

Mr. Speaker, we are here today to move the process along on going to conference on the budget resolutions.

I just spent the last week doing 25 listening sessions throughout the 1st Congressional District, which is the

district I am privileged to represent, talking to the people I represent about the fiscal future of America, how we just went through this process of the House passing a budget resolution, the other body passing their version of the budget resolution.

There is very little distinction between the President's budget, the House-passed budget resolution and the Senate budget resolution. Therefore, this move to go to conference should not be a very lengthy conference because the differences between the two are very few and far between, with the exception of the process called reconciliation.

We will talk about that a little bit more. But I think it's important to understand what this is. And I spent a lot of my time talking with constituents about that, because they think sort of when you pass a budget resolution, the budget is done and it's passed.

That is how it works in our State legislatures, which is, a budget is a budget and it's passed and it's executed. This is the beginning of the process, not the ending of the process.

The best way to think about the process we are engaging in and what we are doing right here with the budget resolution is the budget resolution is the fiscal architecture of the Federal Government. It's the blueprint of what our government should look like, how big it should get, what is the fiscal policy of it. So we are here debating these blueprints of the Federal Government. And the blueprints were approved by the House a couple of week ago, by the Senate, and now the idea here is to smooth out any differences, which are few and far between, and then move forward to implement the component parts of the budget. So once this process is done, then we have the architectural diagrams in place; then we go start building the government that's being proposed here. The new cap-and-trade legislation, new national health care legislation, all these new spending bills, the tax increases, that's where Congress goes from here, which is once the budget resolution is done, start implementing these pieces, the goal of which is by this fall all of this is in law and is done.

Let me reiterate what we are talking about here, just the huge magnitude of what's being proposed here. Just with respect to the cost of government to the future generations, our debt, this budget proposes more debt, more borrowing, under this Presidency than all prior Presidencies combined. This budget proposes that our publicly held debt, the amount of bonds we have to go out there and sell to the Chinese, to the Japanese, to other people to cash flow our government, our debt will double in 5\1/2\ years and triple in 10\1/2\ years.

What's more, what this budget says we ought to do is we should chase ever higher spending, an unprecedented level of new spending with ever higher taxes. It not only proposes the largest tax increase in American history, which is $1.5 trillion, taxes on energy, taxes on incomes, on small businesses, on the very investments that make up our savings portfolios, our 401(k)s, our pension plans, things that are probably going down by about 40 percent for the average American, not only are those tax increases huge, the spending increases are much larger.

So what these architectural designs do, what this blueprint for the Federal Government that the President has sent to Congress that Congress is now in the midst of rubber-stamping does is it says let's have this unprecedented gusher of new spending, let's chase it with higher taxes. Those taxes never quite catch up with the spending, and the result is an unprecedented increase in our national debt.

Mr. Speaker, this is how you end prosperity in America. Name me a great country that has been able to increase standards of living, increase jobs, increase prosperity where they increase the size of government, the taxes of government, the borrowing of government like this. This is an unprecedented spending, taxing, and borrowing spree which we simply do not stand for, which we simply can't go along with.

And I want to draw your attention to one other point: This unprecedented borrowing spree is done in the face of an already bleak fiscal future for this country. This is an ad that has been taken out in many newspapers across America by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan advocacy group that says America should get its fiscal house in order. It just shows this tip of the iceberg. Today's economic crisis is the tip of the iceberg. What this says is right now to pay the bills for the Federal Government, right now to make sure that the government programs that everybody has come to know, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, right now those three programs alone show us a $56 trillion unfunded liability. What that means is for everybody in America today, my mother's generation, my generation, my children's generation--and my children are 4, 5, and 7 years old--for us to pay the bills of all the government promises that are being made to these three generations, today we would have to set aside $56 trillion, invest it at Treasury rates in order to just make sure these programs are solvent. It is an enormous fiscal liability.

Rather than tackling this problem, rather than confronting America's fiscal wreck that's coming, rather than getting us under control, what does this budget resolution do? It makes it worse. It adds more debt on top of this debt. It is saying never mind the fact that all these programs are going insolvent, never mind the fact that we're not even prepared for the baby boomers, never mind the fact that today the per- household debt is $483,000 per household, for every household in America right now today they owe $483,000 just to pay the bills we have already racked up that are unpaid for the Federal Government, the majority wants to what? Not fix it but make it worse. Rather than getting spending under control, it goes out of control. I mean the Environmental Protection Agency this year alone gets a 124 percent increase in their budget. On and on and on the spending goes.

Rather than getting taxes under control so entrepreneurs can keep more of what they earn; so small businesses, the economic engine of America, have an incentive to go back to work to hire people, not to lay people off, taxes go out of control. And rather than tackling this challenge of debt, what are they doing? They are accelerating our increase of debt, accelerating the fact that $483,000 per family is owed today and makes it much, much worse.

At the end of the day, what it's really all about is freedom. The question really before the American people today is with the government's taking more and more money out of your pocket, with the government's growing and making more and more decisions here in Washington, with the government's making the decisions on how your health care is to be delivered rather than you and your doctor making the decision, with the government's taking over the energy sector, the health care sector, 25 percent of our economy, with the government's saying to future generations we are going to have to take more money out of your pocket in order to pay the bills, in order to borrow the money, you have less freedom. And this just shows you how the President and the majority here in Congress are proposing a dramatic and radical new increase in the size of government way beyond where we have historically been.

I asked the Congressional Budget Office before this budget came due, what will the tax rates on my three children have to be if we're going to have to finance all this growth of government through taxes, which ultimately must happen? If the government is to spend beyond its means by borrowing, somebody's going to have to pay that back through higher taxes, and that's the next generation. And the answers I got from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office keep me awake at night.

As I mentioned, I am in my late thirties. My kids are 4, 5, and 7 years old. And what they said was really scary. They said that by the time my three kids are my age, in order to pay these bills that they are racking up for them, the lowest tax bracket in America, today the 10 percent bracket, would have to go to 25 percent. The middle-income tax bracket for middle-income taxpayers would have to go to 66 percent income tax rate. And the top tax bracket, the ones that small businesses pay, will go to 88 percent.

That's the ending of America. That's the end of prosperity. That is severing

the legacy of this country. And the legacy of this country is that each generation takes its challenges seriously, fixes those problems so that they can bequeath onto the next generation a more prosperous, a more secure America. We are at risk for severing that legacy for the first time in the history of this country. If we consign to the next generation that burden of debt, that increase in tax rates, there is no way we will be able to provide a higher standard of living to the next generation of Americans.

But the matter is even more urgent than that. The matter is urgent to the fact that we are in the worst recession we have seen since the 1940s. It's a global recession. And the question we ought to be asking ourselves: Should we be raising all these taxes in the middle of a recession? Should we be raising the energy fees on consumers by anywhere from $1,600 to $3,500 a year in a recession? Should we be raising taxes on small businesses, which create most of our jobs, in a recession? Should we be raising taxes on the assets that make up our pension plans, our children's 401(k) plans, their college education plans, our IRAs in a recession? Of course not. Unfortunately, that's precisely what the President and this budget do.

This is a huge moment for America. And Americans may not know this because they are greasing this thing through so fast: It's a moment where America may abandon its tireless principles, its timeless ideas that built this country, the idea that the goal of government is to protect our rights and to equalize opportunity for all so people can stake their claim and make the most of their lives and replace that with more of a Europeanized notion where we try to micromanage the results of people's lives, where people are less concerned about their liberty and more concerned about security.

We believe in having a safety net to help people who cannot help themselves. We believe in having a safety net to help people when they are down on their luck. But we reject the philosophy and the approach of this budget which says we need to have more than that, we need to have a society where more and more Americans become dependent on the government itself for their own well-being.

We want people to maximize their potential. We want people to make the most of their lives. We don't want to lull people in lives of complacency where they are becoming more and more dependent on the Federal Government. We have seen what those ideas do. We see them on display in foreign capitals all around the world. Higher unemployment, a lower standard of living, stagnant wages, decaying societies. That's not America. That is not what this country is. It's not the idea of America. We want the idea of America that we have known for the 20th century to be the idea of America in the 21st century. That's what this budget is about. That's what this blueprint or this architecture that we are debating here today is really all about.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the vice ranking member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time.

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett).

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Yes.

That's right.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) manage our time for a moment until I return.

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. McHenry).

Will the gentleman yield for a clarifying question on that?

Is it not the case that the Republicans controlled Congress from 1995 to the year 2000, controlling the appropriations and the tax bills that came through Congress at that time?

At this time, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Culberson).

Is the chairman reserving the right to close? Do I infer that he has no more additional speakers?

I have one additional speaker.

All right. I will yield the remainder of our time, 3\1/2\ minutes, I believe----

I will yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina, who doesn't want the 3 minutes.

Yes, I'll consume the remainder of our time. May I inquire, Mr. Speaker: We have 2 minutes left, I believe, or 1\1/ 2\ minutes?

I yield myself the rest of the time.

Mr. Speaker, I'll just simply close this portion of our debate by saying this: Let's all admit that both parties have made mistakes in the past. That happens. The question is: Are we going to make things worse or are we going to make things better?

It is so clear, so obvious to just about any observer out there that piling on a new mountain of debt, a new gusher of spending and the largest tax increase in American history is not going to make things better; it's going to make things worse.

Now, the one thing that the American people do get out of this is they get a choice. We disagree with this budget, and so rather than just simply criticizing, we proposed an alternative, an alternative that keeps taxes down and helps small businesses, an alternative that controls and cuts spending, an alternative that gets our debt under control and that puts us on a path to pay our debt off. It is a stark difference than this budget, which is making its way through Congress, being steamrolled through to give us the largest expansion in government we've seen in the history of this country, the third and final great wave, the building on the New Deal and the Great Society, which will give us a larger Federal Government unlike any we have seen in the history of this country in the past.

It is a budget that doubles the national debt in 5\1/2\ years and triples it in 10\1/2\ years. It is a budget that gives us a huge tax increase in the middle of a recession and that makes everybody pay more for energy, and it's a budget that basically is borne upon the philosophy that the government must grow for society to grow. We reject that idea. That's why we're not supporting this budget.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 316, I call from the Speaker's table the Senate concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 13) setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2010, revising the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal year 2009, and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2011 through 2014, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 316, I move that the House insist upon its amendment to Senate Concurrent Resolution 13 and request a conference with the Senate thereon.

I yield the gentleman from Wisconsin, my ranking member, half of the allocated time, 30 minutes.

I reserve the balance of my time so that Mr. Ryan can proceed.

Mr. Speaker, before leaving here for the spring vacation, the district work period, the House passed, by a significant majority, some 233 ``ayes,'' the resolution before us today, which we are moving to go to conference.

With that resounding vote of support, we would like to see the conference concluded as soon as possible so that the House and Senate both may proceed with the consideration, floor debate, and passage of appropriation bills.

I would, therefore, urge that all Members of the House, particularly those who supported this resolution originally, vote now to go to conference so that we can resolve our differences with the Senate and put behind us on a timely basis the budget resolution for 2010.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would remind my friend and all Members of the House that President Obama came to office less than 100 days ago. And when he came, he found on the doorstep waiting for him a budget that was deep in deficit. By our calculation, the Bush administration is responsible for at least $1.3 trillion of the deficit we are now struggling with trying to resolve and work down in the budget before us, $1.3 trillion out of a projected deficit this year of $1.752 trillion.

The economy, the worst since the Great Depression, happened on the watch of President Bush. He can't escape it. He was in office 8 years, and it happened in the midst of his tenure in office. The debt accumulation during that administration due to the deficits that have steadily racked up almost every year after the first 2 years of his administration, the deficit added over $5 trillion to the debt of the United States.

And to deal with the wretched conditions in our economy and to keep this economy from slipping into a downward death spiral, the Bush administration undertook some aggressive actions, I think rightly so, such as the TARP, dealing with troubled asset programs. They undertook a number of these remedial actions at significant cost to the Federal Government. I don't fault them for that. They did what needed to be done in order to keep the economy from going deeper into the rut. But we are here living with the consequences of that.

The major reason we have a deficit so swollen, $1.752 trillion, is not because of what's about to happen with the adoption of this budget. This budget works the deficit down. It's because of what did happen during 8 years of the Bush administration when we finally ended up with the worst recession since the Great Depression.

So we are dealing with the aftermath of the Bush administration here today, and we have a budget which builds upon the budget sent to us by President Obama. It takes the deficit from where it is, $1.752 trillion this year, and reduces it to $586 billion within 4 years. I would like to see it go further, beyond that. But we have given the House and the Congress a 5-year budget that will put us on a path downward from $1.7 trillion, $1.8 trillion to $586 billion by 2013 and perhaps even better by 2014.

I think we should go further. We have got to go further. I will be the first to acknowledge that when you look at OMB's projections of the 10 years lying ahead of us, in the second 5-year period of that 10-year span, in that period of time the deficit starts going back up again. We don't want that to happen. But we can best make the policy that will address that second 5-year period when we are out of this economy, when we are standing on firmer ground than we are today and we know a bit more about the future of the economy and the budget than we do at this point in time.

In the meantime, what we are doing is prescribing over the next 5 years a budget that will go down, down, down, from $1.752 trillion to $586 billion. I say that is a fiscally responsible budget. So did the House.

When this measure was before us, before we left for the Easter- Passover break, when this measure was before us, the concurrent resolution, 233 Members of the House voted to pass our resolution, our budget resolution which now comes before us on a motion to go to conference.

Mr. Ryan presented, or his side presented, the Republicans presented two budget alternatives. One received 137 votes. 137 votes, that is 80 votes less than a majority, with 293 noes. The other received 111 votes. We received 233 votes.

I think the House has spoken and spoken resoundingly. They listened to the debate, then they read the materials we put out, they decided this is a better way to go. This is a responsible budget because it takes us over the foreseeable future to a much, much lower budget, something we can do, because this year's budget is swollen. $1.7 trillion is totally unsustainable, totally intolerable, but it is swollen by actions that have been taken that are countercyclical in order to get this economy out of the rut it is in right here today. Once you leave those nonrecurring expenditures out, you can credibly say that we can get from where we are to a deficit in the mid-500s in a 4-year period of time.

Now, you are going to hear a lot of talk about tax cuts. But read the committee report and you will see in short summary exactly some of the highlights and features of this particular bill. If you read the very last page, you will see that our budget resolution calls for reducing revenues, for tax cuts. Provided under the CBO baseline forecast, this resolution provides $613 billion over the first 5 years and $1.48 trillion in total tax reductions.

We have been taunted in the past by those saying that when we came to power we wouldn't continue the middle income tax cuts; we would allow them to expire on December 31, 2010, as they are prescribed to expire. But we protect those tax cuts. The marital penalty, mitigation provisions in the marital penalty relief bill, the 10 percent bracket, which is a big tax cut for many working Americans, the child tax credit, all of these we preserve and extend in our particular bill, including the estate tax. We simply say with respect to the estate tax, just leave it in place as it is in 2010, that is, with a $3.5

million per decedent exemption, $7 million for a couple.

All of these things are in the package before us. That is why it received a resounding vote of support from the House just a few weeks ago and why it is a better choice and why we need now to finish the work we began, go on to conference and adopt a concurrent budget resolution which will be the ruling law for the coming fiscal year.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlelady from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

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

Could I ask how much time we have left?

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

I beg your pardon. I was discussing something with another of our Members on the floor.

I'd say we're cleaning up in the aftermath of the Bush administration's 8 years of fiscal policy that left us $5 trillion deeper in debt.

The budget before us now began with the President's submission, as it has since 1921.

We voted upon it here. But who occupied the White House? Who sent us the budget?

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 5 minutes to the gentlelady from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz).

For the purpose of response, I yield 90 seconds to the gentleman from New Jersey.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, so I reserve the right to close.

Does the gentleman have further speakers?

Why don't you proceed with that speaker. Then I'll proceed with closing.

I reserve the right to close. Does the gentleman have further time?

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, this is where we are. Bobby Jones, a great golfer once said, ``You play the ball where it lies.'' The fact of the matter is that after 8 years of the Bush administration this, sadly, is where the ball lies.

When President Obama came to office less than 100 days ago--and remembering that, I think everyone would have to fairly concede these are not problems that he created. When he came to office, he found awaiting him on the doorstep of the White House a budget that was $1 trillion, nearly $800 billion in deficit for this year and substantially in deficit for the forthcoming year.

He didn't create it; he didn't ask for it. It was thrust upon him and left to him by the Bush administration.

He found an economy in crisis and he found that remedial steps had been taken that cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars, a good portion of which is being spent out--the TARP program is an example, the takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is an example. All of these things cost substantial sums, and they were policies taken before this administration came to office. They have swollen the deficit to the unprecedented size of $1.7 billion this year.

The budget that we are proposing--which I now seek to have sent to conference so we can wrap it up, put it to bed and make it enforceable--the budget that we are proposing is a deficit-reduction budget. How can I say that? I can say that because we show credibly, I believe, that the budget deficit declines from $1.752 trillion under our resolution to $586 billion in the year 2013. In 4 fiscal years, we will reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars.

How can we do that?

One of the reasons we can do it is that quite a few of the items that have swollen the deficit in this and next fiscal year are nonrecurring, and when they are finally played out, the problem of debt reduction will be much,

much more manageable. That is, if we have a plan, it will be manageable. We cannot simply leave it to some open-ended plan. And so what we have proposed here is a plan that will systematically, methodically move the deficit down, down, down by $1 trillion over the next 4 to 5 fiscal years.

Now, it's a deficit reduction budget. No question about it. But it is not so committed to deficit reduction that it overlooks and postpones other priorities. For example, national defense will grow by 4 percent, a healthy growth rate that means national defense, including what is spent on supplementals for Iraq and Afghanistan, will be $686 billion next year.

Veterans. Let's not forget our veterans. We appreciate them more than ever. We will be putting $5 billion more into veterans health care, raising it to $53 billion.

Health care reform. This budget tackles issues that other administrations have either ignored, dodged, avoided, or failed to implement. Health care reform. Tough nut to crack, but it takes it on.

The environment. Energy independence, critically important. We've seen it with the spike in energy prices over the last year. This is something we need to do and do now. This bill provides for that.

Education. If you want to be able to say to a small child the next time you go in an elementary classroom, You can go to college. Yes, you can. You can go to college like anybody else. Yes, you can, then you should vote for this resolution because it strengthens Pell Grants by more than any bill we've passed in a long time to come.

So this is a deficit reduction bill, which is a bill with a conscience, with priorities, that carefully laid out here and carefully provided for here, and, therefore, I would submit that everyone interested in education, the environment, energy independence should take a close look at this bill.

Now, it's been said that we have substantially increased taxes in this bill. That's not true. Read CBO's report. Over the next 5 years, there is a net reduction in tax revenues of some $480 billion and $1 trillion more than that over the next 5 years after that. There is deficit reduction left here. The marital penalty provisions, the middle class, middle-income tax cuts that we passed in 2001 and 2003 are, for the most part, all reenacted and extended by this resolution.

So 233 Members, a very solid majority of the House, listened to the arguments pro and con, read and listened to the debate and decided this is a better way to go. I submit, let's stick with the course we set for ourselves several weeks ago. Let's send this budget on to conference where we can make it an enforceable piece of legislation.

I yield back my time.

I thank the distinguished chairman for yielding, and I rise in strong support of this legislation. I want to say to my friend who has just spoken, the ranking member of the committee who chaired the committee, who said they wanted to pay for things, what this bill does is put statutory PAYGO into law. He's right. But what he didn't say to you is when their side controlled the Presidency, the House, and the Senate, they jettisoned paying for things. They did away with statutory PAYGO, they did away with PAYGO generally, and what happened? We went from substantial surpluses under the Clinton administration to substantial deficits under the Bush administration.

Now we were told those substantial deficits and deficits that were being created would create economic growth in our country. In point of fact, however, after 8 years of that economic policy where they jettisoned PAYGO, a PAYGO which provided $5.6 trillion of surplus available in March 2001, according to President Bush; but they abandoned PAYGO, which is in this bill.

This is not a question of payoff to anybody. This was in the President's budget when he sent it down here earlier this year. It was in our budget that passed the House and the Senate. We said we were going to do this. Why? Because it's the right thing to do. Today, we have the chance to vote for health care our seniors can count on and a fiscal future for all Americans that they can have faith in.

Very frankly, my friend also said, We on the Republican side want to fix this. My question is simply: Why didn't you? Why do we still have this issue that confronts us year after year after year because we didn't have the courage to face it? I'm going to talk about the deficit, because this adds to the deficit. I will lament that, but there is not an option, as you added to the deficit every time you fixed it one year at a time. Doctors couldn't rely on it. More importantly, seniors couldn't rely on the fact that their doctors wouldn't have a big cut and push them out. I'm going to talk about that as well. We can do it by stopping a massive Medicare payment cut and by committing future policies to the tested principle of pay-as-you-go.

Now my friends on the other side of the aisle don't like pay-as-you- go because it constrained them in cutting revenues over a trillion dollars, which is one of the reasons we have such a large deficit, because they didn't pay for what they bought. Interestingly enough, my friends, they bought at a rate twice the growth in spending that occurred during the 1990s, in the 2000s, which was about 3\1/2\ percent per year. It was 7 percent a year when my friends on the other side of the aisle controlled all of the levers of power. So they decreased revenue and increased spending, and we had large deficits and the biggest recession we have faced since the 1930s were inherited by this administration and, frankly, by this Congress.

Now going back to the pay-as-you-go. First, the Medicare payment rate cut, if we do nothing, payments to doctors treating Medicare patients will drop by 21 percent in the new year with more cuts in the years to come. If we allow that to take place, many seniors will find their doctors no longer available to treat them.

So this is not only about compensating doctors for the services that are vitally important and we want them to give, but it is also protecting seniors' access to doctors. That will mean less access to health care, longer waiting lists, and serious conditions going untreated and.

In sum, if we do not act on this bill, it will mean sicker seniors. That's why it's essential that we stop these cuts before they're allowed to take effect. The cuts, of course, will occur on January 1 of this year, approximately 1 month from today.

It is important to remember that this bill would simply prevent cuts, not increase payments to doctors. But it is true that ensuring our seniors' access to their doctors will add to our deficit, just as extending any of the Bush tax cuts that are set to expire next year would do. Because seniors' health is at stake in this bill, I believe that stopping these payment cuts is worth the cost.

It's also worth pointing out that this bill represents a new honesty in budgeting. As far as Democrats are concerned, the days of pretending that the costs of the ``doctor fix'' will be made up by even deeper cuts next year are over. That, of course, is a policy we followed in the first 8 years of this decade. We pretended that somehow we'd

fix it later, and we never did. Indeed, most of the costs associated with this bill are the result of stopping the gimmicks that were used for years and cleaning up the mess created by those gimmicks. The first step to getting out of debt is being honest about the debt we're in. It is too deep, it is dangerous, and we need to address it.

So let's be honest. Our country is in a deep fiscal hole for reasons that go far beyond Medicare payments. In fact, there's no one reason for our record national debt. It's bipartisan in nature, not exclusively Republican or Democrat.

The causes include the previous administration's debt financed tax cuts, which I've spoken of, for America's essentially wealthier citizens who got most of the tax cuts; the cost of two wars, which we did not pay for; our escalating entitlements programs, which all of us have supported; the recession that we have confronted and that started in the seventh year of the previous administration's term; and the deficit spending--and we need to clean up that economic mess; spending that economists tell us is necessary to stimulate demand and recession.

In other words, we needed to spend the money to preclude a depression, not just a deep recession that we're in, and almost every economist, including Marty Feldstein, said that that was necessary.

A recent New York Times analysis tells us that 90 percent of our deficit has been brought about by the policies of the previous administration and the extension of its policies and the economic crisis that it left behind.

No one step will get us out of our fiscal hole, but the most important immediate step we can take is to commit ourselves to the principle that in new policies of our country, we will pay for what we buy. That is the principle of pay-as-you-go, or PAYGO, which was in place in the 1990s as we went from deep debt into surplus and that $5.6 trillion surplus that President Bush inherited in 2001. In the 1990s, President Clinton used it to turn huge deficits into a record surplus, and when President Bush abandoned PAYGO, and my friends on the other side of the aisle abandoned PAYGO, record deficits returned.

When Democrats took back the House majority in 2006, we demonstrated our commitment to fiscal responsibility by making PAYGO a part of the House rules. It's sometimes been difficult. And now with the support from President Obama and both Chambers of Congress, we have a real chance to give PAYGO the force of law by passing this bill. Under PAYGO, Congress will be forced to offset all new policies reducing revenues or expanding entitlements, so that they add nothing to our deficit.

In essence, we will be forced to make the hard budgeting choices that are so tempting to avoid. We are avoiding them today. We ought to admit that very honestly. Why are we doing it? Because as a practical matter, in the deep recession that we're in, we cannot pay for it without depressing the economy further.

That is not an acceptable alternative. If we want to cut taxes, we'll have to explain which programs will suffer cuts. If we want to expand entitlements, we'll have to spell out how we are going to pay for it. And no matter which party is in power, we'll be forced to distinguish wasteful spending and subsidies from the long-term priorities that really matter to our country.

Some have explained that statutory PAYGO would not apply to extensions of some existing policies that have bipartisan support, one of which is the one we're talking about today. Policies on the alternative minimum tax, which we've already done. And by the way, I am one of those--wasn't in the majority--who voted against extending the alternative minimum tax if we did not pay for it. In addition to that, Medicare doctor payments, which we're talking about today, and the estate and middle-income tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003.

I sympathize with their concerns. They are not specious concerns. I have said repeatedly that I would fight to pay for all of these policies. Hear me, if the Senate sends this back paid for, I will support it. I challenge all of you on that side of the aisle and all of you on this side of the aisle to do the same. That stands in contrast, frankly, to the first 8 years of this decade, when repeatedly it was stated that they do not believe that extensions of tax cuts need to be paid for.

Unfortunately, it's a political reality that the votes to pay for extensions of the Bush policies are most likely not there. A PAYGO law that ignored that fact would be waived for those policies and then again and again. I prefer a law that we can enforce consistently. And very frankly, that is supported by some of the most consistent voters for fiscal responsibility on this floor.

Mr. Speaker, in our country's economic meltdown last year, we all saw the damage that deep debt can do. It's time for our Federal Government to learn that lesson and act on it. If we fail to act, liberal and conservative, Democratic and Republican, priorities will suffer alike. We can still prevent that outcome, ladies and gentlemen of this House. We cannot get back to fiscal health in one afternoon's vote, and we will not, perhaps not in this President's term or the next, but we must start. We must take a step toward that end.

This bill does that. It supports not only ensuring our seniors access to quality medical services but also ensures that we, again, adopt the policy that brought us $5.6 trillion in surplus.

Parliamentary Inquiry