Providing for consideration of the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 34) establishing the budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2012 and setting forth appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2013 through 2021.

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of the Education and Workforce Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Miller).

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

Mr. Chairman, we do need to reduce the deficit in a predictable, responsible way. That will require spending cuts, and it will also require shared sacrifice. The reason that the fiscal commission said that the Republican plan was unbalanced is they try and do it all one way. History has shown that doesn't work.

I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

Mr. Chairman, this is simple mathematics. When you went from the Clinton rates for the folks at the very top and you dropped the tax rate, we ended up losing a lot of jobs because of the economy. You also lose revenue. And when you do that, you shift the burden onto other people, whether you do it by cutting Medicaid, whether you do it by terminating the Medicare guarantee, or whether you do it by cutting education. That's just mathematics.

I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, there are two parts to the Tax Code. There is the corporate Tax Code. We need to clean up the corporate Tax Code. We agree with the fiscal commission. You've got to get out a lot of clutter, a lot of the tax breaks. In fact, we don't think you need a study to decide to get rid of the tax breaks that reward corporations for shipping American jobs overseas. We don't think you need to study the question about whether we get rid of big taxpayer subsidies for the oil companies.

So, yes, we should take a look at the corporate Tax Code. But in the other part of the Tax Code, the individual Tax Code, what the Republican plan does is actually give the folks at the very top another 30 percent break. We have been talking about going back to the Clinton rates. The Republican plan gives you another 30 percent break. You know what? They say we are going to do this in a revenue-neutral way. Well, the result is middle income taxpayers are going to pay more to give the folks at the top another big break.

With that, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to somebody who knows a lot about this subject, the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of the Small Business Committee, the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez).

(Ms. VELAZQUEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, Republicans originally fought the creation of Medicare on the grounds that it was socialism. Apparently, they haven't changed their minds about that as they try and terminate it and put seniors into the private insurance market.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gonzalez).

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

Mr. Chairman, one of the other things that China is doing is they're investing an awful lot of their resources in clean energy like solar power and like wind power. The United States should be winning that battle and not our international competitors. Someone who knows a whole lot about that is the next speaker, the ranking member on Natural Resources, Mr. Markey of Massachusetts. I yield the gentleman 2 minutes.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Clarke).

Mr. Chairman, I would remind my friend Mr. Gingrey that, when Mr. Bush became President, he inherited a $5.6 trillion surplus. By the end of the 8 years, it was gone.

Now, with respect to tax rates and jobs, what this chart shows is that, when the highest income earners in the country were paying the lower rates during the Bush administration, you actually lost jobs versus during the Clinton administration when, at the higher rates, 20 million jobs were created.

The point is not that higher tax rates increase jobs. The point is that small differences in the top tax rates are not the main drivers of our economy. They are not the main engines of job growth. The figures tell the story. Trying to tell another story is just anti-historical. The reality is that the numbers show, during the Clinton administration, we had very strong growth. During the Bush years, we ended up losing over 600,000 jobs. So let's at least get our history straight.

With that, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from California (Mrs. Capps).

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

The gentleman is absolutely right. We need to come up with a plan that puts the country on a predictable, steady course of deficit reduction, and we need to do it in a balanced way.

The chart the chairman showed about revenues presumed we wouldn't have certain changes in the revenue. For example, that we wouldn't say to the wealthiest, we want you to pay the same rates you were paying during the Clinton administration when the economy was roaring and jobs were being created.

There is a reason the bipartisan fiscal commission called the Republican plan unbalanced. And this is what it is. Under the commission plan, they have a balance of spending cuts and revenue increases. For example, they say the folks at the top, they should be paying a little more. In fact, $2.5 trillion more over the next 10 years than the Republican plan. Because they don't do what the commission recommended, they have to cut into Medicaid, which will hurt seniors in nursing homes, disabled individuals, poor kids, everybody who depends on that already stretched program. They have to terminate Medicare. So those are choices they are making. They have made a one- sided, lopsided choice.

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, I was pleased to hear my friend is interested in getting rid of the subsidies for Big Oil. We can do it tonight or tomorrow. All you've got to do is vote for the Democratic alternative. And, by the way, you can, at the same time, get rid of the tax breaks that reward companies for shipping American jobs overseas. We don't have to study about it. We don't have to send it to the Ways and Means Committee. We can instruct them tomorrow, tonight, and we will get it done if you vote for the Democratic alternative.

With that, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

Mr. Chairman, I welcome our friend from Georgia, and I would just say that we agree on one thing: that this budget does pose a fundamental choice. And that's what we're here to debate about. And we believe that it's just wrong to be providing another round of big tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans when you're ending the Medicare guarantee, when you're cutting investments in kids' education. Those are choices that we shouldn't be making.

We are going to present, and have presented, a Democratic alternative that we think provides a balanced approach.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel).

Mr. Chairman, I have to show us this chart again because I just need to remind the body that during the Clinton administration, when we had the folks at the very top paying a little bit higher rate, 20 million jobs were created. When that rate was dropped for the high-income earners at the beginning of the Bush administration, not only did it contribute to deficits going up, but at the end of that period over 653,000 jobs were lost.

Now the point isn't, again, that by changing the tax rate that was the driver. The point is that small differences in tax rates are not the main engines of economic opportunity. And we need to make choices here. Again, they choose to provide tax breaks to the folks at the very top and end the Medicare guarantee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), who has been a champion of Medicare, Medicaid, and a whole number of other issues important to our seniors and Americans.

Mr. Chairman, hardworking American people have been paying their Medicare payroll taxes day in, day out, month in, month out. The choice we have here is whether we are going to make good on that Medicare guarantee or whether we're going to say to the folks at the very top, We just can't take you back to the tax rates that were in place during the Clinton administration.

Why would we say that to people who have been putting their payroll taxes into Medicare? Why would we say we're going to end the Medicare guarantee?

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

I, too, remember the Voyager spacecraft and also the Apollo program and Moon launch. Great examples of things that individuals and corporations can't do by themselves, things that we have to do by coming together as a people behind a purpose.

The Republican budget, if you look at the long-term forecast provided by CBO, essentially says when you project out here, given the assumptions they were given, you eliminate all of the Federal Government except defense--and even defense is at a smaller share of GDP when you get out there than it is today. That is the kind of result that you get.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Reclaiming my time, look, the issue here is what is the appropriate role and size of government. There is no doubt that we have to take what we think should be a balanced approach that involves both cuts and, as the fiscal commission, the bipartisan fiscal commission says, you've got to deal with the revenue piece if you're going to do deal with this problem in a realistic way.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, we ask every American to read this budget, this Republican budget, and see whether or not it reflects their values and the choices that they would make. We believe when they do that they will reach the same conclusion that the bipartisan fiscal commission did, which is that it's simply unbalanced, it's simply unfair. It puts all the burden of the sacrifice on working men and women. And it does provide those folks at the very top once again--we've seen it before-- with a big tax break.

When it comes to Medicare, it's a fact seniors are no longer going to be able to choose to stay in Medicare. They're going to be forced into the private insurance market with ever-increasing costs and ever- declining support. That is rationing care. That's what insurance companies do. If you don't have enough money to buy the benefits that they are offering, you don't get them. If your doctor's not on that plan, tough luck.

So those are the choices that we're making this evening. And I hope as we go forward the American people will look very closely at this proposal. I'm confident they'll reach the same conclusion the bipartisan fiscal commission did, which is it's just not balanced, and it doesn't reflect American values and priorities.

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

I have to say that to say this plan saves Medicare is in my view Orwellian. It does remind me of the phrase from many years ago that you have to destroy the village in order to save it. I have to say that if you look at what we're doing here, you're saying to seniors you've got to go into the private insurance market.

Now, the chairman mentioned a couple other examples of the private market. But in this case we've already experimented, through Medicare Advantage, with that kind of private plan within Medicare. And you know what we discovered? That you had to subsidize them at 114 percent of the fee-for-service program. It cost us more for Medicare Advantage. In fact, one of the reforms that we made as part of the Affordable Care Act was to say we're not going to ask the taxpayers and folks who are on Medicare fee-for-service to subsidize those private plans that are running over cost. And you know what? In this budget our Republican colleagues kept that reform. If it was so great to have the Medicare Advantage plan, how come they took part of the savings from that plan? They did not.

So it is a big mistake to say to seniors we're going to throw you into the private insurance market with an ever-declining voucher premium. The reason this isn't premium support, it doesn't support the premium. What Federal employees and Members of Congress have is a premium support system through a fair share formula. This is not a fair share for seniors.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi), former insurance commissioner for the State of California.

I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, earlier today we passed a continuing resolution that will ultimately save billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Today we are converting and switching this debate to now saving trillions of dollars.

Mr. Chairman, let me just begin by saying this: The spending spree is over. We cannot keep spending money we don't have.

The American people deserve the truth. They deserve an honest, fact- based conversation about this budget. We have got to get on to the days of no more budget gimmicks, timing shifts, accounting tricks. And we've got to get on to fixing our country's fiscal problems while we still can and while they're still within our control.

Mr. Chairman, specifically what our budget does is it cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the President's budget. It brings the government's spending as a share of our economy back down to where it historically has been, contrary to where the President is taking it.

Mr. Chairman, we do not have a revenue problem in Washington. The problem here today is not that people don't

pay enough taxes; the problem is Washington borrows and spends too much money.

This shows you where Washington is headed, where the President's budget goes, the path we are on.

Mr. Chairman, I am 41 years old. My wife and I have three beautiful kids who are 6, 7, and 9 years old. By the time our children are my age, the government will be twice the size it is today. When they're my age, double the government, double the taxes just to keep this current government afloat.

What we are really trying to do, Mr. Chairman, at the end of the day is fulfill the legacy that we have been given by our parents and by our predecessors in Congress. We're going to have a vigorous debate about how to do this. We're going to have a vigorous debate of our priorities and processes, and it's going to be emotional.

At the end of the day, this is what we are trying to do: We know, according to every fiscal expert out there, that we are giving the next generation a mountain of debt. So we have a choice of two futures, Mr. Chairman. Which future do you want your children to have? One, where the debt gets so large, it crushes the economy and it gives them a diminished future, a stagnant economy; or, two, this budget, using CBO numbers, that literally not only gets us on the way to balancing the budget but pays off our debt, gets our debt manageable, preempts and prevents a debt crisis, and fixes this so we can preserve this great legacy of giving the next generation a higher standard of living.

Now, Mr. Chairman, we had a speech yesterday from the President--not a plan, so to speak, but a speech. And unfortunately, I think the speech, which was a framework with no details, was really not about solutions but about partisanship.

I'm concerned, Mr. Chairman, that leaders here in town are more concerned about the next election than the next generation. I hope that that's not the case. I hope that leaders in this town change their tune so we can fix this problem, but it's going to require them to change their tune. We don't need good politicians; we don't need clever politics.

We need real leadership and real solutions to fix this country's problem because, Mr. Chairman, if we don't make some tough decisions today, our children are going to have to face much, much tougher decisions tomorrow.

I want to talk about one particular program, and I will yield myself 2 additional minutes to do that.

Medicare. Medicare is one of the most important programs we have; it's one of the most successful programs we have. Medicare is in trouble. Medicare is going broke. CBO tells us that in 9 years it has exhausted its trust fund. We need to save Medicare. This budget doesn't change anything for anybody on Medicare now and within 10 years of retiring, and it saves the system for the next generation.

Contrary to what the President proposed yesterday, he wants to delegate more authority to 15 people on a bureaucracy that was created in his new health care law to do price controlling and rationing of Medicare for current seniors. He wants these 15 people--without a consent of Congress, just to do it directly--to impose more price controls and more limitations on providers, which will end up cutting services to current seniors.

We repeal this agency. We don't think Congress should be delegating this kind of power and authority to unelected people to make unilateral decisions on senior health care. So we preserve, protect, and save Medicare for current seniors and those 10 years away from retiring, and then I'll get into the details about how we save it for future generations.

Mr. Chairman, at the end of the day, this budget is about choices. We do four things. We want to grow the economy so we create jobs and have a climate for job creation with tax reform. We want to save the mission and preserve the mission of health and retirement security. We do that. We want to preserve our social safety net and make it more sustainable, more reliable, more adaptive, and more conducive to the 21st century and geared not toward keeping people on welfare, but getting people back on their feet and into jobs and careers to have flourishing lives. At the end of the day, Mr. Chairman, what it's really about is giving our children a debt-free Nation.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds simply to say the gentleman is talking about Medicare. If he had read that CBO letter a little later, he would see it says that Medicare is on such an unsustainable path that there's no way it can sustain itself where it is.

So we're making comparisons to fiscal myths. We're making comparisons to futures that aren't going to exist. The greatest threat to Medicare is the status quo and those who cling to it.

I would also simply say the President yesterday said he wants this unelected board of bureaucrats to cut a trillion dollars out of Medicare. We don't want to see that happen.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers).

Mr. Chairman, I will just simply say we choose to reduce spending. And we don't reduce revenue; we reform the tax system.

With that, I would like to yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee and the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert).

I yield myself 10 seconds to simply say, yeah, less spending, less government, less debt; more jobs, more prosperity.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Appropriations and Budget Committees, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to a senior member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Stutzman).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds simply to say the only part of this budget that mentions oil is that we want to drill for it in our own country so we can actually lower gas prices and get ourselves off foreign oil.

The second point I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, is this budget saves Medicare as we know it. The President is proposing to ration Medicare as we know it.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to simply say, if the gentlelady had taken the time to read the CBO report, it's not a voucher program. In a voucher program, the money goes to the people, and then they go to the market. It's a premium support program.

What does this look like?

It looks just like the plan that you and I have as Members of Congress and that all Federal employees have. It works like the prescription drug benefit, which has come in 40 percent below cost. More to the point, it saves Medicare. It applies to people 54 and below, and it occurs in 2022. Guess what happens 2 years before that under the status quo? Medicare goes bankrupt.

We want to prevent Medicare from going bankrupt. We want a system that's sustainable. We want a system that's solvent and that people can rely upon: guaranteed coverage options just like we have in Congress. That's what we are proposing.

More to the point, what we are opposing is delegating to 15 people the ability and the power to ration over $1 trillion of Medicare against current seniors. We repeal that. The President proposes that. That's the big difference between us.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Gardner).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Let me say a couple of things. Let's look at current law that was passed here not too long ago, the President's health care law. We've all done town hall meetings where people have said: Why do you keep raiding the Social Security trust fund? Stop the raid of Social Security. We agree; that was wrong. We shouldn't have done it, and now we're out of surplus.

Well, guess what, the current health care law raids Medicare. The current President's health care law takes $682 billion out of Medicare to spend on the ObamaCare entitlement. We're ending the raid of Medicare. We're making sure that those savings go to making Medicare solvent. It only gets it to 2021.

More to the point, Mr. Chairman, we believe that seniors should be in charge. We believe that the best way to make Medicare better is to give seniors more choices. Give them the ability to make choices and have providers compete against each other for their business.

Here's the difference: The President wants 15 people to make the choices in Medicare. We say let 40 million seniors have choice, have power, and have those providers compete against each other for their business so they're in charge of their Medicare.

The President's law, the law today, has him appoint 15 people to ration Medicare, and Congress can't even do a thing about it. Their decisions go right into law. That's the future of Medicare under the current law. The President said, let's throw another trillion on top. So here's what happens: When the President is coming up with a need for more savings, what does he do, he calls up his Medicare rationing board and says, go find another $480 billion.

That is not the future we want for Medicare. There's a difference between us. We don't want to have government ration health care. We want people to be in charge of their own health care.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the senior Member from Indiana (Mr. Pence).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to simply say there is a new definition, and I want to explain it. Here is what a tax cut now means. If you're not in favor of the forthcoming tax increases, you're cutting taxes. That's the new math around here. What we don't do is we don't sign up for all these new tax increases that are being proposed by the President in his budget that are coming in the future. And so by not supporting new taxes, we're all of a sudden for tax cuts.

No, I will not yield.

What we are saying is keep the revenues where they are and fix the Tax Code, clear out the loopholes and the deductions so we can lower the rates to create jobs and economic growth.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford).

Will the gentleman yield?

First of all, we think we should go after corporate welfare. Let's stop subsidizing wealthy individuals and corporations with taxpayer dollars.

Like the fiscal commission, we believe that it's better for economic growth to broaden the tax base and lower the tax rate.

If I can continue on the gentleman's time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget and Ways and Means Committees, the gentlelady from Tennessee (Mrs. Black).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to a member of the Ways and Means Committee and former member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Nunes).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Young).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Rokita.

I yield myself 1 minute to respond to the warm, even-handed comments of my friend from Massachusetts.

Do you know what's really cruel, Mr. Chairman? It's if we give our children a lower living standard.

Do you know what's really cruel? It's if we give our children a debt- ridden Nation. It's if we give our children a debt that they can't afford.

Do you know what's really cruel? It's if we don't save Medicare. It's if we don't keep the promises to our current seniors, like we do in this budget, so that all of these programs they've organized their lives around, which are going bankrupt, are preserved. Medicare goes bankrupt in 9 years. We're preserving it for current seniors.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Guinta).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

I have heard a lot of debate today about how we're slashing taxes, slashing revenues for the rich and for everybody else, and bad oil companies and things like that. Let me just show you a little chart.

Under our budget, revenues rise. Revenues go up over $12 trillion. So revenues still increase. Even keeping the Tax Code where we are today, revenues increase.

Now, the President's plan says he wants to raise them another $1.5 trillion. The gentleman from Maryland's plan wants to raise them another $1.7 trillion. But let's not kid ourselves: Revenues, even under our plan, continue to increase.

Now, we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. The green line is the revenue line. The red line is the spending line. Revenues are stable, increasing; spending is on a tear, Mr. Chairman. Spending is growing at an unsustainable rate. We can't keep spending money we don't have. If we keep doing this, we're going to have a debt crisis. People are going to get hurt. Interest rates will go up. We will have to cut indiscriminately across the board at the time it happens. We want to avoid that.

I yield myself 1 more minute, Mr. Chairman.

Let's talk about the Bush tax cuts, or what happened. Let's talk about the distribution of the tax burden. In 2001, the top 1 percent of earners paid 34 percent of the tax burden. Now they pay 38 percent; a higher tax burden. The top 5 percent in 2001 paid 53 percent of the taxes. Today, the top 5 percent pay 59 percent of the taxes. So on and so forth.

We don't have a revenue problem, a tax problem; we have a spending problem. But here's the real problem. If we don't get our situation under control, we really go in the hole. In 2009, the Government Accountability Office is telling us our fiscal gap, the unfunded promises we are making to current Americans, was $62.9 trillion.

I yield myself 1 more minute to explain, Mr. Chairman.

That means we would have to take $62.9 trillion, set it aside, invest it at Treasury rates, just so government can keep the promises that it is now making to everybody in America. In 2009, we owed more than we were worth as total households in America. Last year, 2010, that fiscal gap grew to $76.4 trillion. Now, $99.4 trillion.

We are digging our hole more than $10 trillion a year by kicking the can down the road. Every year we fail to fix this problem, we are submitting our children to a worse future, a diminished country. So the sooner we get our act together, the sooner we fix this problem, the better off we're going to be. If we keep ignoring this, if we keep spending on the path we are on, this fiscal gap, the pile of empty promises that politicians from both parties have been making to Americans gets that much higher.

We have about $100 trillion of empty promises Washington is making to Americans. It is time we tell people the truth. It is time we get government to live within its means, and it is time we get Washington to honor its promises, fix these programs, get spending under control, and give our children a debt-free Nation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston), a

senior member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a distinguished member of the Rules and Budget Committees, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

Unshared prosperity, spending money on tax cuts. Mr. Chairman, the presumption behind that is that all the money out there made in America is the government's, and then the government decides who they spend it back to.

We do have different philosophies. The money that people make is their money. And then the question is: How much of it does the government take?

The money made in America by individuals, by businesses, is their money. It's not the government's money. So we don't spend money on tax cuts.

By the way, Mr. Chairman, we're not even cutting taxes in this bill; we're just not raising them. So the new definition of cutting taxes apparently is: If you're against raising taxes, you're cutting them.

I don't even know where to start with this, but I'm going to start by yielding 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Huelskamp), a member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Lankford.

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

That is because GDP growth grows at a faster pace than government. So it is not as if government goes away. Government keeps spending; government keeps defense and education. It's just that the economy outgrows the size of government, and we're on a virtuous path to more prosperity, more opportunity.

Mr. Chairman, I will give myself a minute to simply say again just to clear up for the record, if you're a person who is 55 years of age or older, there's no change in Medicare for you. The Medicare you're on or that you're organizing your life and getting ready to prepare for when you retire will be there as it is forever for your life under our proposal.

Contrary to the status quo. Medicare goes bankrupt in 9 years. Status quo, the President has a new board called the Independent Payment Advisory Board; 15 people he appoints. They ration Medicare. They put price controls in Medicare. They decide what Medicare can do or what it can't do. Congress is out of the loop. Unelected bureaucrats by the President, his people, they do it. And the President just yesterday said, You know what? Go cut more. Go get more savings. That's the status quo.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

I yield myself 2 minutes, Madam Chair.

Now, let's take a look at what our drivers of the debt are: Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare. The health care entitlements are the biggest drivers. The black line here shows our revenues. These three programs alone take up all Federal revenues. You throw interest on top, which you have to pay interest, by 2035 they consume every single penny of every Federal tax everybody pays.

Now, why are we proposing what we're proposing on Medicare? Because we have experience that this kind of thing works. Giving people more choices, having more competition works. Prescription drugs. That's a program, very successful, very popular. When that program was passed, it was projected to cost $634 billion over the budget window. It ended up costing $373 billion. It came in 41 percent below budget. Premiums are lower than were anticipated. Name me one other government program that actually came in 41 percent below cost projections. There isn't one. Why did this one do that? Choice, competition. The senior is in charge.

We are not interested, Madam Chair, in giving control over Medicare to 15 unelected people to decide where, when, how, and under what circumstances they get their Medicare. We protect Medicare for current seniors. We deny the 15 people on the board the ability to ration their care. And we want 40 million seniors to have the choices. We want them to be in control of their Medicare.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

Because what we have learned is that giving them more control, the senior, the beneficiary, the patient, not the government--competition works. We've tried so many different plans at rationing care. They don't work. One person does work to reduce prices: The consumer. That is why we are saving Medicare.

Madam Chair, I will just simply say we do actually put $10 billion back into Medicare Advantage to make sure the program stays alive.

I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Huelskamp).

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, everyone in this Chamber loves America and everybody in this Chamber wants to preserve the dynamism of this country and American exceptionalism. We also all agree that we have to reduce our deficits in a steady and predictable way. The question is how we do that, and we have very different views of how we should do that.

Later this evening and tomorrow, we will debate a Democratic alternative budget which will strengthen our economy, promote job growth, and decrease the deficit in a steady, predictable and responsible way, but the Republican budget is the wrong choice for America. I urge every American to read this budget because if you do, no amount of spin can hide the fact that this is a wrong turn for America. It is a yellow brick road for the already prosperous, but it's a dead end for the rest.

Just today, we had an analysis come out from the former economic adviser to John McCain when he was running for President, Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's Analytics, who said that the Republican plan will cost Americans 1.7 million jobs by the year 2014, with 900,000 jobs lost next year. And the Republican budget violates the warning from the bipartisan commission that we need to do the cuts and the deficit reduction in a responsible way.

The cochairs of the President's fiscal commission stated that the Republican budget ``falls short of the balanced, comprehensive approach that we need for a responsible plan.'' They are absolutely right. It is not balanced; it is a totally one-sided approach to deficit reduction. Because when you sweep away all the soothing, sweet-sounding talk of reform, at its core this Republican budget is not bold. In fact, it's the same old formula of increasing tax breaks to the very wealthy in this country and to the special interests, like Big Oil, at the expense of the good of the rest of the country, except this time it's the same old plan on steroids.

We all know that to govern is to choose, and the choices made in the Republican budget are wrong for America. It is not bold to give tax giveaways to the oil companies and executive board rooms while slashing investments in our kids' classrooms, in scientific research, and in critical infrastructure for this country.

It is not courageous to provide additional tax breaks for millionaires while ending the Medicare guarantee for seniors and sticking seniors with the cost of the rising health care. It is not visionary to reward corporations that ship American jobs instead of products overseas while we terminate health care for tens of millions of Americans here at home. It is not brave to give Governors a blank check of Federal taxpayer money and a license to cut support for seniors and nursing homes, individuals with disabilities, and low- income kids on Medicaid. And it's not fair to give yet another tax break to the very wealthy and ask middle-income Americans to pay for it. Yet, if you read the Republican budget, those are the choices they make.

We ask, where is the shared sacrifice? We have American men and women putting their lives on the line as we speak in Iraq and Afghanistan while others hide their income in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland and refuse to pay their fair share to support our Nation. That is not right.

The pattern is clear: first you cut taxes for special interests and the very wealthy, and then mathematically what happens? Yeah, when you do that, the deficits go up. You drive up the deficit, and then you say, well, we've got to handle this--not by going back and asking the folks at the very top to do more, but by cutting investments for working families and violating our commitments to seniors and others.

Let me turn to the Republican plan for Medicare because what the Republican plan does is it ends the Medicare guarantee. It forces seniors to go into the private insurance market and have to deal with the rising costs of health

care that they face there, and the seniors have to eat that cost. And since the chairman raised this specifically in his opening statement, I would like to just take a look at this chart based on the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office--and the President did mention this in his speech yesterday.

What this shows is what happens to Medicare under the Republican budget versus current Medicare and how much of the increased cost will now be shifted to seniors instead of Medicare. As you can see, compared to current Medicare, senior citizens are going to have to pay more than $6,000 on top of what they would have had to pay in the year 2022. And the problem gets worse and worse over time so that by the time you're out in the year 2030, you're talking about in the range of $11,000 more paid by seniors.

Now, let me say this. One of the talking points we've heard from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle is, Don't worry, seniors, we're just giving you the same health care deal Members of Congress have.

That's not true. What Members of Congress have is what's called a fair share deal agreement, just as other Federal employees do and as many employees around the country do where the risk of rising premiums is shared.

So for every dollar increase in premiums, the Federal Government puts in 72 cents, thereabouts, and the Member of Congress or the Federal employee puts in the rest. But the point is, no matter how fast the costs go up, you share that risk equally. That's not what happens in the Republican plan.

There's much more to talk about, but let me just say that we welcome this debate. Fundamentally, this is a debate about choices for our country, and as the bipartisan fiscal commission said, the choice made in the Republican budget is not balanced and it is not comprehensive. We agree, and we should reject this budget.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, the chairman of the committee mentioned the IPAB, and it is true that the President indicated yesterday that that is a mechanism for trying to reduce the rise in Medicare costs. The chairman said they repeal the IPAB, which we believe will result in higher Medicare costs, which will mean that seniors have to absorb an even greater amount of the increase.

With that, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the minority whip.

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. Chairman, yes, we do ask the big oil companies to give up their taxpayer subsidies. And yes, we do ask the very top 2 percent of income earners in the country to go back to the same tax rate they were paying during the Clinton years when the economy was roaring and 20 million jobs were created, instead of the dramatic job loss we saw between 2000 and 2008.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to a distinguished member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. Chairman, the Medicaid program is one where the costs of health care have actually grown much more slowly compared to the growth in health care costs elsewhere. Cutting $1.4 trillion out of an already stretched program is not a recipe for helping more people. It will definitely hurt those who depend on Medicaid. You are just giving Governors a blank check with no accountability.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth).

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

In the Republican budget, I want to make it clear, they took some of the savings that we gained through Medicare reform last year. We gained those savings by ending the overpayments to some of the Medicare Advantage insurance companies that were being overpaid compared to others. They demagogued it when we did it, but they kept that in their budget, but they got rid of our initiative to close the prescription drug doughnut hole for seniors.

So if you pass that budget, the moment it passes, there goes the big doughnut hole all opened up again because they took the money but didn't keep our effort to close the doughnut hole.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda).

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

Mr. Chairman, we agree that you've got to make cuts. We just think you need a balanced approach where you also deal with the revenue side. And because yours doesn't deal with that piece at all, that's why the fiscal commission said it was unbalanced and lacked the comprehensive solutions that we need.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz).

Mr. Chairman, we share the gentleman's concern and view. As I said, the question is not whether we reduce the deficits but how we do it and the choices we make in the process.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to Mr. Blumenauer, the gentleman from Oregon.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum).

Mr. Chairman, I just want to go back to the point that was raised again with respect to what Members of Congress have in terms of health insurance plans. We have what's called a ``premium support plan.'' The idea behind a premium support plan is that the employer and employee share the premium, and the employer--in this case, the U.S. Government--pays a certain percent. I have right here the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program handbook, and it reads: The government's share of premiums paid is set by law.

So Members of Congress have protected themselves by law. For most employees, the government contribution equals the lesser of 72 percent or 75 percent of the total premium for the particular plan. In other words, the Member of Congress/Federal employee has 72 cents for every premium dollar paid for. Whenever premiums go up, 72 percent of the cost of that premium is picked up by the government.

The Republican plan gives seniors a raw deal. It does not give seniors the deal that Members of Congress give to themselves, and that should be put to rest right now. Just look at the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program handbook.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Florida (Ms. Castor).

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 223 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

House Resolution 223 provides for a structured rule for consideration of House Concurrent Resolution 34. This rule makes in order every complete substitute submitted to the Rules Committee. Continuing a bipartisan tradition, we are making in order four Democratic substitutes and one Republican substitute, providing 4 hours of general debate, with ample debate on each substitute. This will allow the House to work its will and adopt a budget blueprint for fiscal year 2012.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this rule and the underlying bill. The underlying legislation is our budget for 2012. Our 2012 budget is our blueprint for a strong and secure future for the next generation.

Each of us is here today because those who came before us made amazing sacrifices for the next generation--us--keeping alive the American Dream. In the last century alone, our parents and grandparents have won two world wars, overcome the Great Depression, defeated communism, and created the most prosperous and vibrant society in the history of mankind.

Today it is our turn. It is our turn to take a bold and necessary step to ensure that we pass on to our children this great blessing called America, and even a stronger America than the one we received from our parents.

Paul Ryan calls his plan The Path to Prosperity. I call it leadership. It is what our country has been thirsting for. It confronts our problems head on, and it proposes reasonable and responsible solutions to get us back on track.

Our plan creates jobs, real jobs, 1 million new jobs in America in the first year alone. It stimulates our economy, increasing our GDP by $1.5 trillion in the next 10 years. It protects and strengthens Social Security and Medicare. Let me say that one more time because so many people are trying to demagogue the issue: Our plan strengthens and protects Social Security and Medicare for the next generation of Americans. And it also reduces job-killing government spending by $6.2 trillion in the next 10 years.

Yesterday, our President, he got on board. Two months ago, he gave us his 2012 budget, and now we have 2012 2.0, the second time around. But the plan hasn't changed much, sir. The plan is basically the same. So let's compare our plan in the next 10 years to President Obama's plan over the next 12 years.

President Obama would add $4 trillion to our debt, leaving us at the end of the next decade with $26 trillion of debt, according to the CBO. Even our Democratic colleagues in the House agree, and they have presented a plan that breaks from their own President, cutting an additional $1.2 trillion off the deficit. The Republican budget cuts $6.2 trillion, bringing spending to under 20 percent of our economy.

The Republican plan proposes specific and responsible solutions to strengthen Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. The President talks very vaguely about a plan to cut waste and streamline Medicare and Medicaid, proposing to create yet another unelected commission to solve all of our problems. We don't need more unelected bureaucrats in Washington, sir, enlarging the scope of government. That's not real leadership.

The President tries to tax our way out of debt, placing the burden on those earning more than $100,000. But the problem, sir, is a simple one. If we were to tax these individuals 100 percent of their income, we still cannot cover our deficits this year alone. As a matter of fact, to tax our way out of debt, we would need to increase taxes across the board on every man, on every woman, and on every business by 60 percent. You simply cannot tax your way out of this debt. Imagine the effects this would have on our economy.

The President's budget cuts $400 billion out of our military. In the time that he has led us into Libya, in the time that we have two conflicts going on, it cuts $400 billion away from the men and women who are fighting for freedom, dying for liberty.

I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the rule. I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the underlying resolution.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume, Mr. Speaker, and I just want to address a few points that Congresswoman Slaughter brought up.

I have scoured the budget looking for this notion of a voucher system for Medicare. I've scoured the budget and simply cannot find anything that is, in fact, a voucher system. I have seen things about premium support.

But let's just talk about Medicare for a quick second. $800 billion the President has suggested must come out of Medicare in order to pay for national health care. So we are going to take benefits from our senior citizens in an attempt to provide health care benefits for 19- and 20-year-olds. In fact, that $800 billion is one way to actually increase the cost to every senior citizen in our country. Increasing taxes by $2 trillion in the next 12 months is a wonderful way to make our economy stumble, and that's what the President has suggested.

Finally, you cannot increase taxes on the very job creators themselves and then ask them to continue to create jobs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, let's just clear up a simple point here. The only specified savings in this budget are from raising taxes and cutting the military. If we really wanted to have an opportunity to make Medicare last longer, we could simply repeal ObamaCare, repeal national health care, and put the $800 billion back into Medicare.

I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Congressman, the fact is simple. We could tax those over $100,000 a year 100 percent and we still simply could not close the deficit for this year.

The fact of the matter is people talk about this government getting smaller, and the President's original budget spent $47 trillion in the next 10 years--an $8.7 trillion increase in spending. We're talking about a $2 trillion increase in spending in the next 12 months in taxes. We're not talking about reducing the size and scope of this government.

We must get ourselves on a completely different trajectory. We must bend the trajectory back towards the American people, back towards the private sector, and eliminate the disincentive for growth in our economy called taxation.

So to the extent that we can flatten the tax, spread the risk, we find ourselves in a more prosperous society with a stronger economy led by those folks in the private sector. Entrepreneurs have an opportunity to take those dollars and reinvest them in such a way to create more jobs. It is a simple formula.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Mulvaney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California, Chairman Dreier.

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

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Dold).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford).

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

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall).

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, finally, the Democrats do get it. What they get is, if they do not find a way to scare our senior citizens, they have no chance. When you cover the expenses of running this government and when you think about the fact that what the Democrats have proposed and what President Obama has proposed in his original budget is an increase of $8.7 trillion of new spending and $47 trillion of new spending in the next 10 years, the Democrats have finally found a way to cover their tracks, and it is on the backs of our senior citizens.

There is no doubt that the 2012 budget plan that we have proposed has no impact, not only on our senior citizens who are receiving benefits today, but on those over the age of 55.

Not only are the Democrats willing to scare our seniors based on nothing, but they want to go to 2 years after Medicare is bankrupt and then start having a conversation about numbers when Medicare would not exist under their plan.

What we do under our plan is a simple thing. We strengthen and preserve Social Security and Medicare for the next generation. We understand that it is time to roll up our sleeves and to get serious about preserving the American Dream for the next generation. Our budget does that by cutting $6.2 trillion out of the deficit in the next 10 years and by creating more than 1 million jobs in the next 12 months-- but we go further. We simply say that you do not create more disincentives or higher taxes in order to improve our economy.

Let us do exactly what the previous generation, the Greatest Generation, has done for us--pass on the American Dream in its entirety. We have a responsibility to the next generation in taking the tough road today in order to make the American Dream stronger tomorrow.

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