Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 5652) to provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 201 of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2013.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member, and I thank the ranking member of the full Judiciary Committee, Mr. Conyers, who worked extensively to bring reason to this discussion.

I must remind my colleagues that this is a debate that is, of course, necessary, but it is not going anywhere. This is in essence to respond to the potential and pending sequestration and the deadlock of the committee, but the deadlock of the committee gave us an opportunity to work in a bipartisan manner.

My good friend who just spoke on the other side of the aisle talked about abundance and prosperity and talked about welfare. What I would say to the gentleman is that we're not talking about welfare. We're talking about investment in people, and we're talking about not having a siege upon our children.

On April 25, 2012, we were back in the Judiciary Committee again looking at medical malpractice for the umpteenth time. I wondered why we were there. It was because each committee was told to find a way to find money. So the directions of the Republicans for the Judiciary Committee were to oppress the sick and to be able to cap medical malpractice insurance on innocent victims such as women and children and the elderly when the medical system fails us as it relates to medical devices and other elements.

We were told to eliminate for the children of America by limiting noneconomic damages, restricting punitive damages, limiting access to courts for poor victims of medical malpractice, shortening the statute of limitations for claims, eliminating the protections of children, and prohibiting joint and several liability. We were simply told to shut the courthouse door for children that needed to be able to have the opportunity to have their lives saved, just like a little boy who needed surgery in a hospital in San Antonio. They told the family it was a serious surgery and they needed to have a cardiologist on staff. He went into surgery, and, of course, things went wrong. There was no cardiologist there; there was a mishap; there was a fault; and that little boy died. They want to deny that poor family access to the courthouse. That is what that bill does.

When my friends begin to talk about what else it does, it cuts SNAP, the nutrition program. It cuts Medicaid.

Mr. Speaker, what I would say is that this bill is a siege on children. We should oppose it. It is not reconciliation. It is oppression. I would ask us to vote against it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 5652, the ``Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012'' This piece of legislation should really be entitled the ``Ryan's Replacement Sequester to Thwart the Bipartisan Budget Control Act of 2012''

Whatever anyone wants to entitle this measure, one thing will still remain true . . . this legislation is unfair. It literally takes money out of programs dedicated to serving low income families, children, seniors, the disabled, the most in need of our assistance. Why isn't the funding coming from war savings. There has been a consistent attack on the other side of the aisle on programs that are proven to be affective at combating the stresses associated with poverty, aging, and long term care. Before us is a measure that is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

In my lifetime, I have never seen such a concerted effort to ransom the American economy in order to extort the American public. While I support bipartisan efforts to decrease the debt and to resolve our differences over budgetary revenue and spending issues, I cannot support a bill that unduly robs average Americans of their economic security and ability to provide for their families while constraining the ability of Congress to deal effectively with America's economic, fiscal, and job creation troubles.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trying to give the American people the impression that their sentimental and unbridled concern for the military means that it is necessary to take an ax to programs for seniors and low income that is not something that our military would be proud to be connected too. Why not use, instead, war savings and a small finite tax on income over $1 million dollars.

This unbalanced bill modifies last year's bipartisan Budget Control Act to cancel the sequestration of discretionary spending currently scheduled to occur in January 2013 in order to prevent cuts to defense. That is fine but Republicans have already voted twice this year to pass their budget to end the Medicare guarantee and increase costs for seniors while giving massive tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.

While the U.S. economy is healing, the world economy continues to be in a fragile state and all economies are linked through trade and finance. In this environment, this bill sends the economy downward. However, over the last few years the economy has been steadily growing. We are not where the American people should be but the economy has gained jobs.

According to Secretary Solis she stated ``know where our nation's unemployment rate stands. I have to report it every month. But we've now added private sector jobs to our economy for 26 months running. Since President Obama took office, we've created 4.2 million new jobs. That's no small potatoes when you consider we were bleeding 750,000 jobs a month when this President took office. I know we've got a lot more to do. But we're making progress.'' During this time of progress, this is no time to cut the social safety net for those still unemployed--no time to cut food stamps, medicaid, or medicare.

The President signed the Recovery Act which invested in mass transit, roads, and bridges to build critical infrastructure and secure construction jobs. The Recovery Act also included strong Davis-Bacon and Buy American provisions, to stimulate local economies and create high-quality jobs. In total, the Recovery Act supported up to 3.5 million jobs through the end of 2010.

It is essential that we allocate the money spent on previous wars to programs to help expand opportunities for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, if you asked the typical American family what they would need to do to balance their family budget, they would respond: spend less. But they would also be quick to acknowledge that without a job, or in the case of the federal budget, tax revenue, the budget will never balance. It is critical to address both sides of the ledger. It is also imperative for the Republicans to place the President's jobs bill on the agenda to vote on and pass.

Sure, save money but cutting benefits but without additional revenue, the budget is doomed. Moreover, you surely would not find any family in Texas that would suggest buying luxury items, while struggling to balance the family budget is a sensible approach. But Republicans insist on advocating for tax breaks for the wealthy--the luxury class.

Economists

Economists have long pointed to investments in ``human capital''--the productive capability that is embedded in people--as one of the most important determinants of economic growth. A large and growing body of literature has examined the returns to investments in human capital from both a societal and individual perspective.

In his book, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense, Pfeffer writes: ``There is compelling evidence that when companies use Human Resources best practices based on the best research, they trump the competition. These findings are replicable in industry after industry, from automobiles to textiles, to computer software to baseball. ``We must use our Human Resources wisely.

energy and deficit reduction

And speaking of saving money and reducing the deficit, I have introduced H.R. 3710 which increases the acreage to 10 percent of what is already allocable under a proposal by Interior Secretary Salazar, as announced on November 8, 2011. In other words, more land will be available for exploration, in line with two objectives: decreasing our dependence on foreign sources for oil, and plugging our budget deficit.

The monies will be deposited into the DRES Fund and invested by the Secretary of the Treasury, until the money is transferred to the Coastal and Ocean Sustainability Health Fund (COSH). Annually, the Secretary of the Interior is required to lease 20 percent of the DRES. In addition, this bill will help foment job creation in an industry that is already responsible for 9.2 million American Jobs.

The bill also establishes the Deficit Reduction Energy Security Fund, housed within the United States Treasury Department, which will receive the accrued funds that are dedicated to deficit reduction. In order to ensure that the putative funds generated from the leasing activities which derive from this bill inure to the goal of deficit reduction, the legislation also sets up the aforementioned COSH.

This bill establishes in the Department of the Treasury, the COSH, which shall fund grants for addressing coastal and ocean disasters; and programs and activities that restore, protect, maintain, manage, or understand marine resources and their habitats, and ocean, and coastal resources, including baseline scientific research, and other programs in coordination with federal and state agencies. Monies will be deposited into the COSH fund from interest accrued on OCS royalties, rents, revenues, and fees that will remain, for the period of one year, in the Fund before moving the entirety of the principle in the general Treasury. The bill authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to make grants for such purposes. I look forward to working with members of this Committee and our colleagues to ensure passage of this legislation.

Simply put Mr. Speaker, my bill does not rob Peter to pay Paul but actually requires that money made from the hard work of drilling by our companies is rededicated to reducing our deficit--common sense fiscal and energy policy.

As called for by the House's FY 2013 budget resolution, it replaces the $98 billion sequester in discretionary spending with a $19 billion reduction in the discretionary cap for FY 2013 and with ``reconciliation'' savings from mandatory programs recommended by six House committees. These cuts hurt the American people, children and families.

It also eliminates the separate cap on defense spending for the year to allow for higher spending levels. The measure would modify mandatory programs to save $19.7 billion through FY 2013 and about $315 billion over 10 years, including by decreasing benefits and eligibility for the food stamp program, reducing and repealing elements of the 2010 health care law, and requiring all current and future federal workers to pay an additional 5 percentage points of this salary toward their federal pensions.

President Obama and Democrats oppose the GOP measure, and say that preventing the January 2013 sequester and replacing the savings that would come through sequestration should be done in a ``balanced'' approach in which revenue is part of the solution.

Republicans must abandon their ideological agenda and join Democrats to restore fairness, opportunity, and prosperity to our budget and our economy.

taxes and the buffett rule and taxes

Mr. Speaker, the cloud looming over this Congress is an unintended ``triple-watching hour'' of tax increases that will take effect at the beginning of 2013.

The expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts, the end of the recently extended Payroll Tax Cut, and increases in capital gains and dividends taxation will shock the conscience and wallets of the American people. That is why Congress needs to enact bi-partisan legislation that helps lower the deficit but does not wreck havoc on the financial soul of the middle class. This is a moral document and frankly, the other side is getting more than a little fresh with the American people. It is May and we are voting on a vacuous budget that will likely pass but is doomed to failure in the Senate.

But again, tax reform that lowers the rate, reduces the deficit, and does not pick winners and losers is not easy, but let's not forget, if President Reagan and then-Speaker Tip O'Neill could do it in 1986, anything is possible. But this morning we are not doing a bipartisan dance, but participating in a roller-derby, a truly zero-sum game.

In the budget, the Administration calls for individual tax reform that: cuts the deficit by $1.5 trillion, including the expiration of the high-income 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. As a matter of sound fiscal policy, I am supportive of this effort. I recognize the economic benefits that many attribute to the Bush Tax Cuts, but we must ask ourselves are they affordable at this time.

The President's budget also eliminates inefficient and unfair tax breaks for millionaires while making all tax breaks at least as good for the middle class as for the wealthy; and observes the Buffett Rule that no household making more than $1 million a year pays less than 30 percent of their income in taxes.

The individual income tax is a hodgepodge of deductions, exemptions, and credits that provide special benefits to selected groups of taxpayers and favored forms of consumption and investment. These tax preferences make the income tax unfair because they can impose radically different burdens on two different taxpayers with the same income. In essence, Congress has been picking winners and losers.

the hope and promise of the democratic alternative budget

Preserves the Medicare guarantee and the Social Safety Net. The Democratic budget rejects any policy to end Medicare's guarantee of health care coverage for seniors and disabled workers, and ensures the social safety net remains intact.

Protects Medicare Beneficiaries. Rejects the Republican budget's proposal to end the Medicare guarantee. It supports reforms in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to close the prescription drug ``donut hole'' for seniors with high prescription drug costs and ensure free preventive care. As a result of these measures, as well as provisions in the ACA to make Medicare spending more efficient, a person in Medicare will save an average of about $4,200 on premiums and coinsurance from 2011 through 2021. Medicare beneficiaries with high prescription drug costs will save even more--an average of nearly $16,000 over the same period.

Preserves Medicaid for Low-Income Families and Seniors. Maintains Medicaid to ensure that 57 million low-income people continue to get health care. Seniors and people with disabilities account for two- thirds of Medicaid spending, and children account for another 20 percent.

Preserves Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP). Fully funds SNAP and supports the President's proposal to continue certain benefits added because of the economic downturn. Nearly three-quarters of people served by SNAP are in families with children, and one-quarter are in households with someone who is elderly or disabled.

Protects Social Security from Privatization. Social Security is not responsible for our current deficits and should not be cut to reduce the deficit. However, many Republicans continue to advocate privatization, which would put retirees' financial security at risk and worsen the deficit for decades. Our budget affirmatively rules out privatization.

Helps Create More Jobs Now. Unlike the Republican resolution, our budget includes the President's jobs initiatives, including the following:

Transportation Jobs. $50 billion to fund jobs that address immediate surface transportation priorities and $10 billion to establish an infrastructure bank.

Tax Credits for Job Creation. A temporary 10 percent tax credit for new jobs and wage increases.

Tax Incentives for Manufacturing. Includes a number of incentives for domestic manufacturing, such as providing a tax credit for companies that return operations and jobs to the U.S. while eliminating tax breaks for companies that move opertions and jobs overseas.

Education Jobs. $80 billion to promote jobs creating the infrastructure to help students learn and create a better future workforce, including $30 billion to put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work upgrading at least 35,000 crumbling public schools, and $25 billion to help prevent hundreds of thousands of educator layoffs.

First Responder Jobs. $5 billion to help states and localities hire police officers and firefighters and reverse previous layoffs.

Jobs for Veterans. $1 billion for the President's proposal to establish a Veterans Job Corps and employ at least 20,000 veterans.

Builds a Stronger America through Long-Term Growth. Our budget invests in research,

education, and innovation that will create a globally competitive workforce for the future.

Education Investments. Follows the President's request for increased investment in education and includes his request for $6 billion to prevent the interest rate on subsidized student loans from doubling this July.

Innovation and Research Investments. Funds science and engineering workforce development and supports innovative manufacturing processes that will reduce costs by using less energy, improving product quality, and accelerating product development.

Small Business Investments. Provides additional resources for the Small Business Administration (SBA) to ensure that the lending volume for loan programs remains the same, rather than shrinking and denying many small businesses' access to capital.

Infrastructure Investments. In addition to short-term jobs initiatives for transportation, our budget includes the President's six-year surface transportation proposal to create construction jobs and fuel long-term economic growth. It also includes additional funding to maintain America's harbors, seaports, and waterways.

Reduces the Deficit through Shared Responsibility. Congress has already reduced projected deficits by more than $1 trillion through discretionary cuts for 2011 and 2012 and enacting tight spending limits for the next nine years. Our budget further reduces the deficit with policies that balance spending cuts increased revenue.

Gets Deficits Under Control. The deficit falls from 8.7 percent of GDP in 2011 to under 3 percent of GDP by 2015, and it remains there through the ten-year budget window.

Cancels Sequestration and Replaces it with Balanced Deficit Reduction. Replaces the $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction under the scheduled Budget Control Act sequestration with greater deficit reduction from targeted spending cuts and revenue increases.

Provides Tax Relief for Working Families and Ends Tax Breaks for the Wealthy. Extends the 2001 03 tax cuts for the middle class and rejects tax increases on the middle class. Accommodates expansion of incentives for low- and middle-income families to earn income, save for retirement, and attend college. To increase fairness and reduce the deficit, this budget ends unwarranted and fiscally irresponsible Bush- era tax cuts for millionaires, closes a variety of corporate tax loopholes, and establishes a ``Buffett Rule'' to ensure that working families do not face a higher tax rate than the wealthiest Americans.

ryan republican alternative: hurt and pain--part II

Ends the Medicare Guarantee. The Republican budget ends the Medicare guarantee, giving seniors a voucher with an artificial price cap to purchase insurance and leaving it up to them to figure out how to keep their costs down as the value of their voucher fails to keep pace with projected growth in health care costs. This plan will raise health care costs for seniors and leave traditional Medicare to ``wither on the vine.''

Reopens the Medicare ``Donut Hole'' and Increases Costs of Preventive Care Services. The budget takes away important Medicare improvements for seniors and persons with disabilities by repealing key provisions of the Affordable Care Act. The budget reduces the prescription drug health by re-opening the coverage gap, or ``donut-hole,'' and it increase costs to seniors for preventive care services. Reopening care services. Reopening the donut hole alone will increase costs for Medicare beneficiaries with high prescription drug costs by an average over $10,000 over the next ten years.

Abandons American Workers. Putting Americans back to work is the fastest and most effective way to reduce the short-term deficit-in fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that slow growth and under-employment account for over one-third of the projected deficit for 2012. But the Republican budget turns it back on American workers, ignoring the President's proposals for new jobs for teachers, first responders, construction workers, and veterans involved in building a better infrastructure that will boost our economy now and in the future. Independent analysts have found that the Republican budget could lead to the loss of more than 2 million jobs over two years.

Transportation Jobs. Instead of investing in infrastructure, the Republican budget reduces transportation spending by at least one- quarter over 10 years. Next year, transportation spending would be barely one-half of this year's level, a steep cut that could delay or stop projects already underway. A failure to invest in transportation will also hurt businesses' ability to transport goods and supplies in the long run, weakening future economic growth.

Tax Breaks for Outsourcing jobs. The Republican budget boosts tax incentives that encourage multinational companies to ship profits, intellectual property, and thousands of jobs overseas while costing the American economy billions of dollars.

Makes College More Expensive, Undermining U.S. Competitiveness. The budget eviscerates funding for higher education, eliminating the $104 billion that Congress has already enacted to help sustain the maximum Pell grant award and to provide for yearly inflationary increases. It adds an average of $2,800 in higher loan repayment costs to more than 7 million low-and moderate-income college students by letting the interest rate on subsidized students loans double, from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. It also eliminate $47 billion for lower-cost loans for low-income students as well as repayment plans enacted and paid for by previous Democratic Congresses. It even rejects the President's proposal to extend a $2,500 tax cut to working families to help cover the costs of college, refusing to extend the American Opportunity Tax Credit beyond December. Overall, mandatory higher education funding is cut by $166 billion over ten years versus current law levels, and by $285 billion below the President's request.

Slashes the Social Safety Net. The Republican budget shreds the social safety net for seniors, low-income children, persons with disabilities, and families struggling to get by in a challenging economy, all while cutting taxes for the very wealthy.

Slashes Medicaid for Seniors and Low-Income Families. The budget slashes Medicaid by $810 billion and converts it into a block grant to states. ``Block-granting'' Medicaid is not entitlement reform it is entitlement destruction. This is simply code for deep, arbitrary cuts in support to the most vulnerable seniors, individuals with disabilities, and low-income children.

Block-grants and Cuts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP). The budget slashes SNAP funding by $133.5 billion over ten years, harming the million who rely on this aid to feed their families. Nearly three- quarters of people served by SNAP are in families with children, and one-quarter are in households with someone who is elderly or disabled.

Abandons Fairness. The budget provides tax breaks for the wealthy and special interests at the expense of everyone else. Republicans' refusal to ask millionaires to pay one more penny in taxes leads them to place the entire burden of reducing deficits and debts on the shoulders of middle-income families and seniors. This budget dismantles the Medicare guarantee, cuts back and nutritional assistance for low-income children and families, and severely underfunds the crucial health care safety net for more than 56 million Americans provided by Medicaid. At the same time, it showers an additional $4.6 trillion in tax cuts (over and above extending all of the Bush-era tax cuts) that primarily benefit the wealthy. Overall, millionaries can expect an average tax cut of $394,000 in this budget, which includes $129,000 just from extending all of the Bush-era tax cuts.

Mr. Speaker, again I call on my colleagues to vote against H.R. 5652, an unrealistic, unpragmatic, and unPATRIOTIC so-called bill that is a punch to the gut of the most vulnerable Americans.

International Association

of Fire Fighters',

Washington, DC, May 10, 2012.

Member of Congress,

U.S. House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative: On behalf of the nation's 300,000

professional fire fighters and emergency medical personnel, I

write to express my strong opposition to H.R. 5652, the

Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012. This

legislation would rewrite the bipartisan Budget Control Act

of 2011 by placing greater economic hardships on working

class Americans or vulnerable populations.

Although the IAFF is deeply concerned with the impact that

defense cuts will have on our federal members employed at

defense installations, we cannot support unraveling the

Budget Control Act through the unbalanced and draconian

approach of H.R. 5652. Balancing the budget on the backs of

fire fighters without requiring those who are well off in our

society to share more of the burden is simply inexcusable. To

solve our fiscal challenges, we must have shared sacrifice

from all members in our society. Instead of shared sacrifice,

H.R. 5652 just leaves fire fighters sacrificed at the altar.

One of the main ways H.R. 5652 achieves savings in the

federal budget is by shifting a greater burden for funding

essential services to state and local governments. Over the

past five years, states already have cut nearly $300 billion

from their operating budgets as a result of the Great

Recession. Even as the private sector recovers, state and

local governments are still struggling to balance their

budgets, leading to continued job losses among fire fighters

and other public sector employees. Since April 2012, the U.S.

economy has lost 584,000 jobs in the public sector. Further

cuts in federal aid for essential government services will

only exacerbate public sector job losses and undermine core

functions of government such as fire protection and emergency

medical treatment.

Specifically, H.R. 5652 would completely eliminate the

Social Services Block Grant, saving the federal government

$18.7 billion. Originally established during the Reagan

administration, these critical funds help state and local

governments provide essential

services to 23 million seniors, children, and disabled

Americans. Home-based services like Meals on Wheels, child-

care services for low-income families, and programs to

prevent child abuse and neglect all receive funding, in whole

or in part, through the Social Services Block Grant.

H.R. 5652 would also cut $22.7 billion from the Medicaid

program. Created along with Medicare in 1965, Medicaid

represents an historic joint commitment by the federal

government and our states and territories to provide

essential health care to our nation's poor. Medicaid is one

of our nation's core safety-net programs. As the depths of

the Great Recession grew, so too did Medicaid enrollment,

creating increased pressures on state budgets. The proposed

cuts in H.R. 5652 to Medicaid will only add to state budget

pressures. For example, nearly half of the cuts will come

from a reduction in the state provider tax threshold. States

can use the revenues generated from the provider tax to

offset their share of Medicaid payments.

Eliminating the Social Services Block Grant and cutting

Medicaid would have disastrous consequences for our local

communities. State and local governments would be hard-

pressed to fill the budget holes created by H.R. 5652.

Without these funds, state and local governments may be

forced to eliminate these programs or cut funding from other

essential programs such as the fire service to balance their

budgets. Either way, the consequences to our local

communities would be devastating.

Furthermore, the IAFF strenuously objects to forcing

drastically higher pension contributions from current and

future federal employees. H.R. 5652 would require all current

federal employees to contribute an additional five percent in

pay toward their defined benefit pension plan, with no

enhancement in benefits. Federal workers have already

contributed $60 billion toward deficit reduction through a

two-year pay freeze. Forcing greater economic sacrifices from

federal fire fighters is particularly insulting, given the

sacrifices these brave men and women already make on the job.

The nation's federal fire fighters protect many of America's

most vital national assets, ranging from sensitive military

bases to Veterans hospitals. Federal fire fighters should not

be treated like a piggy bank for Congress.

For these reasons, we urge you to reject H.R. 5652, the

Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012 when it

comes for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. Thank

you for your consideration of the views of America's front

line domestic defenders.

Sincerely,

Harold A. Schaitberger,

General President.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 648 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), 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

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you coming in early to be with us early this morning. This is a big day. This is the reconciliation bill.

I serve on both the Rules Committee and the Budget Committee, Mr. Speaker. As you know, we've had some tremendous successes in the appropriations process. This week, we've been working through the Commerce-Justice-Science bill. It's a bill that's reduced spending to those levels that we had in 2008, doing those things that the voters sent us here to do.

We're going to vote on that bill today in final passage. But that appropriations process that we have control over here in the House, that process where we reduced spending from 2010 levels down to 2011 levels, down to 2012 levels, and are going to go down again to 2013 levels to be responsible stewards of taxpayers' dollars, those are only one-third of the taxpayer dollars.

Two-thirds of the taxpayer dollars that are spent in this town--and by spent I really mean borrowed and then spent--come on what they call mandatory spending programs. Mr. Speaker, as you know, mandatory spending programs are dollars that go out the door whether Congress acts or not. Appropriation bills require Congress to act affirmatively, but mandatory spending goes right out the door without any oversight from this body until you get to reconciliation.

Reconciliation is that process that Democrats put in place wisely years and years ago to allow the House and the Senate to come together and begin to reduce, restrain, do oversight on those mandatory spending dollars. This is a rule that brings that bill to the floor.

That bill is going to be coming under a closed rule, Mr. Speaker. We're talking about a bill that has been put together by almost every committee of jurisdiction here in this House and then assembled by the Budget Committee and brought here to the floor. It's been the subject of countless hearings already. We looked at whether we'd be able to bring a Democratic substitute to the floor. None was submitted that complied with the rules of the House.

So we have one bill on the floor today, an up-and-down vote, on whether or not we're willing to engage in the first serious reconciliation process on this floor--I would argue--since 1997. Some folks might say 2003. I say 1997. Why, Mr. Speaker?

I'll tell you, it's the right thing to do anyway. It's the right thing to do anyway as responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. But in this case, these aren't reductions for the sake of reductions. These are reductions for the sake of complying with what I would argue is a very good deficit-reduction agreement between the President and the Senate and the House last August. And as a part of that agreement, we put in some blanket cuts to national security, some blanket cuts to national defense. And some commentators have described these cuts, Mr. Speaker, as being intentionally so crazy that they would never happen but would be used only as a tool to get the Joint Select Committee to act.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, the Joint Select Committee did not succeed last fall. It's a source of great frustration for me and is also a source of great frustration for the Members who served on that committee. They had an opportunity to bring an up-or-down vote to both the House and the Senate floor on anything they came up with, Mr. Speaker. They didn't have to get the whole $1.2 trillion. They didn't have to get $1.5 trillion. They could have gotten $1 trillion. They could have gotten $500 billion. They could have gotten $250 billion, and we would have brought that to the floor for an up-or-down vote. But they got nothing.

So where are we? Well, in the words of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, he says:

We are at a place where, if these cuts were allowed to go,

the impact of these cuts would be devastating to the Defense

Department.

I happen to share his concerns. Again, these were across-the-board cuts put in place to be so intentionally crazy that Congress would never allow them to occur, and it would spur the Joint Committee to action.

I happen to have supported an amendment offered by Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the ranking member on the Budget Committee. When we were going through the Budget Committee process last year, he offered an amendment that said, dadgummit, everything's got to be on the table, and that includes the Defense Department. I agree with him. The Defense Department does need to be on the table. And in fact, the Defense Department is undergoing $300 billion worth of reductions today.

This bill does nothing to change that. There is $300 billion being reduced from the Defense Department, as well it should. It's not easy, but it should happen, and it is happening. This isn't dealing with that. This is dealing with even additional cuts. Again, in the words of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, a former Democratic Member of this House:

The impact of these cuts would be devastating for the

Department.

So we have an opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to do what, I would argue, you and I came here to do--and not just you and I, but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--to do those things not just that happened year after year after year, those things that have 12 months of efficacy and then go away, but the things that can be set in permanent law to change the direction of spending and borrowing in this country. And, candidly, Mr. Speaker, it's more about the borrowing than it is about the spending.

There are priorities in this country that we need to focus on, and I would argue that we've done a great job of focusing on those priorities. But when you are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar from your children and your grandchildren, we have to redefine what responsibility is because, I will tell you, that is irresponsible.

And this bill then takes a step in two directions: one, turning back this second round of Defense Department cuts--not the first round but the second round, the round that Leon Panetta describes as devastating to the Defense Department--and then setting us on a path to bend that cost curve going forward by tackling mandatory spending programs for the first time in almost a decade.

And with that, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to strongly support this rule.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I say to my friend, as the Republican Budget chairman said to him yesterday, I appreciate his passion on this issue. What brings us to the very best decisions that we can make in this body, Mr. Speaker, is having folks who work hard day in and day out educating themselves on the issues. They can bring the very best case for the American people to the floor.

And that's why I would ask my friend whether or not he believes it actually helps that debate to get involved in some of those rhetorical feats of mind, I guess we would call them, because he knows as well as I know that under the law of the land, in 2002, food stamp benefits, SNAP benefits, would have gone up by about 40 percent over the last 10 years, and Republicans and Democrats came together over the last decade and increased those benefits 270 percent, Mr. Speaker.

Now, this proposal suggests that instead of going up 270 percent, we allow those benefits to go up 260 percent. That's the draconian cut.

We see that in the same rhetoric in the student loan program, Mr. Speaker. Everyone in this body knows the law of the land was that student loan rates were at 6.8 percent--a below-market rate of 6.8 percent. They were lowered for a very small fraction of the student population for a very temporary period of time to 3.4 percent, and the law now hasn't gone back to 6.8 percent, to standard levels. But folks want to talk about that as a doubling instead of a returning to common law.

And more importantly, Mr. Speaker, to continue to suggest, as he knows is not the case, that Republicans are unwilling to focus on the Defense Department, let me say it plainly. I believe there is waste and fraud and abuse in the Defense Department, and I stand here willing to work with you to eradicate it all. I supported Ranking Member Van Hollen's amendment to put Defense on the table. The budget that this House passed--the only budget that's passed in all of Washington, D.C.--reduced defense spending by $300 billion in recognition of exactly that.

And, Mr. Speaker, again, the rhetoric just gets a little overheated from time to time, and, candidly, I think it gets in the way of us doing the people's business. When I say to you that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, on August 4, 2011, said:

If these defense cuts happen--and God willing that will not be the case, but if it did happen--it would result in a further round--because we've already cut once; in fact, already cut twice--a further round of very dangerous across-the-board defense cuts that I believe, says Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense, would do real damage to our security, our troops, and their families.

I would say to my friend: How does it advantage us to make this a Republican-Democratic issue when the Democratic chairman of the House Budget Committee, Leon Panetta, says allowing these cuts to go forward would be dangerous to our defense, to our national security, to our troops, and to our families? How does it advantage us to make this a Republican-Democratic issue when President Clinton's OMB Director, Leon Panetta, says this would be dangerous across-the-board defense cuts that would do real damage to our security, our troops, and our families? How does it advantage us to make this a partisan issue when President Clinton's Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, former OMB Director, former Democratic Budget Committee chairman, says: I believe allowing these cuts to go forward would do real damage to our security, to our troops, and to our families?

Do we have real choices to make? We do.

I would be happy to yield to my friend from Maryland.

Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman both for his comments and for his offering of that substitute.

The reason is threefold:

Number one, that substitute doesn't comply with the rules of the House. We made a decision in this body that we were going to not continue to ask for more and more and more out of taxpayers' pockets but that we were going to try to do our own business here in terms of oversight on all the money that's already being borrowed and spent and sent out the door.

Number two, that happened to be the rules that we adopted in this Congress,

Mr. Speaker, but under the rules adopted in the last Congress in which you were the Budget chairman, you know your substitute would also not have been in order under the PAYGO rules that you instituted. Again, not a Republican or Democratic issue. Under a Republican House, the substitute is not in order. And under a Democratic House, the substitute is not in order.

But, number 3, and, I would argue, most importantly, I say to my friend, we've got a trust deficit with the American people, and it doesn't surprise me. When we talk about the 5-year impact of the reconciliation plan that we passed out of our Budget Committee and I hope that this House will pass today, we're talking about a net effect on debt reduction, the process for which reconciliation was created, of $65 billion over 5 years. Over the next 5 years, $65 billion is not going to have to be borrowed from our children and our grandchildren. Under the gentleman's substitute, over that same period of time, spending is actually going to go up by almost $37 billion. This is a process that is designed to reduce borrowing and spending, to reduce the burden we are placing on our children, and the gentleman's substitute increases the burden that we place on our children.

I would be happy to yield.

Reclaiming my time, I would say to my friend, what we have within our power is the power to stop the borrowing and the spending. I'm reading here from today's Congressional Quarterly, because folks sometimes get confused, Mr. Speaker. We talked about the Reading Clerk and the tough work they had yesterday, reading today from Congressional Quarterly, it says here that Democrats left open the possibility that they would offer an alternative proposal through a motion to recommit, which is allowed under the rule. My friend on the Rules Committee knows that to be true. My friend on the Budget Committee knows that to be true.

I look forward to your using that opportunity to bring your substitute to the floor for a vote. I think that is the right of the minority. I'm glad we preserved the right of the minority, Mr. Speaker.

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

Will my friend yield?

I have a very brief question.

My understanding of your substitute is that it raises $3 in taxes for every $1 in spending cuts. Could you tell me which bipartisan commissions have represented that, have also agreed that $3 to $1 is the right combination?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say we just disagree on what balance is. When our proposal for budget reduction is to reduce spending by $65 billion over 5 years and your proposal for budget reduction is to spend an additional $35 billion over those same 5 years, we disagree on what balance is. We are moving in the wrong direction under your proposal, right direction under our proposal. I'm very proud of our proposal, proud to serve on the committee with my friend.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Michigan (Mrs. Miller).

Mr. Speaker, you know, when I hear my colleagues talk, it sounds as if we have a choice about doing one thing or another thing. I will say to my colleagues, when you're borrowing $1.4 trillion a year from your children----

Just a moment. I'd be happy to yield to my friend.

When you're borrowing $1.4 trillion a year from your children, when you're mortgaging the future of this country, it's not a choice of either spending cuts or revenue changes; we've got to have both. We've got to have both. And to describe it to the American people as if we can do one or the other and get ourselves out of this mess, we cannot. We absolutely cannot. It takes both.

I would ask my friends--and with this, I'd be happy to yield to my colleague--when this House brought to the floor a tax cut bill that gave every Member of Congress a tax cut at the end of 2011 that said we only have to pay 4 percent of payroll taxes that we owe, instead of 6 percent of payroll taxes that we owe, I voted ``no.'' I said there's not a Member in this body that needs a tax cut. I said we have too big a problem in this Nation to give tax cuts to Members of Congress. I voted ``no.'' Did anybody else vote ``no'' with me? Did anybody else vote ``no'' with me?

I will not be lectured about how it is that tax cuts are distributed in this country when we have opportunities to cut them on this floor, to eliminate them on this floor, and my colleagues continue to vote ``yes.'' We could have added a provision that eliminated those tax cuts for the rich. We did not, and we should have.

With that, I'd be happy to yield to my friend.

Reclaiming my time from my colleague, and I very much appreciate her passion--if I can get regular order, please, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the Speaker for his help there. I'm sorry that I needed it, but I appreciate him offering it.

You know, we passed a budget in this House, a comprehensive budget in this House. And to hear my colleagues talk, you'd think this is the only bill we're going to pass for the rest of the year. To hear my colleagues talk, you'd think we're not going to bring the farm bill to the floor and go after ag subsidies. To hear my colleagues talk, you'd think we're not going to bring a tax bill to the floor and try to raise revenues in this country. To hear my colleagues talk, this is it.

This isn't it. This is the bill that responds to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, who said in February of this year about the cuts that we're trying to prevent today:

I will tell you that I am prepared to say that

sequestration will pose an unacceptable risk.

That's what we're here to talk about today: How do we mitigate the unacceptable risk? How do we mitigate against the challenges that former Democratic Budget Committee chairman, former Clinton OMB Director, former Clinton Chief of Staff, current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says threaten our national security?

And, again, we're going to have a choice, Mr. Speaker. We've brought a very powerful program, a very powerful proposal to the floor today, a very powerful proposal. For the first time in over a decade, we're trying to get a handle on that out-of-control portion of spending in this budget. Just a little bit, Mr. Speaker. Just a little bit.

And, again, we just have a different idea of what balance is. We have a different idea of what deficit reduction is. My idea of deficit reduction is over the next 5 years we reduce the deficit.

My colleagues' idea of deficit reduction is over the next 5 years we spend an additional $40 billion above and beyond what we were going to borrow and spend anyway. It's a legitimate difference of opinion. I'm glad we're bringing this rule to the floor, Mr. Speaker, so that we can have a vote on that opinion. I look forward to the debate on the underlying bill.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, there are no tough choices here. I talked to the gentleman whose seat I took the other day. I said, John, you know, when you were up here as a Congressman, you made it look fun. Folks were always saying thank you, thank you, thank you for all the spending that was going on here. I said, I don't get to make any fun decisions.

When you've increased the public debt in this country by 50 percent over the last 4 years, you're all out of giveaway decisions. All we have now are tough decisions. That's all we have.

And, again, I know that my friend from Massachusetts speaks with passion and conviction. His advocacy for

the neediest among us is an inspiration on the floor and in committee and on and on, and I don't fault him for that a bit.

But I would say to my friend, had we not given that payroll tax cut to Members of Congress, we could have provided that food stamp increase that you discussed earlier to an additional 2 million individuals in this country, an additional 2 million individuals in this country had we foregone that tax increase right here. But we didn't. We chose just to go along with the program and cut away, spend away. We can't do that. We've got to stop that.

And I would say to my friend, because it's hard, I have the same families struggling in my district that you do. In fact, our foreclosure rate in my district is higher than it is in your district. Our number of folks who are going homeless in Georgia as a result of foreclosures, higher than it is in Massachusetts.

But when you talk about the additional 1.8 million folks, 1.8 million folks, Mr. Speaker, according to the CBO, who are going to lose their food stamp benefits under this bill, there's no question about that.

But here's the thing, Mr. Speaker, and this is important. This bill doesn't cut anybody from food stamps. This bill says the only people who can get food stamps are people who apply and qualify for food stamps. Hear that, Mr. Speaker.

The CBO tells us, and my friend from Massachusetts quotes, that 1.8 million people are going to lose food stamp benefits. But the only change this bill makes is that you actually have to apply for the benefits to get the benefits. So that means 1.8 million people in this country are receiving food stamp benefits who would not qualify for food stamp benefits if they had to go and apply.

Mr. Speaker, that is not mean-spirited. If you want to change the food stamp rules, if you want to make it a laxer process, whatever you want to do, let's do that. But let's not demonize each other. Let's not say we're trying to throw poor children out in the streets, when all we're saying is we have a successful food stamp program, and why don't we just limit it to those people who qualify for it.

I'd be happy to yield to my friend from California.

Reclaiming my time from my friend, I would say reaching out and bringing folks into the program who do not qualify for the program. The rules for the program are clear, Mr. Speaker. If you qualify for food stamps, I am the first one who wants you to have it. If you qualify for the SNAP program, under SNAP program rules, you should get food stamps.

I'll be happy to yield to my friend.

This is important, Mr. Speaker, and I hope folks are paying attention back in their offices. The gentleman is talking about the error rate, the error rate, folks who have mistakenly gotten food stamps because in the application process they got the application process wrong. They shouldn't have qualified but they have given them away anyway.

What the CBO says is something entirely different. What the CBO says is that 1.8 million American families, if they walked into the office today and applied for food stamps today, would not qualify for food stamps. It's not an error. It's not a mistake. It's that the rules of the game have been changed to say we just want everybody, we just want everybody to have a part in the program.

When the gentleman says it's a paperwork nightmare for States, I happen to agree with the gentleman. There's a tremendous paperwork challenge for States. But this does not solve that. All we're saying is go through the application process. To suggest that we're trying to take benefits away from people who need those benefits is disingenuous.

I would be happy to let the gentleman have his own time, Mr. Speaker, because I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friend that I wish he would show me the code sections here that go into the SNAP program, the codes that say, under the SNAP program, the income criteria that we had yesterday is changing, and so folks aren't going to get those benefits tomorrow. That's not here. All this bill does is to say you need to apply, and you need to earn those benefits on your own merits.

When the gentleman talks about paperwork, he knows good and well the CBO took that into consideration. When the CBO says 1.8 million families are no longer going to qualify, it means some folks are going to get thrown off of categorical eligibility because that is the gaming of the system. They're going to go back in, and they're going to apply for benefits, and they're going to get them, but 1.8 million are going to go back in and apply and get denied because they don't qualify for benefits.

Mr. Speaker, if we need to change the eligibility criteria, if we have folks in need who can't qualify, let's change the eligibility criteria. But in the name of good government, when we're going into programs and saying we have rules of the game--we just want people to have to follow them--to somehow define that as being mean-spirited, it galls me.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friend from Massachusetts that I am prepared to close if he has anymore speakers.

Then I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Massachusetts for joining me on the floor today.

I will say I think he chose exactly the right words when he was trying to make his points: describe your opposition as hating women and children, and that's your best chance of winning your argument. If only it were true.

And that's what I hope the American people take home from debates like these, Mr. Speaker--that there are serious challenges here and that there are serious people who are here who are trying to solve these challenges. But we get wrapped around the axle in the name- calling I hear, that I would argue does nothing to feed a child and that does nothing to take care of a family.

The gentleman says that we're the richest Nation in the world. I would tell the gentleman there is no poorer nation on the planet. There is not a nation on the planet that has borrowed more money than this Nation has--not one, not one. What do they say about socialism, Mr. Speaker? It's a great plan until you run out of other people's money. Guess what? We've run out of other people's money.

I just want to show you a chart, Mr. Speaker. This is a chart--and I'll show it so that other Members can see it. The green line represents tax revenues in this country. It goes back to 1947. What you'll see is that tax revenues are fairly flat as a percent of the economy. In fact, because this chart goes all the way back to 1947, it reflects the New Deal with FDR. It reflects all of that growth in government. The red line is the government spending. It goes all the way back through 1965. It reflects Lyndon Johnson and all the Great Society spending that goes on.

I just want to make sure all of my colleagues can see it there. The red line represents where spending is going in this Nation, and the green line represents where taxes are historically in this Nation. Mr. Speaker, does this look like we have a tax problem here? Does it look like we have a spending problem in this Nation?

Taxes have remained the same as a percentage of GDP, as has spending, until now. Until now, we have a spending-driven crisis in this Nation. I say to my friend that, again, he chose all the right talking points: they want to protect the rich; they want to protect the oil companies.

There is one bill in this Congress that you know well, Mr. Speaker, that eliminates every single corporate loophole exemption deduction and break. There's one. That same bill, Mr. Speaker, eliminates every loophole the wealthy use to avoid paying their fair share. Mr. Speaker, it is the single most popularly cosponsored tax bill, fundamental reform bill in the House and in the Senate. It has almost 70 Members in the House; it has nine Members in the Senate, and there is one Democrat on it.

Mr. Speaker, giving the right speech down here about what folks ought to do doesn't move us in the right direction. Putting your name behind some legislation and moving something forward gets us in the right direction. This Budget Committee chairman sitting here beside me, I'm so proud of him. Chairman Paul Ryan, that's a man known around this country as a man who is trying.

There are a lot of folks here who are known for blaming. There aren't many folks who are known for trying, who say, I don't care about the slings and the arrows. America is facing crisis. And if not me, then who?

We got that in the House-passed budget, Mr. Speaker, folks who said, If not me, then who? And they made tough choices. Here we have the first reconciliation bill. My colleagues on the other side are going to offer a motion to recommit to this deficit-reduction bill that actually increases spending and call that balance.

Mr. Speaker, the food stamp program spending has increased 270 percent over the last decade. The mean-spirited folks that my colleagues talk about want to increase it by 260 percent instead. These aren't easy decisions, Mr. Speaker, but they're not going to put one family out that qualifies for food stamps.

We're going to move beyond the demagoguery, Mr. Speaker. We're going to move into the real business that governing this Nation takes. I hope we'll get a strong bipartisan vote on this rule. I hope we'll get a strong bipartisan vote on the underlying bill. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of both the rule and the underlying bill.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, there's agreement here on two things: one, we need to reduce our long-term deficits--the question is not whether we need to do that, but how; second, we agree that the automatic, indiscriminate, meat-ax cuts scheduled to begin next January are the wrong way to reduce the deficit. We need a responsible alternative.

Now, the House Democrats put forward a budget, as did the President, that deals with this issue over 10 years in a balanced way, building on the more than $1 trillion of cuts we already made on a bipartisan basis last August, and including additional cuts, but also cutting tax loopholes that benefit special interests, and asking people who make more than $1 million per year to help a little bit more toward deficit reduction. That is the kind of bipartisan approach that's been recommended by bipartisan groups like Simpson-Bowles and Rivlin- Domenici. Unfortunately, the Republican approach to the budget--and now to the sequester issue--takes this lopsided approach.

Now, let's remember, 98 percent of our House Republican colleagues, while they come down here and talk about how we have this big deficit and debt problem, they have signed a pledge that says we're not going to ask for one penny of additional contribution from people making more than $1 million a year to help reduce our deficit, not one penny. We won't take one penny of taxpayer subsidies away from the big oil companies to help reduce the deficit.

And the math is pretty simple after that. If you say from the beginning you're not going to ask people making $1 million a year to help do a little more to reduce our common deficit, if you say you're not going to ask companies that have these tax loopholes that actually incentivize them to ship jobs overseas to pay a little bit more, what do you do? Your budget has to whack everyone else, and that's what it did. That's why their budget ended the Medicare guarantee. That's why they cut $800 billion from Medicaid--two-thirds of Medicaid spending goes to help seniors and disabled people in nursing homes. That's why they slash vital investments in education, research, infrastructure, things that had been bipartisan investments to help our economy grow. That's what they did then.

And now on this sequester proposal, what do they do? The chairman talks about eligibility. These are people who are eligible to get food and nutrition assistance because they're struggling. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which is our referee around here, has told us what the real-world consequences of their proposal before us today would be. Over 22 million households with kids would see their food and nutrition support reduced; 300,000 kids knocked off the school lunch program; 300,000 kids knocked off the Children's Health Insurance Program. Those are the kinds of choices they make because they refuse to take a balanced approach to this deficit issue.

Now, I want to say one word about defense spending. Last August, as part of the bipartisan Budget Control Act, our Republican colleagues deliberately chose to expose defense spending to deep additional cuts rather than ask millionaires and big corporations to share a greater responsibility for paying for our national security. Now our Republican colleagues are on the floor today saying these defense cuts would devastate our national security; but they still, even today, apparently aren't concerned enough about the impact of those cuts on national security to ask millionaires to pay a little bit more for our common defense. That's the same kind of mentality that led us to put two wars--Iraq and Afghanistan--on our national credit card. Even as we asked our soldiers to sacrifice, we said we're just going to put that on our national credit card.

So there's a fundamental question here: If you're so concerned about those cuts to defense, why is it you won't close one special interest tax loophole to help pay for them?

We, the Democrats, had a substitute amendment that we would have been able to debate and vote on right here today. We took an alternative approach. We also prevented those defense cuts. You know how we did it? We said we don't need to make these big agricultural subsidies in direct payments. We also don't think we should have taxpayer subsidies for the big oil companies. We did it in a different way. Apparently, our Republican colleagues are kind of worried about what we were going to propose because they brought a closed rule to the floor, meaning Democrats didn't have an opportunity to get a vote on our alternative.

I reserve the balance of my time.

At this time I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Mr. Speaker, I just would like to respond to the chairman of the Budget Committee in terms of the ratio of cuts to revenue. I think the gentleman will recall that one of the recommendations that the bipartisan commission made was the trillion dollars in cuts that we made as part of the Budget Control Act, that was 100 percent cuts. If you take that into account, the reality is what we've done so far with our proposal is 92 percent cuts, 8 percent revenue, and with that revenue generated by closing those tax loopholes I talked about earlier.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. Speaker, before I turn to one of my colleagues, let me say in response to my friend Mr. Hensarling that the American people are well aware of what was happening to the economy the very day the President was sworn in as President of the United States: losing 800,000 jobs every month, the economy in free fall, almost 9 percent in negative economic growth. People's retirement savings had dropped by one-third compared to where they were in 2007. That's the economy the President inherited.

As a result of the extraordinary measures taken by the President, by the previous Congress and, most importantly, with the fortitude of the American people, what we see is this. After the day the President was sworn in and when the economy was in free fall--those were jobs lost-- we began to lift ourselves slowly out. We have now had 25 consecutive months of positive private sector job growth.

Is it enough? No. Of course, we had no help from our Republican colleagues in working on the turnaround. The President's jobs bill that he submitted to this House last September is still sitting here. Fortunately, we finally did a piece of it with the payroll tax cut.

My Republican colleagues say they have an answer. Their answer is back to the old trickle-down economics: another round of tax breaks for the folks at the very top, and somehow that's going to trickle down and lift everybody up.

Do you know what? We tried it. It didn't work. It was called 8 years of the Bush administration. We had two back-to-back tax cuts at the end of the 8 years, a net job loss in the private sector after those 8 years, and we had big deficits. The last time we had a balanced budget here was in 2001, which was before those policies. So it is important for us to get the history of the past right in order to make sure we know how to move forward properly in the future.

I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I would just point out that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office

has stated that as a result of the economic recovery bill and the extraordinary actions that were taken, over 4 million jobs were created or saved. That means a lot to the people who didn't lose their jobs and to the people who were losing their jobs at the rate of 800,000 per month when the President was sworn in. Are we where we want to be? Of course not. Are we a lot better off than we were? We're pulling ourselves up. The last thing we want to do is go back to where we were.

Nobody on the Democratic side has said we can deal with this on the tax side alone. I keep hearing that. It's just not true. We just voted on a bipartisan basis in August for a trillion dollars in cuts. What we propose is what every bipartisan group that has looked at this challenge has said: you have to do this through a combination of cuts, but you also have to get rid of all that pork-barrel stuff in the Tax Code and use some of that to reduce our deficit. Ask the folks who have been making over a million dollars a year to help pay more for our common defense. That is just common sense.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

I yield the gentleman another 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I also urge all our colleagues to support our troops and support our military, and the Democratic substitute that we offered would have made sure that the sequester on defense spending did not take place.

I have great respect for the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Mr. McKeon, who just spoke. Here's what he said not long ago. He said:

We need to address our budget problems comprehensively,

through smarter spending and increased revenue.

He also said:

If it came that I only had two choices, one was a tax

increase and one was a cut in defense over and above where we

already are, I would go to strengthen defense.

In our Democratic substitute, we said let's close some of those tax loopholes to generate a little more revenue to help pay for defense; let's ask people who are making over a million dollars a year to get rid of some of their tax breaks to help pay for our common defense so that we don't have to have a budget that whacks everybody else in the country. That's what the chairman of the Armed Services Committee said. I agree with him. He got beaten down by many in the Republican Party after he made those comments with them saying, oh, you violated that pledge that says we're not going to raise one more penny of revenue to reduce the deficit. But he was candid.

Unfortunately, neither he nor any one of us are going to have a chance to vote on the Democratic substitute that makes sure that we don't have the defense sequestration. We just do it in a

balanced way, through cuts as well as closing some of these tax loopholes.

I now yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Florida (Ms. Castor).

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

First, I would just like to respond to the chairman of the Budget Committee and point out that the Rules Committee waived three rules to bring the Republican legislation to the floor. It couldn't waive one rule to allow a Democratic substitute to have an up-or-down vote. And the one rule you wouldn't waive is the one that rigs the process against closing special interest tax loopholes.

To the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, I think everybody needs to know that the Ag Committee didn't reduce one subsidy to ag businesses--not one. Even though the overall Republican budget says it should be $30 billion, there's a bipartisan bill that would do that, but not one. Instead, they took $33 billion out of food and nutrition programs.

Now, we should be very clear on this. People say that they're going to make sure that everyone who's eligible to get food stamps will. And then they say, under SNAP, suggesting that there are a lot of people who are getting it who are cheating. That's not true. All those other people are eligible. They're eligible.

And it's not Democratic scare tactics saying all these people are going to lose their access to food and nutrition programs. It's the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the referee here, that was never contested by our Republican colleagues in the Budget Committee. They say 22 million American households with children will see their food and nutrition support reduced; 2 million Americans, approximately, will lose all access to the food and nutrition programs through SNAP; 300,000 kids will lose the school lunch program. Those aren't our facts. That's what the Congressional Budget Office says.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici).

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

I know it makes our Republican colleagues feel better when they pretend that these cuts don't harm real people, but the reality is they do harm real people, and the cuts that were made in Energy and Commerce will mean that 300,000 children will no longer get health care throughout the Children's Health Insurance Program. That's not my fact. That's from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

We have heard a lot about the fact that cuts to the prevention fund to help provide for healthier starts, that won't have any impact. We hear these stories coming up. I would just like to put in the Record information from the Centers for Disease Control that refutes this urban legend that somehow these funds were used to spay or neuter dogs. These things just aren't true.

The reality is that it will mean 326,000 women will not get breast cancer screenings and 284,000 will not get cervical cancer screenings. That's what happens when you zero out the prevention fund.

CDC Analysis: Energy & Commerce Committee's Press Release Regarding

Communities Putting Prevention to Work

Background

CDC carefully monitors grantee activity for appropriate use

of Federal funds, and to ensure that investments are directed

to evidence-based interventions that make a difference in

health.

CDC continues to review all reported allegations regarding

grantee activities.

CDC has not found among these examples any instance in

which the anti-lobbying prohibitions have been violated. Many

allegations relate to activities that were performed by

outside organizations not using federal funds, or activities

that actually took place before CDC funding was even awarded

to the grantee. Other activities are, in fact, permissible

under the restrictions, such as educating the public on

health risks.

See below for information on CDC's Communities Putting

Prevention to Work program, which was primarily funded in FY

2009 with funding from the Recovery Act.

See below for additional information on how CDC implements

restrictions on grantee lobbying with Federal funding.

CDC Analysis of Press Release Statements

On May 2, the Energy and Commerce Committee issued a press

release including references to activities of specific CDC

grantees. Below is CDC's analysis of each statement and

further information relevant to the work being done within

these CPPW communities.

Mr. Speaker, it is serious, and the Democratic substitute proposal would have prevented those cuts from going across the board in defense, as well as the non-defense part of the budget. Unfortunately, our Republican colleagues don't think it is serious enough to ask oil companies to do without taxpayer subsidies to help cover the cost. They apparently don't think it is serious enough to ask people making $1 million a year to help with our deficit reduction to pay for the military that we have.

I yield 2 minutes to the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Frank, to talk about some of the impact of this on taxpayers.

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

We keep hearing from our Republican colleagues that there's nothing more important than making sure we defend our national security. We agree that that's essential. We also agree that we need a strong economy. What's confusing is, if that's so important, why are our Republican colleagues refusing to ask the big oil companies to give up their big subsidies? They've said they don't need them.

So, Mr. Speaker, again, we also keep hearing that these cuts aren't going to have an effect. There's the old saying that you're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. What we've been talking about are facts from the Congressional Budget Office about the number of kids that would lose their health care and the number of struggling families that would lose their food and nutrition support.

I now yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Puerto Rico (Mr. Pierluisi).

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words the chairman of the Government Reform Committee said with respect to Federal employees.

If you listen to the comments of a lot of these colleagues, they have made Federal civil servants scapegoats, and, in fact, their budget that's before us today does hit Federal employees.

So the folks in the intelligence community who helped track down Osama Bin Laden, what do they get under this proposal? A 5 percent pay cut.

How about the folks at NIH who are, every day, looking to find cures and treatments for diseases that plague every American family? A 5 percent pay cut.

How about the nurses who work in the Veterans Hospitals? A 5 percent pay cut.

And yet, you don't cut the direct payment subsidies to agriculture. You don't cut the subsidies to the big oil companies. You just want to whack Federal civil servants.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), who has been working on this issue for a very long time.

I thank the gentleman from Maryland.

It is now my privilege to yield 3 minutes to another great Member of Congress from the State of Maryland (Mr. Cummings), the ranking member on the Government Reform Committee.

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the Child Tax Credit, I would like to insert into the Record a letter we received from the Catholic bishops on this subject. In part, it reads:

I reiterate our strong opposition to an unfair proposal

that would alter the Child Tax Credit to exclude children of

hardworking immigrant families.

The bishops also talk about the devastating impacts of eliminating the Social Services Block Grant.

Committee on Domestic Justice

and Human Development,

Washington, DC, May 8, 2012.

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative: As you vote on a reconciliation

package for the fiscal year 2013 budget, I would like to

affirm the principle contained in the Committee Report that

the ``budget starts with the proposition that first, Congress

must do no harm.'' In this light, I urge you to ensure all

policies meet the moral criteria established by the Catholic

bishops of the United States to create a circle of protection

around programs that serve poor and vulnerable people and

communities:

1. Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it

protects or threatens human life and dignity.

2. A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it

affects the lives and dignity of ``the least of these''

(Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless,

without work or in poverty should come first.

3. Government and other institutions have a shared

responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially

ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity

in difficult economic times.

A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on

disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons;

it requires shared sacrifice by all, including raising

adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other

spending, and addressing the long-term costs of health

insurance and retirement programs fairly.

I reiterate our strong opposition to an unfair proposal

that would alter the Child Tax

Credit to exclude children of hard-working, immigrant

families. The bishops' conference has long supported the

Child Tax Credit because it is pro-work, pro-family, and one

of the most effective antipoverty programs in our nation.

Denying the credit to children of working poor immigrant

families--the large majority of whom are American citizens--

would hurt vulnerable kids, increase poverty, and would not

advance the common good.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP,

formerly known as food stamps), provides vital food security

to families during tough economic times. It is estimated that

cuts proposed in this bill would deny assistance to two

million families, and cut the benefit for everyone else. No

poor family that receives food assistance would be

unaffected, constituting a direct threat to their human

dignity. If savings in agricultural programs need to be

achieved, subsidies and direct payments can be reduced and

targeted to small and moderate-sized farms.

The Social Services Block Grant is an important source of

funding for programs throughout the country that serve

vulnerable members of our communities--the homeless, the

elderly, people with disabilities, children living in

poverty, and abuse victims. We should prioritize programs

that serve ``the least of these,'' not eliminate them.

The Catholic bishops of the United States recognize the

serious deficits our country faces, and we acknowledge that

Congress must make difficult decisions about how to allocate

burdens and sacrifices and balance resources and needs.

However, deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility efforts

must protect and not undermine the needs of poor and

vulnerable people. The proposed cuts to programs in the

budget reconciliation fail this basic moral test. The

Catechism of the Catholic Church states it is the proper role

of government to ``make accessible to each what is needed to

lead a truly human life: food, clothing, health, work,

education and culture, suitable information, the right to

establish a family, and so on'' (no. 1908). Poor and

vulnerable people do not have powerful lobbyists to advocate

their interests, but they have the most compelling needs.

As you pursue responsible deficit reduction, the Catholic

bishops join other faith leaders and people of good will

urging you to protect the lives and dignity of poor and

vulnerable families by putting a circle of protection around

these essential programs and to refrain from cutting programs

that serve them.

Sincerely,

Most Reverend Stephen E. Blaire,

Chairman, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human

Development.

I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California, the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr. Waxman, who has been working so hard on these issues.

I yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished 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. Speaker, we're still waiting for this House to take up the President's jobs bill that was submitted last September. We've seen 25 consecutive months of positive private sector job growth. It was a whole lot better than where we were in January when the President was sworn in, losing 800,000 jobs a month. But we need to sustain that recovery, and we're still waiting. The clock is ticking. Let's take that legislation up so that we can accelerate the recovery.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Texas, representing the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Ms. Sheila Jackson Lee.

(Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, we keep hearing about waste, fraud, and abuse. We all need to do everything humanly possible to make sure there's no waste, fraud, and abuse. We keep hearing about these people who are receiving assistance under Food and Nutrition programs like they are cheating the system. They are eligible for the program. And that is why the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that 22 million households with kids are going to see their food nutrition cut, not because they're getting it somehow fraudulently. It is because what the Republican proposal does is cut it off. Almost 2 million people will be eliminated from access to the Food and Nutrition program.

I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore), somebody who knows a lot about these issues and is a terrific member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I was glad to hear that last colloquy, because this Republican proposal cut the Food and Nutrition programs in the Ag Committee's jurisdiction and then

didn't ask for one penny from the ag subsidies. If our Democratic substitute had been made in order, that was one of the cuts that we made in order to prevent devastating cuts to the Food and Nutrition programs for over 22 million American families with children.

I now yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal), who is on the Ways and Means Committee and knows a lot about this issue.

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished Democratic Whip, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Baca).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time remains?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

As we said at the beginning, there is no disagreement over the fact that we need to have a plan to reduce our deficit. The question has been how. And there is no dispute about whether we need to replace the sequester, the meat-ax cuts that will take place automatically January 1. Again, the question is how.

The Republican approach once again asks nothing of people who are doing so well in this country, people who are making over $1 million a year. And because they ask nothing of them, their budget hits everybody else. The figures we're talking about today, these are about real people. These are figures from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office as to the impact of their proposal: 300,000 kids will lose their health care coverage under CHIPs; 22 million kids will see their food and nutrition support under SNAP reduced; 2 million people will see all of their food and nutrition support eliminated. Those are facts.

I know people want to pretend that this doesn't impact real people. That makes it easier to say we're not going to ask big oil companies to get rid of their subsidies if we can pretend that the cuts don't have an impact, but they do. And that's why every bipartisan group that's looked at this budget challenge has said we need a combination of cuts. We did a trillion more, and we have cuts in our substitute, but you also need to get some revenue by closing some of these tax loopholes.

Mr. Speaker, the Democrats had a substitute amendment. The Republicans won't even let us have a vote on

it. They waived three provisions in their rules to bring up their proposal. They wouldn't waive one to hear an alternative.

We keep hearing that it's so important to reduce the deficit; apparently, not important enough to ask for one penny from people who are making a million dollars a year.

We keep hearing that the impact of sequester is going to hit defense. But again, not one penny from the oil companies to help take a balanced approach.

I urge rejection of the Republican proposal.

I wish we could have an up-or-down vote on the Democratic substitute. That would be democracy, but maybe that's asking too much these days.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield the balance of my time to a lady who has spent her life fighting for justice and trying to make sure that is reflected in the budgets that we present to the American people, the distinguished Democratic leader, Ms. Pelosi.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia, my friend, Mr. Woodall, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in very strong opposition to this rule. It is totally closed, and it denies Democrats, led by the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), the substitute.

We're not asking for dozens of amendments or something that hasn't been done in the past with regards to reconciliation bills. All we are asking for is one vote on our substitute, one vote on what we believe is a better alternative to the Republican bill. Last night in the Rules Committee, every single Republican--every single one of them--voted to deny Democrats that opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, as one who does not believe in arbitrary and thoughtless across-the-board cuts as a way to balance our budget, I want to support Mr. Van Hollen's substitute in order to avoid the implementation of the Budget Control Act's sequester. In my opinion, to allow this sequester to go into full effect would be bad for the country.

We are here in this awful mess because a so-called supercommittee failed to reach agreement last fall on a comprehensive and balanced deficit-reduction plan due in very large part to the absolute refusal of Republicans to put revenues on the table. Bowles-Simpson, Rivlin- Domenici, and the Gang of Six all had deficit-reduction proposals that sought to be balanced with both spending cuts and revenues. They sought to be fair. They realized that you cannot solve our long-term fiscal problems by slashing and burning the last century of social progress in America.

But, today, my Republican friends have brought to the floor a reconciliation bill that actually makes sequestration look good. What's going on here is very simple--very troubling, but very simple. They are protecting the massive Pentagon budget and demanding no accountability by exempting it from sequestration and finding even deeper cuts in programs that benefit the people of this country.

The bill before us would create a government where there is no conscience, where the wealthy and well connected are protected and enriched, and where the middle class, the poor, and the vulnerable are essentially forgotten. I have never seen anything like this. It is outrageous. It takes my breath away.

My friends won't cut billions in subsidies for Big Oil at a time when oil companies are making record profits and gauging Americans at the pump. They won't address the inequities of the Tax Code, which allows billionaire Warren Buffett to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. The revenues from fixing these two unjust policies alone would result in billions and billions and billions of dollars in deficit reduction. But the Republicans have protected Big Oil, and they've protected the billionaires. However, my Republican friends take a meat-ax to SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. This is a program to help poor people afford food.

My friends on the other side of the aisle should heed the words of President John F. Kennedy:

If a free society will not help the many who are poor, they

cannot save the few who are rich.

Mr. Speaker, we are one country. We should care about one another, especially those who are most vulnerable. That's not a weakness or something we should be ashamed of. Rather, it's something that makes us strong and great.

As my friends know, I have spent a lot of time and effort in Congress on the issues of hunger, food insecurity, and nutrition. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens don't have enough to eat, and every single one of us--Democrats and Republicans alike--should be ashamed. And that's why I am so outraged by the $36 billion in SNAP cuts.

This notion that SNAP promotes a culture of dependency, that SNAP is a golden ticket to prosperity is just wrong. Some on the Republican side have even claimed that SNAP enslaves Americans. Give me a break. In fact, even in 2010, when unemployment was close to 10 percent and jobs were scarce, the majority of SNAP households with a nondisabled working-age adult were working households--working households.

Working families are trying to earn more. No one wakes up in the morning dreaming to be on SNAP, but these are tough economic times. Some people have no choice. But we know that SNAP enrollment and spending on SNAP will go down as the economy improves, as families see their incomes rise and no longer need SNAP to feed their families. Don't take my word for it. This is directly from the Congressional Budget Office.

Of course, last night in the Rules Committee, we heard the tired line that there's a lot of abuse in the SNAP program. We heard that there are countless numbers of people receiving benefits who do not deserve them. That, Mr. Speaker, is simply not true.

It's a common and unfortunate misconception that SNAP is rife with fraud, waste, and abuse. Many have decried SNAP as a handout that can be sold or traded for alcohol and other items that shouldn't be purchased with taxpayer funds. It cannot. And to the extent that there is abuse, the USDA is cracking down on it.

SNAP is both effective and efficient. In fact, the error rate for SNAP is not only at an all-time low, but it has among the lowest--if not the lowest--error rate of any Federal program. If only we could find a program at the Pentagon that had such a low error rate.

Last night we also heard about categorical eligibility, a process in which a low-income person is automatically eligible for food stamps if they are already enrolled in another low-income assistance program.

Categorical eligibility--and I think it's important to state this because there's such misconception here. Categorical eligibility makes it easier for poor people, those people who are already approved for low-income assistance programs, to receive SNAP benefits. But it also makes it easier on the States that have to administer these programs. This saves time and money and paperwork, because the people who are already eligible for similarly administered benefits do not have to reapply for SNAP, and States do not have to waste workers' hours processing paperwork for people who are already eligible based on their incomes.

Categorical eligibility does not mean that people who don't qualify for SNAP get those benefits. To the contrary, people still have to qualify for the program to receive food. Any claim that this is a fraudulent practice or that it is rife with abuse is just another falsehood and smear against one of the most efficient Federal programs.

The demonization of SNAP and other food and nutrition programs by my Republican friends must come to an end.

We have an obligation in this country to provide a circle of protection for the most vulnerable.

Cutting $36 billion means that more than 22 million households will see a cut in their benefit. This means 22 million families will have less food tomorrow than they do today. In fact, 2 million people would be cut from the SNAP program altogether. Another 280,000 kids will lose access to free school meals.

My friends on the other side of the aisle don't like to hear this, but sometimes the truth hurts. If this bill before us becomes law, it will take food out of the mouths of children in America, all in the name of protecting tax cuts for the wealthy and increased Pentagon spending. The Republican reconciliation bill threatens Medicare, it threatens children's programs, it threatens educational programs, as well as programs that support our infrastructure. In short, if this were to be adopted as law, it would threaten our economy as a whole.

And the bill not only protects the Pentagon budget, it increases it by billions of dollars. Does anyone here honestly believe there's not a single dollar to be saved anywhere in the Pentagon? If you do, you're not reading the newspapers. It's there in front of us every single day, the abuse that goes on. No-bid defense contractors. I can go on and on and on.

We have, and will continue to have, the strongest military on the face of the Earth. But at some point national security must mean more than throwing billions of dollars at unnecessary nuclear weapons or at pie-in-the sky Star Wars programs that will never actually materialize.

But national security has to mean taking care of our own people. It means educating our children. It means an infrastructure that isn't crumbling around us. It means clean air and clean water and a health care system that works. Those should be our priorities. But sadly, those are not the priorities in the bill before us today.

Of course, Senator Reid says the bill is dead in the water in the Senate. At a press conference yesterday, the Senate Majority Leader said:

As long as Republicans refuse to consider a more reasonable

approach, one that asks every American to pay his fair share

while making difficult choices to reduce spending, the

sequester is the only path forward.

That's a pretty clear statement that the Senate will not consider this bill. Quite frankly, it's the right thing to do.

A reasonable approach is what the American people want. Yes, they want us to get our fiscal house in order. They want us to reduce the deficit in a fair way so that the wealthiest among us pay their fair share. But mostly the American people want jobs, something the House Republican leadership continues to ignore.

The American people know that the best way to bring this deficit down is through job creation. They want the economy to improve. They want their lives to get better. This bill does not do that.

Mr. Speaker, let me conclude by quoting President Dwight Eisenhower in a speech he made in 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every

rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those

who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not

clothed.

I'm afraid, Mr. Speaker, that President Eisenhower wouldn't recognize today's Republican Party.

We should reject this closed rule and the underlying bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume just to reemphasize the point that Mr. Van Hollen made.

You know, the Rules Committee has the right to be able to waive the rules to bring any piece of legislation to the floor. And as Mr. Van Hollen rightly pointed out, in the report on this rule, the Republicans waive, implement waivers because their proposal, without these waivers, would violate the rules.

And so, you know, my friend talks about that this shouldn't be a partisan discussion. I would just say to my friend, the reason that this is a partisan discussion is because the Republicans have made it such by denying us the right to come to the floor and offer our substitute, not as a procedural matter, but as a real substitute. You have politicized this debate. You have shut us out, and that is why there is frustration.

And I just want to say one other thing again because I am so sick and tired of the demonization of programs that benefit poor people in this country, especially the SNAP program.

My friend was talking about all of this money that we invested in SNAP as if somehow we were giving these very generous benefits out. Just for the record, in 2002, the average SNAP benefit was $1 per meal per day per person--$1. With all of the improvements we have made, today it is about $1.50 per meal per day; and it is going to go down next year because of cutbacks we've already made in this program, unfortunately, to offset other things over the past few years. That means in a 10-year period that we have increased this benefit by 50 cents per meal. Now, I don't know about my friend, but $1.50 doesn't go very far today.

So when we're talking about trying to help people get through this economic crisis, that's what we're talking about. So this is not some extravagant, overly generous benefit. That's what it is. That's what it is. And rather than cutting waste in the Pentagon budget, which we all know exists, you protect the Pentagon budget. Rather than going after subsidies for oil companies and going after billionaire tax breaks, you protect all of that. And where do you go to find the savings? From programs that help the poorest of the poor. I mean, it's outrageous.

Mr. Speaker, at this point I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), the ranking member of the Budget Committee.

I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I'm proud to yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond to the gentleman.

First of all, no one here on our side is arguing that sequestration should go into effect. We don't think that's good for our country, but we think that the Republican reconciliation bill is even worse for our country because of the cuts in so many programs that actually help our people.

There's no balance in there. The gentleman can say I'm all for balance. There's none in your reconciliation bill. It's all cuts to programs that actually help the people of this country.

And, finally, I'd just say we have an alternative to sequestration. Mr. Van Hollen brought that before the Rules Committee last night. The Rules Committee Republicans, every single one of them, voted ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, at this time I'd like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi).

Will the gentleman yield?

Just so the gentleman understands, the General Accountability Office says the error rate in the SNAP program is less than 3 percent. What is he talking about when people are getting benefits that they don't deserve? I'd like to know the numbers of that. How much?

I yield myself 30 seconds, Mr. Speaker.

The gentleman is wrong. He's just wrong when he talks about the abuse of the SNAP program, that people are somehow getting benefits that they're not entitled to. And the demagoguery that's going on with regard to categorical eligibility is just inexcusable. That actually cuts paperwork and bureaucracy at a State level, and it helps people who are eligible to get the benefits.

I'd also say to the gentleman, he gets up on the floor and talks about this payroll tax cut for Members of Congress. That was a payroll tax cut for everybody.

Now, if you wanted to exempt Members of Congress, that would be minuscule. That would do nothing to provide any benefit to anyone.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

What galls me is that the Republican majority is balancing the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable in this country, on the poorest of the poor.

The gentleman talks about the CBO. The CBO says that cutting $36 billion from the SNAP program means that more than 22 million households will see a cut in their benefits. It means that 22 million families will have less food tomorrow than they do today. In fact, 2 million people would be cut from SNAP altogether. That is not my making up numbers. That's the CBO. That's where I get that from. I think that's cruel and inhumane during one of the worst economic crises that we've faced.

Yes, we have to balance the budget, and we have to make tough choices, but why does it have to be on the backs of the most vulnerable? Why can't Donald Trump pay a couple of more dollars in taxes? Why can't we end the subsidies to Big Oil? Why can't we make it so that Warren Buffett pays the same tax rate as his secretary? That's all we're saying here.

Your reconciliation bill represents your priorities. What we're arguing is that your priorities are wrong and bad for the country. We have an alternative. You won't even let us have the opportunity to debate that alternative on the floor.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I'm it.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to this closed rule to let the House work its will and to give Mr. Van Hollen's substitute an up-or-down vote in the House. It deserves more than a procedural vote.

I ask unanimous consent, Mr. Speaker, to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous materials, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I think what we're talking about here today are two different visions for this country. The Republicans have their vision that is outlined in their reconciliation package. Mr. Van Hollen, I think, has adequately summarized what the Democratic priorities are.

The main difference is that, in their proposal, there is no balance. It's a meat-ax approach to everything--cut, cut, cut, cut--regardless of what it means to the people of this country. What we're trying to do and, quite frankly, what other bipartisan commissions have recommended, is a more balanced approach: we cut spending, but there are also some revenues to be raised.

At a time in our country when we have a Tax Code that allows Warren Buffett to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary, it seems that it's time for a little fairness, and that's all we're asking for here. That's all we're asking for--a balanced, fair approach. We are prepared to make the tough choices. Yes, some of those tough choices mean cuts. But I'd say to the Republicans that some of those tough choices may mean you'll have to go back on the pledge that you signed with Grover Norquist, that you'll have to support closing tax loopholes and raising taxes on the wealthiest individuals in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I would at this time like to insert in the Record a letter from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and I want to read one paragraph from that letter, which is to the Members of Congress:

The Catholic bishops of the United States recognize the

serious deficits our country faces, and we acknowledge that

Congress must make difficult decisions about how to allocate

burdens and sacrifices and balance resources and needs.

However, deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility efforts

must protect and not undermine the needs of poor and

vulnerable people. The proposed cuts to programs in the

budget reconciliation fail this basic moral test. The

catechism of the Catholic Church states it is the proper role

of government to ``make accessible to each what is needed to

lead a truly human life: food, clothing, health, work,

education and culture, suitable information, the right to

establish a family, and so on.'' Poor and vulnerable people

do not have powerful lobbyists to advocate their interests,

but they have the most compelling needs.

Mr. Speaker, that paragraph sums up what I feel and what so many of us feel about what my friends on the other side of the aisle are doing. Yes, we have to make tough choices, but why are always the tough choices on the backs of middle-income families and on the backs of the poor?

There are people in this country who are hungry. We are the richest country on the planet, and we have hungry people here. Yet what is our response? It's not to figure out a way to help deal with this terrible scourge. Our response--their response--is to take a meat-ax approach to SNAP, which will cut benefits. That's what the CBO says, that it will cut benefits and that people will have less food tomorrow than they have today if this is to become law.

I think that's a horrible choice. That's not a choice we should be discussing on the floor. Yes, let's make these programs more efficient. But I'm going to tell you the SNAP Program is a hell of a lot more efficient than the Pentagon--the waste, the fraud, and the abuse in the Pentagon, the wasteful weapons systems in the Pentagon. I want to tell you that I don't care what Leon Panetta says. There are savings to be found in the Pentagon's budget, and we ought to go after that. We ought to make sure that Donald Trump pays his fair share in taxes, and we ought to close these corporate tax loopholes that allow corporations to get away with paying no taxes. Middle-income families can't do that.

This is about fairness. That's what we're looking for--fairness and balance. This is a tough time. But rather than following the European model--which my friends seem to love, a model of austerity and of cut, cut, cut, cut, which is not very popular, as they're seeing--what we're trying to do here is to make responsible cutbacks and responsible investments: investing in a robust highway bill to put people back to work, investing in education to make sure our young people are prepared to compete in the 21st century economy, and, yes, investing in the social safety net and investing in programs that provide a circle of protection to the poor and the most vulnerable.

There is nothing wrong with that. We should be proud of the fact that we are a country that cares. Let's not give that up. That's a strength. It's not a weakness. It's a strength. I say to my colleagues that my biggest problem with what the Republicans are doing is that it fails that test. What it does is it goes after the most vulnerable in a way that, I think, is cruel and wrong.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and to defeat the previous question. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Committee on Domestic Justice

and Human Development,

Washington, DC, May 8, 2012.

U.S. House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative: As you vote on a reconciliation

package for the fiscal year 2013 budget, I would like to

affirm the principle contained in the Committee Report that

the ``budget starts with the proposition that first, Congress

must do no harm.'' In this light, I urge you to ensure all

policies meet the moral criteria established by the Catholic

bishops of the United States to create a circle of protection

around programs that serve poor and vulnerable people and

communities:

1. Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it

protects or threatens human life and dignity.

2. A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it

affects the lives and dignity of ``the least of these''

(Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless,

without work or in poverty should come first.

3. Government and other institutions have a shared

responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially

ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity

in difficult economic times.

A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on

disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons;

it requires shared sacrifice by all, including raising

adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other

spending, and addressing the long-term costs of health

insurance and retirement programs fairly.

I reiterate our strong opposition to an unfair proposal

that would alter the Child Tax Credit to exclude children of

hard-working, immigrant families. The bishops' conference has

long supported the Child Tax Credit because it is pro-work,

pro-family, and one of the most effective antipoverty

programs in our nation. Denying the credit to children of

working poor immigrant families--the large majority of whom

are American citizens--would hurt vulnerable kids, increase

poverty, and would not advance the common good.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP,

formerly known as food stamps), provides vital food security

to families during tough economic times. It is estimated that

cuts proposed in this bill would deny assistance to two

million families, and cut the benefit for everyone else. No

poor family that receives food assistance would be

unaffected, constituting a direct threat to their human

dignity. If savings in agricultural programs need to be

achieved, subsidies and direct payments can be reduced and

targeted to small and moderate-sized farms.

The Social Services Block Grant is an important source of

funding for programs throughout the country that serve

vulnerable members of our communities--the homeless, the

elderly, people with disabilities, children living in

poverty, and abuse victims. We should prioritize programs

that serve ``the least of these,'' not eliminate them.

The Catholic bishops of the United States recognize the

serious deficits our country

faces, and we acknowledge that Congress must make difficult

decisions about how to allocate burdens and sacrifices and

balance resources and needs. However, deficit reduction and

fiscal responsibility efforts must protect and not undermine

the needs of poor and vulnerable people. The proposed cuts to

programs in the budget reconciliation fail this basic moral

test. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states it is the

proper role of government to ``make accessible to each what

is needed to lead a truly human life: food, clothing, health,

work, education and culture, suitable information, the right

to establish a family, and so on'' (no. 1908). Poor and

vulnerable people do not have powerful lobbyists to advocate

their interests, but they have the most compelling needs.

As you pursue responsible deficit reduction, the Catholic

bishops join other faith leaders and people of good will

urging you to protect the lives and dignity of poor and

vulnerable families by putting a circle of protection around

these essential programs and to refrain from cutting programs

that serve them.

Sincerely,

Most Reverend Stephen E. Blaire,

Chairman, Committee on Domestic Justice

and Human Development.

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 648, I call up the bill (H.R. 5652) to provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 201 of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2013, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 5652, the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind everybody for a minute as to how we got here. Why are we doing this? What's going on?

When the President was requesting an increase in the debt limit last year, he wanted a blank check. Just increase the debt limit. Borrowing unchecked. Then when that wasn't going to happen, he asked for a big tax increase. That didn't occur.

What occurred out of that was the Budget Control Act. You've got to cut at least a dollar's worth of spending for every dollar of debt- limit increase that occurs.

So Congress passed the Budget Control Act with no tax increases, spending cuts. Half of it, approximately, were the caps on discretionary spending netting about $1 trillion in savings--$917 billion, to be specific. The other half, the $1.2 trillion, was the Select Committee--people call this the supercommittee. That committee failed to produce a result. As a result of that, a sequester occurs. And the sequester, according to people on a bipartisan basis, is not good government. The sequester, according to the Secretary of Defense, the President himself, would hollow out our military when it kicks in on January 2 next year. The sequester will take nondefense discretionary spending down 8 percent and defense down 10 percent.

We believe the purpose of the sequester was to replace the fact that Congress isn't governing. Well, let's have Congress govern. That's why we're doing this. What we're doing is we're bringing a bill to the floor to cut 405 percent of the spending cuts that are in the sequester in the first year. A net deficit reduction of $242.8 billion to set aside the sequester under discretionary for 1 year of $78 billion, we think that's a good tradeoff.

More to the point, we need to get in the habit of doing reconciliation because 61 percent of the Federal budget is off limits, it's autopilot, it's not touched. Congress doesn't deal with it. So we should look at this part of our government that is not being dealt with.

The last time we used reconciliation for its intended purpose--to cut spending, to reduce deficits--was 2005. So rather than just having annual discretionary spending bouts and debates, we should look at the other parts of government that are on autopilot.

Take a look at what we're doing. We basically are doing five things. We're stopping the abuse by ensuring individuals are actually eligible for the taxpayer benefits they receive--novel idea, I know. We're eliminating government slush funds to stop bailouts. We're controlling runaway, unchecked spending. We're putting restraints on government spending by bureaucracies. And we're getting rid of duplicative spending.

I can go through each program, and we will do this in this debate, but what we're simply saying is people should actually be eligible for the benefits that they receive, whether it's a tax credit, whether it's a SNAP benefit, whatever it is. When we take a look at why we're cutting spending, we are

doing this with the guise of the fact that we have a spending-driven debt crisis on the horizon. If taxes go back to where they've been for the last 40 years, which is what they are projected to do, there's no way you can fix this problem by raising taxes.

We have a spending-driven debt crisis, and the debt crisis is one in which we have a tidal wave of debt coming to this country just like Europe is experiencing. If we don't get our spending under control and we don't get our deficit under control, the people who need government the most--the poor, the elderly--they're the ones who get hurt the first and the worst.

We need to get spending and, therefore, deficits under control to prevent a debt crisis. That's what this does. It's a downpayment. Instead of saving hundreds of billions of dollars like this bill does, we need to get into the practice of actually saving trillions of dollars, which is what our budget does, in order to prevent a debt crisis from ruining the American Dream for Americans.

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

I yield myself 1 minute to say, Mr. Speaker, that the gentleman's substitute raises taxes $85 billion and raises spending $55 billion on the net to achieve simply $30 billion in deficit reduction. This bill achieves $243 billion in deficit reduction without raising taxes.

The ratio of tax increases to spending cuts gross 3 to 1. That's what they think balance is.

Let's look at food stamps. Food stamps went up 270 percent over the last decade. If this passes, it will have gone up 260 percent.

Let's talk about Medicaid and SCHIP. This program has gone up 50 percent over the last 10 years. It's projected to grow 125 percent over the next 10 years. If this passes, it will grow 123 percent over the next 10 years.

If we can't have a civil debate about how to slow the growth of spending around here then we'll never get this under control. Medicaid alone made $15.8 billion in overpayments in 2011 alone. If we can't deal with this waste, if we can't deal with this overspending, we can't fix this problem.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 7 minutes of my time to Mr. Hensarling of the Financial Services Committee, and ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to yield time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes to just address a few of these.

If you're eligible for food stamps today, you'll be eligible for food stamps tomorrow under this bill. We're simply saying you have to be eligible for this benefit to actually get the benefit.

The slush fund, which is called the Preventive Services Fund, doesn't fund cervical and breast cancer research. It funded things such as the Pitt County, North Carolina, funds for signage to promote recreational destinations, including public parks, bike lanes, and more. The city of Boston received a $1 million grant for urban gardening. The New York Department of Health used a $3 million taxpayer-funded grant from this fund to lobby for a soda-tax initiative. The Cascade Bicycle Club Education Foundation granted $3 million to the Seattle and King County Public Health Facility to use taxpayer dollars to ``improve the walking and biking environment.'' This is where our taxpayer dollars are going.

With regard to the child tax credit, one investigation in Indiana said an illegal immigrant is claiming $29,608 as a tax credit for 20 children who live in Mexico and have never visited the United States before.

What we're saying is government spending on these programs should go to the people who they are intended for, not to people who are not eligible and are not intended for. If we're going to do prevention for health care, then do cancer screenings, do cancer research. Don't fund signs for bike paths.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Mr. McKeon.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to make three points.

That line the gentlelady used about Medicare was rated the ``lie of the year'' in 2011 by PolitiFact. Number two, the reason the Democratic substitute is not being considered is because it violates the House rules. What's interesting about that is, it would have violated the House rules that the Democrats had when they were in the majority. The third point is, when it comes to tax loopholes, we're proposing to close those tax loopholes in order to lower tax rates for American families and businesses to create jobs. They want to do it to prevent spending cuts; $3 of tax increases for $1 of spending cuts is the math and the logic that the other side chooses to use. When you have a spending problem, you've got to cut spending.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lucas), the chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, and ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to yield time.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds simply to say that the Social Services Block Grant, according to the Government Accountability Office, is a textbook example of overlap and duplication of Federal programs. It's one of 69 programs to fund early education; it's one of 200 programs serving Americans with disabilities; and it's one of 49 programs providing education and training services. The program demands no accountability for results and provides no means to measure the impact of the programs.

Mr. Speaker, we've got to end duplication and waste in government. We're saying also, on the tax side, close loopholes for tax reform, not to fuel more spending.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to yield time.

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

An additional 30 seconds. I've got three other committees that are coming.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Medicaid is projected to grow at 125 percent over the next decade; under this bill, it will grow 123 percent. Food

stamps grew 270 percent; under this bill, they would have grown 260 percent. Only in Washington is this considered draconian cuts. Slowing the growth of spending is not cutting; it's slowing the growth of spending.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks), a member of the Judiciary Committee, and ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to yield time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa), chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to yield time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Members of Congress and Federal employees contribute .8 percent to their pensions. According to the CBO, their benefits are 48 percent higher than their average private sector counterparts. We think it's just reasonable and appropriate that they contribute about 5.8 percent to their pensions and contribute their half. It's the least we can ask of ourselves as Members of Congress and of hardworking Federal employees, that we treat ourselves like private sector workers are treated. More to the point, Mr. Speaker, if we want to have the moral authority to get spending under control, we need to ask more of ourselves.

With that, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Camp), the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to yield time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oklahoma, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Cole.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to a distinguished gentleman on the Budget Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished chairman of the Agriculture Committee, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lucas).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Mulvaney), a member of the Budget Committee.

I would say, Mr. Speaker, this is not a tax cut bill, this is a spending cut bill.

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

I continue to reserve.

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

First off, Mr. Speaker, let me thank those six committees that contributed to making this possible.

Over 60 percent of the Federal budget is in a category of spending we call mandatory spending. It's a budget term of art that means that part of spending is on autopilot. Congress does not address or oversee or set the levels of that spending in any given year. Congress does address what we call discretionary spending. That's government agency budgets--about 39 percent of the budget every single year. The last time Congress actually looked at this 60 percent of spending on autopilot for savings was 2005. It's important that we make sure that we're scrutinizing how we're spending hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and it's a shame that we haven't revisited this category of spending since 2005. We're doing that here.

Now, the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Speaker of the House, the minority leader of the House, they've all said that this sequester is a mistake; it's bad, it's going to hurt. Not only does it hollow out defense, according to the Defense Secretary, but it also creates an 8 percent across-the-board cut to domestic discretionary spending, like the National Institutes of Health. We think we should prevent that. On a bipartisan basis, we think we should prevent that. That's what we're doing. This is the only plan that says, Prevent that from happening, and here's how you pay for it. Here's our plan to stop that from happening, this event that everybody says should be stopped.

Now, when we take a look at what this package does, I think we want to

look at, is our government working the way it ought to be?

In particular, we're hearing lots of comments about how this hurts people, how this hurts the poor. Let's take a look at our poverty- fighting efforts. And should we measure our poverty-fighting efforts based on inputs or based on outcomes? Should we measure our poverty- fighting efforts based on how much money we're spending and how many programs we're creating? Or should we think about how many people are we getting out of poverty?

Here's the problem: These efforts aren't working. One out of six Americans today are in poverty. We have the highest poverty rates we've had in a generation. These programs aren't working. Let's fix them. Let's pass reforms that instead decrease the poverty rate, which is happening these days, and get people back into lives of self- sufficiency.

Let's go back to the American idea of an opportunity society with a safety net that doesn't keep people in poverty but gets people out of poverty into lives of self-sufficiency. And we're not going to be able to achieve that if we don't grow our economy. We're not going to be able to achieve that if we don't have more opportunities in society so that people who are on the bottom rung of the economic ladder can't climb up and out.

We shouldn't be defining success as how many people we have on these benefit programs. We should be defining success as to how many people we are graduating from these benefit programs into lives of self- sufficiency, into jobs. That's the American idea.

So when you take a look at whether these programs are working well or not, we need to reform them. We haven't touched these programs for decades. Food stamps, we've gone from 17 million people to 45 million people in a decade, a 270 percent spending increase--$1.8 billion in overpayments last year alone. We're just saying you need to qualify for the benefit to get the benefit.

Medicaid. If we think this is such a success, then why are half the doctors filling out surveys saying they're not going to take any new Medicaid patients. If this program is working so well, then why was $15.8 billion in overpayments made just last year? Does this devastate Medicaid? Instead of increasing Medicaid by 125 percent over the next decade, this proposal increases it by 123 percent over the next decade--hardly draconian.

What we're saying is we need to make these programs work to achieve their intended results. Give States more flexibility to customize their benefits to meet the needs of the people in their States. That's what these Medicaid reforms are all about.

When we hear the other side talk about no spending cuts but more tax increases, that's going to slow down job creation. We're the first ones who came to this floor saying, ``Close these tax loopholes, but close these tax loopholes to create economic growth by reforming the Tax Code.'' Treat people fairly in the Tax Code so that a company or a person who makes the same amount of money pays the same level of tax. You do that by getting rid of tax shelters and tax loopholes, not to raise spending, but to lower tax rates so American businesses can survive, can thrive, and create jobs. Upward mobility. Economic opportunity. That's what we're trying to achieve here.

Mr. Speaker, we should not be talking to each other in this society as if we're stuck in some class, as if this person's middle class, that person's lower class, and that person's upper class. Our ancestors left those class-based societies to form this country, which should not be a class-based society. It should be a society of upward mobility, where we can make the most of our lives, based on our own God-given talent and our own effort. We should not be speaking to people as if they're stuck in their current station in life and the government is here to help them cope with it.

We need to get ourselves out of this debt crisis because, if we have a debt crisis, if we keep on this path where we're borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend, we're going to have a debt crisis. Europe is in a debt crisis.

And what happens when you're in a debt crisis? Immediate austerity, cutting benefits to seniors, cutting benefits to people in the safety net, raising taxes. That slows down the economy, especially for the youth.

Look what we're doing right now. Half of our Nation's college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed--half.

It's not working. We need to change these policies. We need to grow the economy. And if we have a debt crisis because of this spending, then the people who need government the most, they're the ones who get hurt the first and the worst.

We're leading. The President, no plan to fix this. The Senate, no budget since 2009. And our friends on the other side of the aisle, tax increases, spending increases, no spending cuts.

Mr. Speaker, this is a small step in the right direction. It's something Congress should do every day. I urge passage of this bill.