Baseline Reform Act of 2014

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 539 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend from Florida (Mr. Hastings), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

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

Mr. Speaker, this is a big day for me down here on the House floor. I don't know if you were catching every word of the rule as it was being read, but what you've got here in a nutshell, Mr. Speaker, is a rule that makes in order absolutely every germane amendment that was offered, not to one budget reform bill, not to two budget reform bills, but to three budget process reform bills.

We talk so much about numbers in this institution, Mr. Speaker. We talk about baselines. We talk about CBO scores. We also talk a lot about people. We talk a lot about families. We talk about why what we do here matters in the lives of folks back home.

Father Conroy prayed this morning, Mr. Speaker, that we could get out of some of our old habits that the inertia leads us to disagree and find those things around on which we do agree. There is one thing that is undisputed in this Chamber--in fact, on Capitol

Hill; in fact, in this entire town--Mr. Speaker, when it comes to budget process, and that is that every time we decide we are going to spend money today, we get a little boost in the economy, and that boost comes from a mortgaged future. We can get a little today at the expense of a little tomorrow, or, conversely, we can lose a little bit today in exchange for gaining a little bit tomorrow.

There is no free lunch when it comes to budgeting, Mr. Speaker. I only get to spend each dollar once in this institution, and I can either raise that dollar from today's taxpayers or I can borrow that dollar from tomorrow's taxpayers. There are arguments on both sides. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was fond of saying: Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but they are not entitled to their own facts.

What these three budget process bills before us today, Mr. Speaker, will do is make sure we are working from the same shared set of facts. Now, again, this rule, Mr. Speaker, provides for these three bills. It is H. Res. 539. It is a structured rule for H.R. 1874, the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act. That is going to be on the floor today immediately following this rule. If we are able to secure passage, and I certainly hope that we can, we will be debating H.R. 1874.

H.R. 1874 will instruct the Congressional Budget Office to calculate, when we make these decisions, whether we are going to spend a little today and mortgage tomorrow or whether we are going to save a little bit today in exchange for growth tomorrow, to calculate that impact. It is not enough to spend the dollar, it is not enough to save the dollar. We have to explain, not just to our colleagues, but to the American people, what the benefit or the burden of that decision is going to be. H.R. 1874 brings some clarity to that decision.

One of my personal favorite bills, Mr. Speaker, is H.R. 1871. H.R. 1871 and H.R. 1872 are also made in order by this bill. H.R. 1871 happens to be the Woodall bill, Mr. Speaker. It is the Baseline Reform bill. Candidly, I can't claim credit for it. I want to, pride of authorship and all. But, Mr. Speaker, the truth is it is the gentleman from the great State of Texas. Mr. Louie Gohmert has been fighting for this bill long before I arrived in this institution. I happened to get a seat on the Budget Committee; he happens to serve elsewhere; so I am carrying this language. I couldn't be prouder to do it, but I want to give credit where credit is due.

The fight that the gentleman from Texas has been making over the years--and it is not a fight against one another; it is a fight against inertia, as Father Conroy talked about this morning--is to say that it is just crazy in today's tight economic environment to assume that if the government spent X dollars this year, we are going to give them X plus 3 percent next year, that irrespective of what your mission is, irrespective of what your productivity is, irrespective of what your success is, we are just going to assume that your agency is going to get more money next year than it got this year. That is not the way anybody operates at home. That is not what we do around the dinner table. That is not what any business in America does. That is not what we should be doing.

So H.R. 1871 says we are going to assume you are going to get next year what you got this year, with absolutely no inflation whatsoever.

Now, this is not an area of wide agreement. I would argue what you get next year ought to be less than what you get this year, because we ought to expect some productivity increases from you. It is fair in the industrious society in which we live that we expect you to do more with less next year. But we are not trying to achieve all of that today. We are just saying that what you get next year is going to be what you get this year. Eliminate those automatic inflaters that bias us towards less productivity and more cost.

Finally, H.R. 1872, Mr. Speaker, that is a bill from my friend from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett). That bill says we ought to have accurate accounting, fair cost accounting, of government loan programs.

We are in the business of guaranteeing a whole lot of loans in this institution, Mr. Speaker, loans for all sorts of meritorious activities that we would agree on both sides of the aisle are worthy of being carried on, but the question is how do we account for that in the budget process.

Today we assume that those loans will never go bad--that those loans will never go bad--and that we will only reflect a cost of the American taxpayer guaranteeing those loans when and if those loans do go bad. But that is not what happens in the real world. That is not what we ask of our bankers down on Main Street. That is not what we ask of any financial institution. We would run you right out of town if you tried to do your accounting that way in the real world, Mr. Speaker.

So what Mr. Garrett says is: Why can't we apply real world accounting to this institution? Why can't we hold ourselves to the same high standard that we hold folks back home? I applaud him for that. I think that is something, again, that brings us together rather than divides us.

What I like most about this rule, though, Mr. Speaker, is that when the amendments were offered--and that is the way the process goes, for folks who don't watch the Rules Committee as closely as my friend from Florida and I do. Members of Congress come; they submit their amendments to the Rules Committee; and the Rules Committee decides what is made in order. But we do that in consultation with the Parliamentarians. We need to make sure that amendments are germane. We want to make sure that the conversation is on the topic that the bill is on. We don't allow nongermane amendments most of the time, but sometimes Members submit amendments in good faith that don't comply with the rules as they were submitted, but they can be worked on to make them better.

What I am particularly proud of, Mr. Speaker, is that, when we received some amendments that were not quite within the four corners of the rules, rather than just rejecting those amendments out of hand, which would have been a perfectly appropriate response, we didn't do what was appropriate; we did what was right. And that was to go and work with those Members to improve those amendments, get them within the four corners of the parliamentary process, and make those in order today.

So, again, every single germane amendment that was submitted to the Rules Committee on each of these three bills was made in order for debate under the bill. We will do the first of those bills today. If this rule passes, we will do the remaining two next week, and all done in the name of transparency and accurate information for the American people.

It is perfectly legitimate to have your own opinion about what the Federal budget ought to look like, but you are not entitled to your own facts about what the impact of those decisions will be.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes to thank my friend from Florida for laying out exactly what the case is that needs to be made today.

It just so happens all of those spending priorities that the gentleman from Florida mentioned are spending priorities I share-- investments in education; investments in roads and bridges; investments in cutting-edge research that makes a difference in people's lives, not just in terms of treatments, but in terms of cures.

In the absence of crystal-clear budgeting, in the absence of the reforms that we have proposed here today, the $5 trillion that the Budget Committee passed that proposes to reduce Federal spending over the next 10 years is exactly the same as the interest that that very same budget proposes to pay over the next 10 years.

I want you to hear that, Mr. Speaker. Every single reduction in spending that the gentleman just laid out is necessitated because, dollar for dollar, we are wasting those same amounts on paying the debts that previous Congresses have racked up.

That is a Budget Committee-passed budget. The President's budget, Mr. Speaker, proposes to spend $6 trillion over the next 10 years on interest alone--interest alone.

Mr. Speaker, by not taking responsibility today, not only are we mortgaging our children's future by piling these debts on them, we are trading away opportunities to make a difference in their future.

Because those dollars that we are sending to the Chinese and Germans who loan us money and the money that we are spending to pay our debts is money that we could be spending on those shared investment priorities that the gentleman from Florida and I have in common.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from the State of Florida (Mr. Nugent), one of the great members of the Rules Committee, a former sheriff.

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

It never surprises me how much I have in common with my friend from Florida. We come from very different parts of the world, Mr. Speaker. If you go to many events in this town, they will generally have a Southeastern State section and a Florida section. Florida is a little bit different from the rest of those Southeastern States. Our constituencies may not look the same demographically, may not look the same on paper, but when it comes to caring about one another, I have no doubt that our communities are incredibly similar, as the gentleman from Florida and I are very similar.

The debate is not about whether or not we have an obligation to our neighbors. We do. The question is are we meeting our obligation to our neighbors, and I will tell you that we are not. The pathway up in this country is what our obligation is here. I would say to my friends that providing a safety net that has no ladder out is a cruel and unsatisfactory path for this House.

I was talking with a gentleman down in southeast D.C., Mr. Speaker, and he runs a project that takes folks from homelessness and drug addiction to employment. He said: The problem with you Republicans is all you do is offer people hope: pick yourself up by your bootstraps; tomorrow will be better than today. He said hope in the absence of access is futile. He said: But Democrats offer help. If you are naked, I will clothe you. If you are hungry, I will feed you. If you are in prison, I will visit you. But he said help in the absence of a pathway out is to condemn someone to a life of poverty. He said: What you all have to do is to come together. You have to provide that help to meet people's immediate needs, but you have to provide that pathway out.

Mr. Speaker, I don't care if you are rich today; I care whether or not the

opportunity exists in America for you to be rich tomorrow. And I don't mean rich by having six figures or seven figures or eight figures; I mean rich because you have got a roof over your head and you can feed your family.

The American Dream, Mr. Speaker, is not to be the next Bill Gates. I don't know where that ever got started. The American Dream is to be able, by the sweat of your brow and the power of your ideas, to be your own man or woman, to make your own decisions.

I listened deeply to the words of my friend and I looked for where we might find that common ground, because, Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friend from Florida, if you go into any public housing facility in my district, they will tell you that the Federal Government prevents them from succeeding. The residents would say: You have got to let us kick the bad actors out. The residents would say: We have got folks here who are trying to make a difference, and we have got folks here who are bringing us down. You have got to give us the ability to keep our kids safe. You have got to give us the ability to keep our community safe. You have got to give us the ability to run our lives.

But Federal law says no, Mr. Speaker. Federal law says we know what is fair; we know what is best.

But I know the gentleman from Florida and I share a heart for letting folks in these communities take control of their lives, make those choices that will enable tomorrow to be better than today.

Mr. Speaker, with this budget--again, I can't make this point sharply enough--the President proposes to spend $6 trillion on interest alone over the next 10 years--$6 trillion. Now, at the President's spending levels, Mr. Speaker, that is almost 18 months of running this country. Understand that because of the borrowing patterns of past Congresses and administrations, we are losing 18 months of the very services the gentleman from Florida proposes that we provide. Eighteen months are eroded out of the next 10 years with interest alone.

Mr. Speaker, one of the things that the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act does, for example, is say you have got to project out over 40 years.

You will remember, when the President proposed his health care bill, no question, his intention was to help folks; no question, his intention was to make life better for folks. We can absolutely debate whether or not those were successes or failures, but this is the way that budget sorted itself out. He said: I am not going to spend more than $1 trillion on this program.

Now, I don't know when in the world, Mr. Speaker, $1 trillion became the low number that we decided would be tolerable as a program, but he said: I don't want to spend more than $1 trillion on this program.

So, instead of creating a 10-year program, he created a 6-year program, put the implementation off for 4 years. Critical health care services, absolutely necessary we provide these services to the American people, but they can wait 4 years. We have got families in need, families that don't have options, families that don't have choices, but I am not going to help them get choices for another 4 years. Six-year program, $1 trillion.

The Pro-Growth Budgeting Act says we need to look at programs over 40 years because that $1 trillion, 6-year program explodes in years 7 and 8 and 9 and 10. And it may be money well spent. I hope that is what the gentleman from Florida believes because I know he supported the program. I don't believe it is money well spent. I think we are losing trillions of dollars in health care costs that could be better controlled. I think we are losing trillions of dollars in care that could have been provided to folks but, instead, is being lost in an inefficient health care system.

But we don't have those answers when those bills come to the floor of this House for a vote. Who is it that opposes that, Mr. Speaker? Who is it that opposes, when we make trillion-dollar decisions that are multigenerational, that we don't have access to long-term data?

The gentleman from Florida says it seems disingenuous for us to pretend inflation does not exist. That is not what I am proposing, but disingenuous to pretend that it does. I think it is similarly odd to pretend that the program stops after 10 years instead of it continuing on in perpetuity, as these programs do. These bills do nothing but provide us with other information.

I will close with this, Mr. Speaker. My experience in this House with a voting card began in 2011. And while the gentleman is absolutely right, Mr. Speaker, when he talks about inflation and how services can be eroded, my experience in this House, your experience in this House, Mr. Speaker, is that we spent less in 2011 than we did in 2010, not more. Inflation was there, but we spent less. My experience, Mr. Speaker, is that we spent less in 2012 than we did in 2011, less in 2013 than we did in 2012, less in 2014 than we did in 2013. Every year I have been here we have spent less. I think that is what our constituency expects from us, not to cut critical service programs, but to increase our productivity and prioritize their dollars, prioritize their dollars to those places where they can do the most good.

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

I would say to my friend from Florida, Mr. Speaker, I, too, am prepared to close.

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

Two paths diverged in the wood, and I took the path less traveled, and that has made all the difference.

Mr. Speaker, this is Washington, D.C. There is a term called ``Washington, D.C., math,'' which, as my friend from Florida, the sheriff, described earlier is when you can raise spending by $5 and call it a cut. That is Washington, D.C., math.

The path less traveled in this town is the path of fiscal responsibility; the path less traveled in this town is the path of accountability; the path less traveled in this town is the path of transparency, and that is what these three measures before us today propose, Mr. Speaker.

I held a townhall meeting, Mr. Speaker, about 12 months ago. They asked if I was going to support the congressional pay raise. I said: Well, we are not going to do a congressional pay raise this year, but I hope one day to come home and tell you that I have earned it.

I do. I want to show up back home, Mr. Speaker, and tell folks that, dadgummit: I have earned it. Be proud of what we have done in Washington, D.C. I have earned it.

I think that is true of every dime of spending the Federal Government does. I don't think we ought to assume, as the current baseline does, that every single Federal agency is going to have their budget increase next year by the cost of inflation. I think those agencies should come to this institution, as they do in an annual appropriation process, and say: I have earned it. I have earned it.

I am not just talking about making a difference in people's lives; here are the results. I am not just talking about lifting people up; here are the results.

The hardest thing to end in this town, Mr. Speaker, is a Federal program. Once they get started, they seem to last forever. Mission creep. If they solve one mission, they are going to adopt a new mission, roll right on down the line. Nobody wants to work themselves out of a job.

Is it so outrageous, is it the role only of the fringe, as my friend from Florida proposed, to suggest that, if we are going to borrow and spend more of our children's money, we should come and justify it?

Mr. Speaker, that kind of budget transparency has become relevant only to the fringe of America. It is not the America I know.

I tell the young people--and I try to start every day back home with young people, Mr. Speaker. I say, listen, just tell me what you want in terms of support for higher education because the only dollars I am going to spend, I am going to borrow from you. I am borrowing it from you.

We all love our children. We all want our children to succeed. But we are borrowing from them. Every decision we make. These three bills ask for three things, and three things only before we make the decision to borrow from our children:

Number one, the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act. It asks that for those programs that are going to have a big impact on our economy, that we look not just at what the 1-year impact is, not just at what the 10- year impact is, but that we look at a generation of impact.

Before we start down that road less traveled, Mr. Speaker, we should know what it is going to cost us and how it is going to benefit us. We don't get that information today, as the gentleman from Florida, the sheriff, noted. We have not reformed the Congressional Budget Act since 1974. That kind of multigenerational information is worthy of this body. This bill would provide it to us for the very first time.

The Budget and Accounting Transparency Act. If you are going to lend money, you ought to account for it; you ought to evaluate it.

We often talk about our $17.5 trillion debt, Mr. Speaker. That comes from Washington math because if we were anywhere else other than this town, we would have to evaluate all the promises that we have made. I mean, you know how Social Security is funded, for example, Mr. Speaker. It is today's workers that are paying for today's retirees. There is not a dime set aside for today's workers when they retire.

The true cost of government, the true national debt, as recently calculated by Dr. Larry Kotlikoff of Boston University, not a conservative by any stretch of the imagination, is over $200 trillion-- $200 trillion. ``Trillion''--we throw these words around as if they are nothing--that is 1 million millions. We have not had 1 million days since the birth of Christ, Mr. Speaker. We won't for another 730 years. Mr. Speaker, 1 million millions is 1 trillion. We have borrowed and promised on behalf of our children $200 trillion.

The fair value accounting request is only that we be honest with the American people. I am prepared to live by whatever decision the American people make. I believe in our Republic. But we cannot ask people to make decisions without providing people with good information. This bill does that.

Then finally, Mr. Speaker, the bill, again, sponsored by my good friend from Texas, Louie Gohmert, a long champion that I have the privilege of serving with in this Congress, the Baseline Reform Act. The Baseline Reform Act says, if you are going to raise spending by $1, you are actually raising spending by $1.

I know it sounds radical, Mr. Speaker. I know it sounds like the province of the fringe, but it is not. If you are going to raise spending by $1, you should say you are going to raise spending by $1. Dadgummit, Mr. Speaker, I can't even have a town hall meeting these days and talk about budget numbers--because I am a budget guy--I can't talk about budget numbers without someone raising their hand and saying, now, Rob, when you talk about spending reductions, is that really a spending reduction, or is that just a reduction in the rate of growth? That is how it has become.

For 4 years in this institution, we have spent less each and every succeeding year. Now, I would argue, contrary to what my friend from Florida suggested, that we are prioritizing spending on shared goals, and we are deprioritizing spending on which we do not have those shared goals. It seems fair in these difficult economic times, as we are taking those dollars from hardworking American taxpayers across the country, that we identify high-priority spending and low-priority spending.

I will take the work at NIH, as I mentioned earlier, Mr. Speaker. That is high-priority spending. That is basic research that is going to make a difference in people's lives and not a difference in something minor, Mr. Speaker, but perhaps a life-and-death difference. It is a goal that we share. It is a goal that the Appropriations Committee shares. It is a goal that we are going to be able to realize.

But I don't think there is a single man or woman at NIH, I don't think there is a single professor at NIH, I don't think there is a single Ph.D. candidate at NIH who is embarrassed to come up here and say, I have done well. I am a good steward of the taxpayers' money. Trust me again.

Mr. Speaker, that is where I want to take us with these budget bills. I want to have folks proud of how they are spending the dollars, proud to come and share that with us here in this Congress and have the American people proud to get onboard with renewing those dollars once again.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all of my colleagues to support this rule. This rule has made in order every amendment that was germane to these three bills. I ask them to support this rule so that we can begin voting these bills this very day.

The material previously referred to by Mr. Hastings of Florida is as follows:

An Amendment to H. Res. 539 Offered by Mr. Hastings of Florida

At the end of the resolution, add the following new

sections:

Sec. 4. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution the

Speaker shall, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule XVIII, declare

the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on

the state of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R.

1010) to provide for an increase in the Federal minimum wage.

The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All

points of order against consideration of the bill are waived.

General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not

exceed one hour equally divided and controlled

by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on

Education and the Workforce. After general debate the bill

shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule.

All points of order against provisions in the bill are

waived. At the conclusion of consideration of the bill for

amendment the Committee shall rise and report the bill to the

House with such amendments as may have been adopted. The

previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill

and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening

motion except one motion to recommit with or without

instructions. If the Committee of the Whole rises and reports

that it has come to no resolution on the bill, then on the

next legislative day the House shall, immediately after the

third daily order of business under clause 1 of rule XIV,

resolve into the Committee of the Whole for further

consideration of the bill.

Sec. 5. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the

consideration of H.R. 1010.

With that, 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.

I would like to thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), my friend, for yielding the customary 30 minutes for debate.

I rise today in opposition to the rule and underlying bills.

In my friend's commentary, I perceived him as being very reasonable, particularly when he gets to the part of the rule that deals with those amendments that were made in order that are germane. It is a particular concern that he has demonstrated in the period that he has been on the Rules Committee. He also is an advocate for open rules.

That said, one of the down sides to our process, in my judgment, is that I would imagine that at least a significant portion of this body-- not the majority--don't even know what we are debating today and won't know until they come here to vote. For that reason, we should make open rules; whereas, ideas that germinate during the course of the debate could be put forward by Members under our rules process.

Mr. Speaker, this rule provides for consideration of three bills. Before getting into it, normally when people leave our offices or when we complete the process of debating a measure and want to give kudos to the staff, we do so at the end of the process. But today I want to recognize the rather extraordinary staff on both sides of the Rules

Committee, and particularly the young man seated next to me, Ian Wolf, who labors actively to help me put words together to come here with, and two young men that are working in the office with me: Tom Carnes, who recently came to me as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Maine, and Mike Sykes, a wounded warrior. Many of the words that I will speak henceforth are from those three gentlemen, and I thank them for that.

Normally, like my friend from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), we both are, in my judgment, good extemporaneous speakers. But today, I am going to stick to the script because of these two young men. Then, if I am provoked by my friend from Georgia, I will speak extemporaneously.

Mr. Speaker, this rule provides for the consideration of three bills, all of which impose tortuous new rules on an already convoluted budget process and attempt to embed Republican dogma into what is intended to be an objective analysis based on reality, not fantasy.

The bouquet of imagery to explain this latest budgetary behavior is certainly painful: Yogi Berra and deja vu all over again; Groundhog Day with Bill Murray's character, Phil Connors, doomed to repeat the same day over and over again; Sisyphus sentenced for his hubris to push a boulder up a mountain only to see it careen to the bottom and have to start all over again.

We have seen these proposals before, Mr. Speaker. Yet, once again, my friends across the aisle try their best to throw up smokescreens right and further right. Once again, my friends, led by Chairman Paul Ryan, present reforms that are not common sense but that are actually nonsense. Once again, Republicans propose budget process changes that are nothing more than gimmicks to eliminate the spending on essential government services and to dress up tax cuts for the wealthy. Once again, we have to waste time considering budgetary gimmicks like ``dynamic scoring'' and whether we should factor in inflation when accounting for future spending instead of dealing with the important issues of the day.

The need for immigration reform isn't going anywhere, friends. The need for investment in our infrastructure isn't going anywhere. The need to provide health care for our veterans is not going anywhere, and will I tell you that your budget gimmicks aren't going anywhere either, and you know it. You can pass these gimmicks all day long. You are in the majority. You can pass them all day--24 hours a day--and twice and three times on Sunday, but you know that they are dead on arrival in the Senate.

So let's turn to serious business, business the American people would like us to take up, rather than wasting our time and the time of millions of Americans. The changes envisioned within these bills tie Congress and the Congressional Budget Office up in knots in an effort to prove that conservative ideology about taxes and spending is going to grow our Nation's economy--not create more jobs, not stimulate demand, not invest in infrastructure or in education or in any of the many endeavors that are critical to improving the lives of all Americans.

In H.R. 1871--Mr. Woodall's favorite bill and for good reason as he is the author of this iteration of it, and he gave attribution to the person who has struggled to put this measure forward--it is proposed that the Congressional Budget Office not include annual inflation when making its budget baselines. This seems like a rather mundane, technical change, but it isn't.

I would be pleased to support this, Mr. Speaker, because it means that, in making my own personal budget projections, I can simply ignore the fact that the costs for everyday items and activities tend to go up every year. I can just assume that what I am paying today I can keep paying 10 years from now and still expect the exact same number of goods and services. But, of course, we all know that isn't true. Simply wishing away inflation won't make it so. Fuzzy math, as it has been described by some, does not equal fiscal responsibility.

By eliminating inflation adjustments from discretionary spending projections, Republicans are actually reducing the funding for a Federal program. Since the dollar amount would stay the same every year, the number of services that could be covered would decrease. I hasten to add that I agree with my friend Mr. Woodall that accountability ought to be factored in and that these programs should be able to perform in a way that is accountable to the public. When they do not, they should be dispensed with, and that is a prerogative that we can exercise, but it doesn't have to be done the way that it is put forward. It is our responsibility to have the oversight of these structures in our government.

Over the long term, this results in a massive decrease in essential services that millions of Americans rely on. This technical change then is actually a backdoor effort to slowly starve necessary government programs. Rather than be up front about which programs my friends on the other side want to eliminate, they would rather put sneaky rules into place to guarantee the outcome they want without having to have an open debate.

Through H.R. 1874, Mr. Speaker, Republicans want to introduce dynamic scoring into the CBO's projection process. Dynamic scoring? Take a closer look. It is more like dynamic stealing. By implementing this fantasy math, the Republicans artificially inflate the costs of important programs as a way to steal them out from underneath those who are most in need of them. They tweak the CBO's analysis so that tax cuts for the wealthy seem like they grow the economy while investments in programs that help everyday Americans do not. Let me repeat that. They tweak the CBO's analysis so that tax cuts for the wealthy seem like they grow the economy while investments in programs that help everyday Americans do not. I have lived here long enough to see ``trickle down'' fail repeatedly. Republicans make it easier to cut taxes for the rich rather than to build bridges and schools for the rest of us.

This bill specifically instructs the CBO to ignore the positive economic effects that would come about from investments in things like infrastructure and education. I want to underscore the word ``infrastructure.'' We talk about it all the time around here, and a decade ago, one of our colleagues spent a portion of his career here asking us to spend money on bridges. When I came here in 1992, we had 14,000 bridges in this Nation that were in need of repair, and we have not addressed the circumstances surrounding that, and we need to and we can. It is as if dealing with infrastructure and education--as if spending on things that Americans want and need--won't boost the economy, which is the way their approach suggests.

Mr. Speaker, the Republicans are at it again with H.R. 1872. This proposal seeks to significantly change how the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office calculate the costs of government loans and loan guarantees. This bill would just add an extra price tag to programs based on what an individual would pay for a loan in the private market. Never mind the fact that the United States Government is not an individual acting in a private credit market.

What this bill really represents is another attempt by the Republicans to make important programs for the poor and middle class families appear too expensive to be continued--programs meant to help young people get an education, programs that help struggling families afford homes, programs that help the elderly in their need of security in their failing health, programs that help farmers and small businesses grow this economy. By artificially inflating the costs of these programs, the Republicans hope to fool us into thinking that we can't afford them.

But as far as I know, April Fool's Day started and ended on Tuesday. I will tell you this: I am not going to be fooled; my constituents aren't going to be fooled; and the American people aren't going to be fooled by your gimmicks--and these budget bills are only the appetizers.

The entree was served up by Chairman Ryan when he recently introduced his next budget, which he dubbed--and I was reading it last night--the Path to Prosperity, but it would be more accurately called a path to poverty. As much as I had hoped for the opportunity to turn down a path where we consider meaningful legislation, we are again forced to battle against Chairman Ryan's latest march down his

path to poverty, and since we have already adopted top-line numbers for the next two budget cycles, there is no reason for this budget beyond feeding the political base of my friends on the other side.

We will see the bumper stickers. We will hear the talk. We will hear the echo chamber recite the mantra of those who would feed their base. I suppose this budget is a solid start for a 10-minute standup set at your local yuck-yucks, but that is about the best that I can say for it.

I mean, you are going to cut spending by $966 billion over the next 10 years by cutting funding for food stamps, by cutting funding for income assistance to help needy families, by cutting Pell grants for kids to go to college. You can't be serious. You are going to implement draconian cuts to programs millions of Americans rely upon, but you make sure that we increase defense spending. You can't be serious.

Mr. Speaker, what the Republicans are really showing us here is their blueprint for America's future. You don't even have to look that closely to see that this blueprint creates nothing but structural integrity problems for our economy. The Republicans' blueprint lays bare their full frontal assault on middle class families and the poor. Their blueprint calls for turning Medicare into a voucher program. They will describe it differently, but it comes out to nothing more than a voucher program. Their blueprint calls for non-defense discretionary spending to be cut to the tune of $791 billion. This will result in draconian cuts to education, public works, medical research, and the list continues. It goes on and on.

Do you want to better yourself by obtaining a college degree? Ryan's road to ruin is going to make sure that there is no money there for you to do so.

Do you want to help grow our economy by shipping your goods on our roads and bridges? Good luck, since your goods will undoubtedly be held up at one of the many Ryan roadblocks to prosperity that will strip the budget of much-needed infrastructure investments.

Are you or is any member of your family suffering from a disease, the cure for which would certainly be furthered by Federal medical research dollars? Sorry, but with this Republican budget proposed by Mr. Ryan, you have found yourself on Mr. Ryan's fast track to despair.

Rather than using the budget process to lead this country into a new era of economic growth, Republicans want to cut taxes for the rich, cut programs for everyone else, and then feel like they have set this country on the right track. This is no way to run an economy, no way to run a budget process, and it is no way to stick up for the millions of struggling Americans, as my friends on the Democratic side are doing and have done for years, who need us to focus on improving the economy.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I thank Mike and Tim and Ian and the Rules Committee staff who are working with me.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Now, I turn to the extemporaneous side. Mr. Speaker, on Monday evening of next week, my friend Mr. Woodall and I will be in the Rules Committee, and we will be taking up the Ryan budget. I might add that we use the names of individuals.

I have great respect for Paul Ryan. I think he is a brilliant young man; and clearly, ideologically, he and I have our differences.

I remember being on the floor and hearing the two best speeches in the 21 years I have been here that were made pertaining to issues of the moment. One was made by Ron Dellums, chairman of Armed Services at the time, and the other by John Kasich, who is now the Governor of Ohio.

I still consider those two speeches to be the best that I have heard in the time that I am here, mine and Mr. Woodall's notwithstanding.

On that night that Mr. Kasich made his remarks, I listened very intently to him. I forget the exact numbers that the budget was proposing, but after he finished his remarks, I went up to him and congratulated him on his remarks

I then said to him what I will say to Mr. Ryan at some point in the future: I understand what it is that you want to spend, and I believe that we would probably spend right at or about the same amount of money. The difference is what you want to spend it on and what I want to spend it on.

That is what I said to John that night. I find myself in that situation repeatedly through the years. I myself, and certainly many others, am a champion of those who are less fortunate in our society, and I don't believe that my friends are unmindful of the great need that our constituents have, be they Republican, Democrat, Independent, or otherwise situated politically.

The simple fact of the matter is that there are people in this country who are not as well off as some others in the country. There should be nothing to decry the fact that there are some in our society who have done exceedingly well, even during recessions.

I have a friend that is a billionaire. He told me he made money during the Depression, he made money before the Second World War, after the Second World War, and made money after every recession, largely for the reason that he knows how to make money; and I don't begrudge him that.

But that same individual told me that any amount of taxes that he paid, he would prefer to see that it goes to educating our children appropriately, and if it required him to pay more taxes, he would have no problem doing so, and toward that end, I feel the same way.

People think that those of us up here in Congress live a life of luxury with a high salary of $174,000 a year. Well, the simple fact of the matter is--and rightly, perhaps--we have not had a raise for Congress Members for 5 years.

At the very same time, if I use myself as an example, my rent here in this town has gone up $600 during that period of time. My salary didn't go up. So where was I supposed to meet these needs?

The simple fact is that, when we talk about a household budget, that is an entirely different set of circumstances than a Federal budget or a State budget or a city budget. They do not operate the same, and we should stop making that analogy.

It is not like I sit down and fill out my budget. This is an extremely complex process. The Congressional Budget Office only gives us the numbers that we tell them that the policy is going to be, and they tell us what the numbers are going to look like. They don't provide the numbers. They don't do the oversight on the programs that we make here.

We don't have to just give them the money, but if we set a baseline and if we do allow for inflation, when those programs have failed or those that are sunsetting--and more of them should sunset and too many of them have failed--then that is our responsibility.

When we cut poor people, when we cut middle class people in this country--that is the base of this country, that is the bedrock of this country. It has been and will continue to be.

If we go the path that my friends want us to pass through, what we will do is allow for those people that are better off in our society-- who could afford to help more the poor and the middle class--to get richer, and it will cause more middle class people to become poorer; and then the needs will be greater. If we don't see ourselves as a better society than that, then something is drastically wrong with us.

I don't begrudge a single rich person on Earth, but I do feel strongly responsible for those that are poor and not poor necessarily by virtue of their circumstances.

What we tend to do to poor people here is, rather than ask them what we can do with them to lift them out of poverty, we do things to them. That is why most of us know that they won't vote at voting time, largely for the reason that they have the most reasons to vote and, at the same time, have the relative least reasons to vote.

The insufferable triumvirate of inadequate jobs, inadequate housing, inadequate educational opportunity persists in this country, and the fact of the matter is that we can do better--and we should do better-- by those that are poor. We should do something meaningful to create jobs.

After Monday of next week, when we talk about this budget, I defy my friends to tell me that they are going to put that budget on the floor. When we vote on it Wednesday, I say let's go into debate Thursday and debate it until its conclusion and then vote on it.

I guarantee you we are not going to vote on the Ryan budget, everybody knows that, and I challenge my friends to bring it forth any day after next Monday when we do the rule. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I would inquire and ask the Speaker to inquire if my colleague is prepared to close. I have no further speakers at this time, and I am prepared to close.

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

My colleague just concluded his remarks by saying in 2011, 2012, 2013 they spent less, and he is correct. But in 2011, more people needed food stamps; in 2012, more people needed housing; in 2013, more people needed to get across safe bridges and safe roads. So I am not sure where the twain meets.

I agree with my colleague that he and I have more in common than we do differences, but I hearken back to my earlier comment. He wants to spend or not spend on what he wants to spend or not spend, and I want to spend or not spend on what I want to spend or not spend.

I want to spend on roads. I want to spend on children's education. I want to spend on people who are hungry. And I believe he does as well, but you cannot do that if you keep cutting everything all the time.

Mr. Speaker, these bills and Chairman Ryan's budget are nothing more than base attempts to rally the fringe of the Republican Party, and I stand steadfastly against each one of these attempts to drag us down a Ryan road to ruin.

To quote the great American poet, Robert Frost:

I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages

hence. Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less

traveled, and that has made all the difference.

Mr. Speaker, friends, today we stand before two roads: one, a road to ruin paved with pummeling cuts to hurt the poor and attack middle class families, simply put, to protect the better off in our society, the real rich; the other road, a road that helps the poor ascend out from poverty, not a ladder out that has its ladder rungs with holes in it, as my friend discussed that ladder out, a road that helps middle class families more fully achieve their dreams, a road that helps our businesses and economy grow, a road that embraces our veterans and fights for them as vigorously as they fought for us. And if Fort Hood doesn't teach us anything about the mental health of our soldiers and our society, then I don't know what will.

Unfortunately, I believe this latter road traveled by my fellow Democrats and by me today will be the road less traveled, and this fact will certainly make a significant difference for the millions of Americans trying to fully realize their dreams.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 1010, our bill to raise the Federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 539, I call up the bill (H.R. 1871) to amend the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 to reform the budget baseline, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 1871 in the Record.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

I am pleased to be down here with the ranking member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Maryland, the gentleman whose opinion and counsel I have respect for.

What I love about the Budget Committee is that we have a chance to talk about issues that are defined by numbers in committee, but whose outcome is a difference in people's lives back home.

After all, the reason the gentleman from Maryland is the highest ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee is not because he cares about math, it is because he cares about people. That is who the Budget Committee consists of, Madam Speaker.

The bill that is before us today is a bill first conceived in this House by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert). I happen to be on the Budget Committee, I happen to have passion on this issue, so my name exists to carry this bill forward; but it has been an idea that has been around in this institution, and it says this.

We have all seen it. We have all been in townhall meetings, Madam Speaker, where you say: this is what we have done to spending for next year.

And somebody is going to raise their hand, and they are going to say: Rob, is that Washington math, or is that real math? Is this one of those things where you raise spending by $10, but you call it a cut because you predicted you would raise spending by $20 instead?

How sad is that? How sad is that, that in a country run by the American people, that they have to ask their representatives: Is this real math, or is this Washington math?

This bill, Madam Speaker, puts a stop to Washington math forever. It says this: don't assume you are going to spend more money next year than you spent last year unless the law requires it.

Social Security is a good example of that. We raise Social Security each and every year. Why? Because the law of the land requires it, but not so in Federal budgeting rules.

In the crazy world of Federal budgeting, Madam Speaker, you raise spending next year just because. The assumption is: well, of course, they are going to spend more money than they did last year. Are they getting more bang for their buck?

I don't know. Is the crisis still there? Does it still need to be funded? I don't know, but we are going to assume more dollars go out the door.

My bill asks one thing and one thing only, Madam Speaker, that is to justify the American people's tax dollars when they are spent. If you need more money next year, come to Congress and say so.

If it is a priority for my constituents back home, I promise you, you will get my ``yes'' vote, but gone are the days of assuming Congress will always spend more, irrespective of the merits.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds.

I think I have got one of the best chart teams on Capitol Hill. I will say to my friend from Maryland that that is a great Big Mac chart, and I think it drives home my point exactly, which is that Federal Government math assumes that, if you bought a Big Mac 10 years ago, you are still buying a Big Mac today. I just wonder if that is true. I have switched to the value menu. I get the McDouble from time to time for 99 cents. The Spicy McChicken is now a part of what I do. I have to get into my wallet and justify the expense, and when prices double, sometimes we, as Americans, have to substitute.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

In reclaiming my time, absolutely, inflation is not going to go away, but we have to make tough choices, and this bill requires us to make those choices in a transparent way for the American people.

At this time, Madam Speaker, I would like to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), who first said that we must be transparent in this way, that we must be fair and honest in this way. He is the original author of the Baseline Reform Act.

Madam Speaker, at this time, it is my great pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock), a champion for budget transparency and a member of the Budget Committee.

Madam Speaker, at this time, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan), chairman of the Budget Committee.

Madam Speaker, I would say to my friend from California that I do not have any further speakers remaining. I am prepared to close.

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

Madam Speaker, I brought down a chart that takes us from 2006 out to 2044. For almost everyone here in the Chamber, that it going to get into the meaty part of our lifetime.

What it shows with the green line, Madam Speaker, is what revenues have been in this country, historic revenues going backward and projected going forward, not in dollar values but as a percent of our economy. What it shows us is that revenues going forward will continue to be historically normal at just under 20 percent of GDP.

But the red line, Madam Speaker, represents projected spending. This is the projected spending if we do nothing at all. We don't need to show up for work another day in this Chamber. We don't need to come down here and pass one new law, spend one more dollar. The spending on autopilot, Madam Speaker, is represented by the red line. You see it rising off the top of the graph.

Spending is the problem. For decades, since 1974 and the passage of the Congressional Budget Act, there has been an assumption that spending was going to rise each and every year. My friends on the Democratic side of the aisle called it inflation. Inflation existed before the Congressional Budget

Act was passed. It is going to exist after the Congressional Budget Act is modified or repealed. Inflation is an economic certainty, and that is not the topic of discussion today.

The topic of discussion today is who makes decisions when it comes to America's budgeting. If spending is the problem, if it is spending that is rising faster than revenues, if it is spending that has changed over the past decade, who should make those determinations?

Here is the thing, Madam Speaker. I will go back to that Washington math that I talked about coming from townhall meetings, because I know everyone here has been a part of that. I know everyone here has had that hand go up when we talk about cutting spending and they say: Is that a real cut or is that a Washington cut? When you say ``cutting spending,'' Rob, do you mean cutting spending or do you mean that you are only going to increase it by $10 and the projection was it is was going to go up by $20?

Only here is increasing spending by $10 considered a cut. There is no family in America that considers that a cut.

Think about your budget back home, Madam Speaker, whatever that is. I remember buying milk for $1.99 a gallon. I am a big milk drinker. Skim is my favorite. But $1.99 I was comfortable paying. Today I am prepared to pay more--I am. There has been inflation. I am prepared to pay $4 a gallon for a gallon of milk.

I didn't assume that I was going to drink the same amount of milk every day going forward. In fact, I confess, I found powdered milk, Madam Speaker. It was on the discount shelf at Giant. I got two gallons of powdered milk for $2.25 total. That is $1.12 a gallon for that powdered milk. I am not paying $4 a gallon. I am paying $1.12 because I have to make choices.

American families don't get unlimited dollars to spend. Though, the Federal Government pretends like it does.

We are borrowing from future generations every time we make a decision. So this bill says one thing and one thing only: Who makes decisions for America? Is it going to be the Congressional Budget Office? Is it going to be a statutory baseline, or is it going to be the men and women in this room who put themselves up for election every 2 years?

Madam Speaker, for me, the answer is clear. I have got a Constitution that lays it out fairly clearly here in my pocket. I don't think I need to read it to folks here to get them to understand because I think we all share that view.

We share the view that difficult decisions are not supposed to be made by unelected bureaucrats in a back room. Difficult decisions are supposed to be made by us, right here in this Chamber.

If you have a project back home in your district, if you see a national priority, and you want to spend a penny more than we spent last year, come to the floor of the House and make your case. Make your case. For Pete's sake, I am a huge supporter of Federal research. The work that goes on at the CDC down in Atlanta, the work that goes on in Maryland at NIH, it is amazing. Nobody else is going to do that if we don't come together and do it here in this body.

I have got to tell you something. I don't need a baseline. I don't need a bureaucrat. I don't need any Washington math to come and make the case that we ought to spend more at NIH next year than we did last year. Why do I not need them? Because I believe it. Because my constituents elected me to stand up for Federal research. We came here to make these tough decisions.

Back in the day, before the class of 2010, before the class of 2012-- back in the day, there is good reason to assume that Federal spending was going to go up every year because every year since the end of the Korean war that is exactly what happened. I watched it. Every year, we spent more than we did in the last.

Something has changed in this town, Madam Speaker, and I think the thing that has changed in this town are the people that the folks back home are sending to this town. I think the town's actually the same. I think the folks back home are sending new folks, folks like the gentleman from California, folks like the gentleman from North Carolina. Sending people to town with the direction of not trading away their children's future because they are afraid to make tough decisions today.

So, what does that mean? That means in the 4 years I have been in this institution, Madam Speaker, we have spent less money in these discretionary accounts that this bill would affect every single year than we did the one before. Think about that.

In the absence of this legislation that I am proposing, we are going to go assume that spending goes up every year, but the reality that my friends on the other side of the aisle are talking about, the reality of inflation, the reality of congressional decisionmaking, the reality of our budget is that that spending has gone down, not just from 2010 to 2011, though it did; not just again from 2011 to 2012, though it did; not just again from 2012 to 2013, though it did; and not just again from 2013 to 2014, but it did that too. Four years in a row we spent less the following year than we did the year before.

When are we going to get back to that 2010 level of spending? Is it going to be next year? No, it is not. Is it going to be the year after that? No, not by the budgets that we will be passing on the floor here this week. What about the year after? No, not then either.

So, the opponents of this legislation suggest that we should create a process in Federal law that assumes that spending goes up every single year, and yet the reality of this institution, as it exists today, not as it existed 10 years ago, not as it existed 20 years ago, not as it existed in 1974, when this legislation was first enacted, but as it exists today, is the responsible men and women in this Chamber who are prioritizing taxpayer dollars in such a way that for the entire 10-year window we won't spend a penny more than we did on day one. That is the reality.

Could we spend more each and every year? Of course we could. Could we borrow more and more from our children and grandchildren and ask them to pay it back tomorrow with interest? Of course we could. Did our constituents elect us to come here and make difficult, difficult, difficult discussions? They did.

I was in the Rules Committee last night, Madam Speaker. My colleague from Massachusetts said, Some of these decisions have real consequences for folks back home. I disagree. I think every decision has real consequences for folks back home. Every single one.

This legislation simply asks that before we spend another penny from folks back home that we come to the floor of this House, to the committee chambers around this institution, and make the case for why it is worth doing. I challenge you to look in the eyes of young people whose future we are mortgaging and suggest that they deserve anything less.

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

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

Madam Speaker, I hold in my hand a copy of the motion to recommit. I will read from line 1. It says: Section 3: Prohibiting cuts in education, health, and safety protections.

I said something that generally speaking here on this floor we agree on, but it makes the case of why this bill is so necessary. Because this bill has nothing to do with cuts in any account, no cuts in education, no cuts in health, no cuts in safety protections.

This bill does one thing and one thing only, and that is to say, let's spend next year what we spent this year, unless someone makes the case to do more.

I thought the gentlewoman from Illinois made a powerful case for why it is important to pay close attention to these accounts and focus the dollars on those accounts that we can do the most good. But to solve this misunderstanding that there are cuts in baseline budgeting, to solve this misunderstanding that prevails across the conversations across America, let's support H.R. 1871. I reject this motion to recommit.

I support the underlying bill, Madam Speaker, and I ask that we can bring fairness and transparency to the budget again for the first time since 1974.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor), the majority leader, for the purpose of inquiring about the schedule for the week to come.

I thank the gentleman for that information. It is wonderful news that that budget is going to do all of those things, I want you to know. And we are pleased that a budget is coming forward. We may not be pleased with the budget, but we are pleased that it is coming forward.

As the gentleman knows, we have already had the budget levels for fiscal year '15. You indicate that the budget will adhere to the Ryan- Murray agreement. I assume that also means that it will adhere to the firewall division between defense and nondefense discretionary spending as well.

Is that accurate, Mr. Leader?

I thank the gentleman for that information.

I will tell my friend, the majority leader, The Wall Street Journal had an editorial of about 13 or 14 paragraphs. I disagreed with the first 13 paragraphs, but I did agree with the last paragraph.

It said, ``But the Ryan outline does the service of showing the policy direction in which Republicans would head if they regain control of the Senate next year.''

Then it goes on to say, ``Senate Democrats don't want to declare themselves with any votes, but they favor higher taxes and much more spending for everything other than defense. Voters will have to decide on the direction they want Congress to go.''

So, Mr. Leader, as I said, we welcome a debate on this budget. We do believe it expresses the priorities of your party, and, as you know, we differ with those priorities in many instances. So I think the American people will get a spirited, informative, and educational debate on the Ryan budget, and I think that that will do much to inform them of the priorities of both parties. As I say, we look forward to that budget.

Unemployment insurance, Mr. Leader, is being considered on the Senate floor. I know the cloture vote has been taken. I don't know whether final passage has been taken.

Does the gentleman have any expectation that if the Senate passes that bill today whether or not that bill might be on the floor next week?

I yield to my friend.

I thank the gentleman for his comments.

I am informed by the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee that we also have a letter from the Secretary of Labor, or one of the people that works with him, indicating that, in fact, they believe this would be workable. But very frankly, notwithstanding the letters, let me ask the majority leader: If, in fact, we made it prospective--which, of course, would clearly be workable--and made it 5 months prospectively, rather than 3 or 3.5 months retrospectively and a month and a half prospectively, as you know, through May 30, would that be an acceptable alternative, Mr. Majority Leader?

I thank the gentleman for his response, Mr. Speaker.

But it seems to me that it begs the question. The question is, yes, we want to get people back to work. Everybody on this floor wants to get people back to work. I don't think there is any doubt about that. Hopefully we would be at full employment, however one defines that-- whether it is 3 percent, 4 percent unemployment, which would be transition employment or unemployment. But yes, we want to have everybody back to work.

The issue that I ask about, Mr. Speaker, is that if we don't get everybody back to work--and we haven't gotten everybody back to work. There were 192,000 new jobs created this past month. That is good, but it is not good enough. And that is why we have a continuing 6.7 percent unemployment rate.

Mr. Speaker, my question to the majority leader was to assume, for argument, that the letter to which he refers is accurate. I don't accept that premise. But accepting that premise for the minute, would the majority leader be amenable to, rather than to do as the Senate does, making it retrospective so that the 3.5 months that would have gone from December 29 of last year to today and paying that back, simply extending for 5 months while people continue to look for employment but have been unable to find it because there are three times as many people looking for jobs as there are jobs available--and we are adding 72,000 people on a weekly basis to the unemployed roles. So if we made it prospective, that would save an awful lot of people the pain and suffering that they are experiencing because they can't find a job.

I yield to my friend.

I thank the gentleman for his comments. As he knows, we have an agenda to do just that. It is called Make It In America, to expand manufacturing, create the kinds of jobs where people can make good salaries, have good benefits, and have good security for the long term. There is no disagreement on that, Mr. Speaker. The only disagreement seems to be, while we are trying to get that done, whether or not we try to assure that those who have fallen through the cracks do not find themselves in dire circumstances because we have eliminated the safety net that we constructed.

I would say to the gentleman, this is the longest time in history-- and we are going to hear a lot of information from members of the Ways and Means Committee--the longest time in history that we have had this level of long-term unemployment. One of the reasons for that is, obviously, the dislocations in the marketplace and that we experienced the deepest recession that anybody--maybe Ralph Hall is an exception-- that anybody in this body has experienced.

In other words, the last time we had as deep a recession as we had at the end of the last administration that carried over into this administration was the deep Depression, and you have to be 90 years or older to have really remembered and experienced that.

So there is a lot of pain out there. All I am saying is we agree there is no disagreement. We want to get people to work. We want to take actions that give them the skills.

As I have told you--and we haven't done this as vigorously, and that is as much my fault as anybody--I want to do that. You were focused on your SKILLS Act. Clearly, we want to make sure people have the skills to get employment.

I would hope that we could look at--assuming the Senate passes this bill--to give relief to 2.8 million people who are in dire straits, increasing by 72,000 a week, give them some support while we are trying and, hopefully together, create the kind of jobs and skills necessary to get them out of the hole that they are in.

If I might note, there are 193 Democrats who have signed a discharge petition to bring the unemployment insurance to the floor. If I might do one other issue, last week, we had the sustainable growth rate. We extended it. We worked together to get that done.

Without going into it at length, I know the gentleman and I have had discussions about the sustainable growth rate, the so-called doc fix. We put a temporary patch on it.

That was, in my opinion, the wrong thing to do. It was the right thing to do temporarily, but it was the wrong thing to do. The gentleman knows that fixing the sustainable growth rate is now, from a scorable standpoint, less expensive to do than it has been in over 5 years.

I would hope that, Mr. Leader, working together, that we could address this issue at some time before this Congress adjourns sine die. We need to fix this, and we need to fix it permanently.

I yield to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments, and I look forward to working with him. I would observe, as he well knows, and I have discussed with the Speaker, the pay-fors that were included in the temporary patch were as elusory as any other pay-for we could find.

We simply accelerated dollars. We didn't have due dollars. We didn't really pay for it. We just simply put the debt off a month or so and collected the money early and pretended that that was going to pay for it.

Whether that is any more real than doing any of the other options that have been suggested, I think, is questionable, but I look forward to working with the gentleman.

Because I mention it every time, but I want to mention it in a slightly different context, I will bring up comprehensive immigration reform again. The majority leader says it is a broken system. We all agree on that, and we ought to move forward.

We are going to be considering the budget. The budget, we don't think is paid for. We will have a discussion about that as we go down. We think it increases the deficits; it is not balanced in 10 years.

But that aside, comprehensive immigration reform, the CBO released its score on our bill H.R. 15, which we think is a bipartisan bill, found it would reduce the deficit by $900 billion over the next 2 decades, including $200 billion over the first 10 years.

Therefore, comprehensive immigration reform, in our opinion, is not only the right thing to do, it is economically the smart thing to do. That is in the context of a bill that was brought to the floor this week that increases the deficit by nearly $74 billion, dealing with the

I thank the gentleman for his comments.

I want to say on border security, H.R. 15, we refer to as a comprehensive bill, as you know, included the border security provision passed out of the Homeland Security Committee, chaired by your Republican chairman, passed out on a voice vote, essentially unanimously, is included in our bill.

So, on the border security issue, we apparently have a very broad- based agreement on that issue. The gentleman says you want to do it individually. The gentleman knows that the Judiciary Committee has passed out individual, discrete bills dealing with discrete parts of the immigration issue, what you say is a broken system.

Bring out discretely those bills. The bill that the Homeland Security reported out unanimously has not been brought to the floor. The four bills that have been reported out of the Judiciary Committee have not been brought up to the floor. They were passed months and months and months ago.

So that if you don't want to do a comprehensive--if that is the view of the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, then I would suggest to the majority leader that he bring out discrete bills, individual bills, not comprehensive, and see if we can deal with those.

I will tell you our disappointment also is that it was not only the Senate bill that was rejected, but the Speaker put out some principles with respect to comprehensive--or immigration reform, I won't call it comprehensive, put out some principles.

We received those positively. We thought that was a positive step. Unfortunately, those--the Speaker's proposal were rejected apparently by a very large number of your party in and outside of this institution. As a result, 6 days after he issued the principles, he said that they were not going to be pursued.

Yes, we were frustrated and disappointed with that because we thought the Speaker had taken a positive step forward. I don't know whether the majority leader was, Mr. Speaker, part of those principles, but in any event, we accepted them as good-faith efforts to come to an agreement, and we were prepared to pursue discussions on those principles. Unfortunately, as I say, the Speaker withdrew them.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to yield back the balance of my time, unless the majority leader wants me to yield to him.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland, the Democratic whip, for yielding.

On Monday, the House will meet at noon for morning-hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business. Votes will be postponed until 6:30 p.m. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning-hour and noon for legislative business. On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business. Last votes of the week are expected no later than 3 p.m. On Friday, no votes are expected.

Mr. Speaker, the House will consider a few suspensions next week, a complete list of which will be announced. In addition, Mr. Speaker, the House will consider three bills from the Budget Committee.

The first bill, H.R. 1871, the Baseline Reform Act, authored by Representative Rob Woodall of Georgia, would require CBO and OMB, when scoring legislation, to assume that the baseline does not increase or decrease for discretionary spending, which they do now. This practice added $1.2 trillion to the baseline in 2013.

The second bill, H.R. 1872, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act, written by Representative Scott Garrett of New Jersey, brings off- budget programs on-budget to provide a more accurate accounting of these programs.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, the House will consider and pass a budget resolution on time for a fourth consecutive year. The Republican budget, under the leadership of Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and the Budget Committee members, will adhere to the agreed-upon spending limits and balance the budget in 10 years, as we did last year, increase economic growth and job creation, create opportunity, lessen the middle class squeeze, cut wasteful government spending, and strengthen our entitlement programs.

I would say to the gentleman, for this fiscal year, he is correct.

Mr. Speaker, first I would ask the gentleman just to refer to a letter by the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, dated March 19, to the Majority Leader and the minority leader in the other body. This letter essentially lays out the case for why their bill is unworkable. Again, these are the folks that are in the business of administering these programs.

I would also say to the gentleman, I think the gentleman knows our position on that bill. It doesn't create any jobs. Right now, we are in the business of trying to see how we can get people back to work, for an America that works for more people, and I would say to the gentleman, I look forward to joining him and focusing on that.

Mr. Speaker, I would say back to the gentleman, it is my opinion that what the gentleman asked for is a continuance of the status quo.

We want to get people back to work. We are in the business of job creation. We want to provide a better environment for businesses to hire folks. We want to help those folks who are chronically unemployed access the skills necessary to fill the job openings today. As the gentleman knows--and I am sure his district is not unlike mine and many others--there are a lot of job openings that are left open because the workforce doesn't have access to proper training and skills.

I look forward to joining with the gentleman in looking towards the future and to how we can help those who are out of work get a job.

Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman that what we are amenable to is looking to try to fix the problem. I would also refer the gentleman to the fact that the emergency unemployment insurance that the gentleman speaks of was in place for the longest time, I am told, in history, and that it was in place for an emergency.

As the gentleman well knows, we have in place 6 months of unemployment insurance benefits for those who are out of work. I know that what those who are out of work beyond that, who are deemed chronically unemployed, want most is an opportunity to get back to work. That is where I believe we ought to focus our efforts and really help people get back into a job so that they can support themselves, their families, and create a better future.

So I hope the gentleman will join us in refocusing away from accepting the status quo as the new norm and, instead, try to enhance the prospects for the pursuit of happiness for more people. And we are about an America that works for everybody, including those who are chronically unemployed.

Mr. Speaker, we, too, would like to see the SGR overhaul replaced with something that works. Our

Physician's Caucus on the majority side of the aisle has put a lot of work into this issue, together with the Ways and Means Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee, have come up with a plan, as the gentleman knows, that had bipartisan support.

The problem is how to pay for it, and as I think the gentleman would agree, we can't go and continue to incur costs without finding out ways to pay for it, and that seems to continue to vex--many of the problems around here are trying to discover bipartisan pay-fors.

We made a commitment to continue to work with those Members who are most engaged in this issue and look forward to continue working with the gentleman to try to find those pay-fors, so we can put in place a long-term plan to give some certainty to our providers under Medicare.

I would just say to the gentleman, as he knows, both the Speaker, I, and others have said we reject the comprehensive approach taken by the Senate.

Also, as the gentleman correctly states, we are in favor of trying to fix a very broken, antiquated, legal immigration system, as well as trying to do something to stop illegal immigration. We just have an issue about the President's insistence on, first of all, saying it is his way or the highway.

Secondly, the gentleman and I have talked before about the growing frustration that many Americans have, as well as Members on our side of the aisle, about the seeming disregard for the law by this administration in selectively implementing laws that have passed, specifically as it relates to the Affordable Care Act.

How would one know provisions that will be upheld, implemented, executed in whole or not, given this situation surrounding the ACA? Those are the kinds of challenges we face.

I would also note to the gentleman that the kind of thing that he refers to, comprehensive immigration, we reject that notion that the Senate bill, and we reject comprehensive efforts that have been undertaken over the last several years because they haven't worked so well.

Instead, we should be looking to try and do the things that we agree on. What about border security--border security itself? If we can agree to say that is going to be our position, we are not negotiating on a comprehensive bill, that we have to take care of that.

What about the kids? The gentleman knows I am very focused on trying to do something that we can agree on, but without saying that that has to be a precursor to something that the President insists, or otherwise, we can't even have the discussion.

So, again, we have got a lot of issues with regards to immigration. I would say to the gentleman I understand his frustration. I think that we have plenty of people who are also frustrated, given how things have gone with this White House.