Require a PLAN Act

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 48 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

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.

Mr. Speaker, we're here today, as you heard from the Clerk, on House Resolution 48, which provides a structured rule for consideration of H.R. 444, which is the Require a PLAN Act. This is a resolution that will require that the President, if he doesn't submit a budget that ultimately comes to balance, submit then a supplementary budget that shows how he would bring the budget to balance.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, we've been grappling with serious budget challenges throughout this President's administration. We go back to FY 2009, the very first year of the administration; the deficit tripled the previous record-high deficit in this country to $1.4 trillion. It was $1.3 trillion in FY 2010, $1.3 trillion in FY 2011, $1.2 trillion in FY 2012. And, Mr. Speaker, there's no plan that the administration has produced to get us from where we are--fiscal irresponsibility--to a point in the future of fiscal responsibility.

Mr. Speaker, we've been doing our part here in the House. We've been proud to work together across the aisle in order to pass budgets that tackle

those hard challenges that are ahead of us. If you read the President's comments, Mr. Speaker, you will see that he recognizes the challenges are hard. The question is: Are we going to deal with those or not?

I hold here, Mr. Speaker, a speech that the President made to the Democratic National Convention on September 6, 2012, where he said this:

I will use the money that we're no longer spending on war

to pay down our debt and put more people back to work.

And my notes here said that it was followed by extended cheers and applause. I expect my friend from Massachusetts supports that spirit wholeheartedly, that, ``I will use the money we're no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work.''

But, Mr. Speaker, I also hold in my hand a transcript from the Budget Committee, on which I have the pleasure of sitting, when we had the President's Treasury Secretary come before the Budget Committee to explain the budget, and I said this:

Can you tell me just in simple terms--in true or false

terms, this budget never, ever, ever reduces the debt, is

that right?

Treasury Secretary Geithner:

Uh, that is correct. It does not go far enough to bring

down the debt, not just as a share of the economy, but

overall. You're right.

I then said this:

It doesn't bring down the debt at all.

Mr. Speaker, that's the conflict that we face here as a people, as a country. Not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as a people. On the one hand, what our politicians are saying is we're going to use the money to pay down our debt. But what the reality is is that proposals are coming out today that never, ever, ever pay down a penny of debt.

Now, Mr. Speaker, if you want to see that for yourself, you can look. The President's budgets each year are posted online on the OMB Web site. In fact, the very first one he submitted--I hold the cover page here--it was called ``A New Era of Responsibility.'' ``A New Era of Responsibility'' is the first budget that the President ever submitted. But as I go through that budget, Mr. Speaker, what I see is projections for 2020, for 2030, for 2040, for 2060, and for 2080.

Mr. Speaker, hear that. You have got young children--2020, 2030, 2040, 2060, and 2080--and in each one of those years, according to the President's budget, not only does the budget never balance under his plan, but it continues to get worse. 2020, 2030, 2040, 2050, 2060, 2080--the President's budget. And I think that comes as news to so many of us, Mr. Speaker, I confess, because I've listened to the speeches, just as my friend from Massachusetts has, where we talk about getting the deficit under control, where we talk about paying down the debt. Only when you get into the plan, do you see that we never pay down one penny.

So this rule today, Mr. Speaker, would allow us to take up a bill that would require the President for the very first time to submit a balanced budget. It doesn't have to balance the way I would balance it. It doesn't have to balance the way you would balance it. But to submit a balanced budget. And as you know, Mr. Speaker, the statute actually required the President submit his budget yesterday. He's going to miss that deadline, but I'm expecting it soon and I'm looking forward to reading it soon. It's so that we actually give the American people a plan.

I want to say--because we heard it in the Rules Committee last night, and I believe my friend from Massachusetts brought it up and he was absolutely right--the history of debt and deficits in this country, Mr. Speaker, is not a mark of shame on the Democratic Party and it is not a mark of shame on the Republican Party; it is a mark of shame on all of us collectively.

Candidly, you and I here, Mr. Speaker, in the big freshman class of 2010, I'm less interested in finding out who to blame and I'm more interested in finding out who has a solution to solve the problem. This House passed a solution to solve the problem. I'd like to see the Senate create a solution. I'd like to see the President create a solution. I'd like to see us discuss that solution as the American people, Mr. Speaker.

There were 14 amendments submitted to this piece of legislation, Mr. Speaker. We heard testimony on that in the Rules Committee yesterday. Unfortunately, six of those 14 amendments were nongermane; we were not able to make those in order. But we did make in order three Republican amendments, one Democratic amendment, and one bipartisan amendment. In fact, all the Members who came to the Rules Committee yesterday to testify on behalf of their amendments, we were able to make those amendments in order.

Mr. Speaker, all this bill does, should it become law, is require that if the President doesn't submit a balanced budget--it's certainly my great hope that he will, but if he doesn't, he share with the American people--again, not in 5 years, not in 10 years--whatever number he believes is the right way to set priorities, tell the American people what steps he will take to get us back on track.

Candidly, Mr. Speaker, it's unconscionable that we can look at projections going out to 2080 and have folks never, ever, ever pay down one penny of debt. Contrast that with what we did here in the House of Representatives, where with a budget that passed this House, the bipartisan vote that passed that budget, passed the only budget that passed anywhere in this town, not only would we have balanced the budget in that time frame, Mr. Speaker, we would have paid back every penny of our $16.4 trillion Federal debt.

That's no small conversation. It's a conversation that's long overdue on this House floor. It's a conversation that has been too long ignored by both Democrats and Republicans, and I'm pleased to be here today to take that up with my friend from Massachusetts, and then later on, the underlying bill.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank my friend from Massachusetts because he's highlighting exactly what our challenges are and exactly why it's so important that we pass both the rule and H.R. 444 today. He went through item after item after item that have absolutely tied our economy up in knots. Short-term problems and short-term solutions are trumping the discussion of long-term problems and long-term solutions.

The sequester that he mentioned, Mr. Speaker, do you know that it was the month of May last year that this House first passed a replacement to the sequester? Now, as you know and as history has recorded, the Senate never acted on any replacement of a sequester, and now we talk about what happened on January 1 as if it was something that was created by this House, as if that fiscal cliff was something that this House invented. In fact, we have a very proud history, bipartisan history, of looking further down the road to try to find the best answers and the best solutions to very serious problems. But we can't do it alone, Mr. Speaker.

One of the great successes we've had just early in this year--and by ``we,'' I mean this entire House, the people's House--is that we appear to have persuaded the Senate to pass a budget for the first time in 4 years. All indication is that this year, unlike last year and the year before that and the year before that, this year they're going to pass a budget to lay out their plan.

But what does it say, Mr. Speaker, about this House, about this process, about the future of this country that it's controversial whether or not the President of the United States should introduce a budget that balances ever? That's the debate today, Mr. Speaker. That's how out of touch Washington has become. That's how confused the speeches have been written. We're debating whether or not the President should introduce a budget that ever balances. I'm advocating, yes, he should. Others are advocating, no, that shouldn't be a requirement; when you take the oath to fully execute the laws of the land, when you take the oath to faithfully protect and defend the United States of America, it shouldn't be a requirement that you balance budgets. In fact, you should be free, not just for 10 years, not just for 20 years, not just for 40 years, not just for 80 years, but forever to deficit spend, to borrow from a generation of children and a generation of grandchildren to pay for our wants today, taking away from their needs tomorrow.

This rule debate is going to come to a close in 40 minutes and we're going to vote. Then if the rule passes, we're going to go into a vote on the underlying bill. There are going to be ``no'' votes on the board that say, no, the President should never have to explain to the American people how we're going to make our fiscal tomorrow better than our fiscal today.

I would like to change his mind, Mr. Speaker, but for now I'm going to focus on changing the minds right here in this Chamber. Because if there is anything that unites us in this body, rather than divides us, it is a true love of this country. And I challenge anyone, Mr. Speaker, to define their love of our freedoms and of our country in a way that allows us to continue borrowing from the next generation forever.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I just want to say to my friend from New York, for whom I do have tremendous respect and value her counsel, to call this a stupid piece of legislation I think really misses the point about what we're doing here.

I would encourage you to ask your constituents in New York, and, Mr. Speaker, I would encourage you to ask your constituents back home, do folks realize, because I didn't, that in the four years that the President has been President of the United States, the budgets that he has introduced come to balance never?

My friends on the other side are making a persuasive case, Mr. Speaker, for why it is they would support doing things with different priorities than I would support doing things. And that's absolutely going to be true. When we debate the budget resolution, we're going to have different approaches for getting to balance. But the President's budgets never get there. If we give him every spending cut he asks for, if we give him every tax increase he asks for, if we do absolutely everything that the budget that he is required by law to submit requests, we will begin to pay down the first penny of debt never.

In fact, if we do absolutely everything that the budget he is required by law to submit to us asks, the debt will continue to grow forever.

I agree with so much of what my friends on the other side are saying about the sequester, about the fiscal cliff. That's why we acted in May in this body. That's why we acted in August in this body on this tax bill. That's why we passed another sequester replacement in August. That's why we passed another one in December. I agree. But can't we also agree that if you're going to be Commander in Chief of America, if you're going to be the President of the United States, if you're going to uphold and defend the Constitution--and we have our former Joint Chief of Staff Chairman telling us that our greatest national security threat is our growing debt--shouldn't it be fair to ask the President to tell us when, if ever, he plans to begin paying back the first penny?

Mr. Speaker, it's not a stupid piece of legislation that we're dealing with today. What's almost laughably ridiculous is that it's controversial.

I believe the gentleman has much more time. I will be happy to reserve the balance of my time, though, and allow my friend to control.

Mr. Speaker, there's a reason that we're spending so much time talking about things other than the underlying bill, other than the rule. The reason is because the rule is a good rule, and the bill is a good bill. We can use this time for the political theater that my friend from Massachusetts appears to disdain, but I would say he's got a talent for it and he should not disdain it so rapidly.

Mr. Speaker, we handled the sequester in May. I hope whenever my friend from Massachusetts refers to his friends on the other side, he means the other side of the Chamber, not the other side of this House, because we, you and I, acted, Mr. Speaker, to solve those issues.

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

Reclaiming my time, my friend is exactly right. Of all of the multiple efforts that we did last year that were all rejected by the other side, we have not recreated those efforts again this year. He's exactly right.

What we have done, however, is created a pathway that's going to produce the first budget on the Senate side, the first opportunity for the bodies to come together in conference.

My friend from New York tells us about, I'm just a bill and what schoolchildren are learning all over America. Mr. Speaker, they're going to have to learn on TV because they have not seen it in this town. We can't. We can't go to conference on a budget unless the Senate passes one. And this year, Mr. Speaker, as governed by the rule book, the United States Constitution that I have right here in my hand, we're going to be able to get that done. That's the kind of work this House is doing. That's the groundwork that we're laying.

My friend from New York is exactly right, Mr. Speaker, when she says that this body, led by Chairman Ryan on the Budget Committee, is going to produce a budget so serious and so responsible, it's going to come to balance, the balance the American people are demanding, faster than any other budget we have seen in this President's administration.

All we're asking, Mr. Speaker: Doesn't it seem reasonable to let the President submit any budget he wants to? We don't want to change the budget he's submitting at all, but just to share with the American people because they don't know when they come to balance.

Who knew, Mr. Speaker, when the budget was entitled a ``New Era of Responsibility,'' that it wasn't going to come to balance in 80 years? Who knew? I didn't. There are people in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, who did not know that in 4 years of his Presidency, this President has never, ever--assuming a world where he gets everything that he wants-- crafted a plan that begins to pay back the very first penny of our debt. That's dangerous, Mr. Speaker.

This bill can put a stop to that process. That is why I know it's going to get support here in the House.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say to my friends that I haven't actually mentioned that the President's budget was late. You're exactly right. He did miss the statutory deadline. He's not going to make it on time. In fact, the story is that it's not going to get here until March. In the years that I've had a voting card, he has never submitted a budget on time. I'm not asking him to get it here on time. I am only asking him, when it gets here, would he tell us when it's going to balance.

With that, I would like to yield 4 minutes to a colleague on the Rules Committee, the gentleman from Texas, Dr. Burgess.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say to my colleague that I share her great passion for America's children and protecting America's children. And I would say to my friend that I don't believe we can continue to operate under budgets that borrow from those children, not just this year, not just next year, but forever, and candidly say that we're protecting them. We're putting our most vulnerable at risk with these deficits, and we have to make the tough decisions.

I'd be happy to yield.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to read from the President's inaugural address. It took place just outside our backdoor here. He said:

We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health

care and the size of our deficit.

He didn't say we should make the easy choices, because there aren't any easy choices left to make. Every single one of them is hard. And I have such great respect for Members of this body who have taken the hard votes and made those hard decisions.

All this bill says is: Mr. President, put your budget where your speeches are. Make the hard choices, any of the choices you want to make to balance, anytime you want to balance, but we can't begin to pay down the debt until we stop running up the debt. And we have yet to see a budget from this President that puts us on that path.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds to say to my friend that I know his commitment to Social Security is heartfelt, and it's one that I share. I hope it gives him comfort to know that there is absolutely nothing in this legislation that changes any of those commitments that he read there on the House floor. In fact, I would say the opposite is true. As someone who's going to retire after Social Security is projected to have gone bankrupt, I think it is critically important that every budget we look at looks at how it is we're going to pay back all of those government bonds that this Congress has swapped the cash in the Social Security trust fund for. Without paying back those bonds, there is no Social Security check to go out the door.

The reason we talk about balanced budgets is because numbers are important. We talk about balanced budgets because commitments are important. And we cannot, we cannot meet our Medicare commitments. We cannot meet our Social Security commitments, and everyone in this body knows it.

Every budget the President produces shows it. But we can do better; and working together, we will do better, Mr. Speaker.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I'd say to my friend, I'm prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time to thank my friend from Massachusetts for being down here with me today to get this rule to a place where we can vote on it. I always look to my friend from Massachusetts to find those things that we agree on, and we certainly agree that Congress has an awfully low approval rating.

I would disagree with my friend though, Mr. Speaker, and say it's a low approval rating because we don't deal with important issues like this. It's a low approval rating because folks will say Republicans want to privatize Social Security, even though our budget did no such thing.

It's a low approval rating because folks will say our budget destroys Medicare forever, even though our budget did no such thing. It's a low approval rating because folks say they want to grapple with the tough challenges of the country, and yet they continue to borrow and spend as they always have.

But I'm an optimist, Mr. Speaker. I really do believe that we've come to a place--not just in this country, not just in this House--I think we've come to a place in each individual in this country, where folks are prepared to do those things that must be done to ensure that our children's tomorrow is better than their today.

Mr. Speaker, when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about their deep love and affection for the next generation and how they want to ensure that the most vulnerable are taken care of, they mean it from the heart. They mean it from the heart.

But when the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tells us that our biggest national security concern is our growing debt and deficits, how much love can you show to the next generation, Mr. Speaker, when you continue to dig into their pockets instead of your own?

It's not incumbent upon us to decide how our children set their priorities. It's incumbent upon us to set our priorities so that they don't have to make those tough decisions.

Mr. Speaker, if we went out in the street in front of this Capitol and asked every man and woman who brought their family here to visit the Nation's Capitol how many of them knew that in not one budget, and for not 1 year does the President ever propose that we come to balance, that would be shocking, shocking news. And yet it's the truth.

Mr. Speaker, title 31 lays out in intricate detail congressional requirements for the President's budget. Congressional requirements for the President's budget. H.R. 444 would incorporate those requirements and add one more and, that is, that in this time of economic challenge, you be honest with the American people about the tough choices that we're all facing.

Mr. Speaker, if it was easy, they'd have done it before you and I got here. It's hard, and it's getting worse every single day any one of us fails to deal with it.

We can deal with it today, Mr. Speaker. I know our Budget Committee is committed to dealing with it. I know this House is committed to deal with it. Let's make the President a partner in that today.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge strong support for the resolution. I urge strong support for the underlying bill.

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

I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia, my good friend, 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 urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this restrictive rule and to vote ``no'' on the underlying bill.

The process here is awful. The bill before us was not even considered by the Budget Committee. They didn't hold a single hearing, no markup, and on a party-line vote last night the Rules Committee denied Mr. Van Hollen, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, the opportunity to offer a meaningful substitute. The Rules Committee also, on a party line, voted against an open rule. To all of the Republican freshmen and sophomores who campaigned on the need for openness and transparency, by voting for this rule, you are officially part of the problem.

This bill before us isn't a meaningful attempt to address the budget; it's a gimmick wrapped in talking points inside a press release.

Two weeks ago, this House passed the so-called ``No Budget, No Pay Act,'' then they went on another recess. There wasn't a holiday, mind you. I guess it was the Super Bowl recess. Now they're back with today's bill. It calls on the President to tell Congress when his budget will come into balance. If his budget doesn't say when it will come into balance, then he must submit a supplemental statement telling Congress when it will come into balance.

Why are we doing this? Because the President is late submitting his budget for the next fiscal year. Okay, fine. The President should submit a budget on time, and I support that. But lost in all of this Republican budget Kabuki theater is the truth: the reason the administration is late with their budget is because they just spent months trying to avert the disaster that was the fiscal cliff.

As the Speaker was trying in vain to corral House Republicans into doing the right thing, we had Plan B and Plan C and Plan--who knows what. Finally, we reached a deal on January 1, technically after we went over the cliff. In the meantime, back in the real world, we are less than 24 calendar days away from the disastrous sequester taking effect--less than 24 calendar days from massive, arbitrary, and devastating cuts to defense and nondefense

discretionary programs, cuts to jobs programs and medical research and education, cuts to military personnel and law enforcement, cuts that will cost jobs and do real harm to the American economy as it struggles to recover.

And the reality is that we don't even have that much time. We only have 9 legislative days left in February to address the issue, 9 days to negotiate a trillion-dollar deal with the Senate and the President. And instead of a meaningful plan to address the crisis that we need to avert, we have this nonsense before us today. This is no way to govern.

The disturbing truth is that many Republicans seem downright giddy when it comes to the sequester cuts. There is news story after news story about how the Republicans are going to allow the sequester to take effect. In the Rules Committee last night, the author of this bill, the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Price, couldn't support these cuts fast enough. I was shocked.

Mr. Speaker, it was only last week that the economic numbers for the fourth quarter of 2012 were released. Unexpectedly, we saw a contraction in those numbers, a contraction fueled by a massive reduction in defense spending. What do you know: huge cuts in government spending during a fragile economic recovery damage economic growth. The Republican response is to double down on this stupid.

These Republican games of Russian roulette with the American economy must come to an end. It is time to replace short-term partisan political interests with the greater good.

The President today is asking us to consider a thoughtful, balanced plan to stop the sequester. I urge the Republican leadership to bring that plan to the floor of the House for a vote as soon as possible. That's what the American people want and that's what they deserve: a real plan. The bill before us today isn't it, and I urge my colleagues to reject it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I would like to submit for the Record a letter sent to the Honorable Paul Ryan, the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, from the Executive Office of the President in the Office of Management and Budget which explains why the President's budget for this year is delayed--because of the theatrics that my friends on the other side forced us to go through to avoid going over a fiscal cliff. So I think it's understandable why the budget may be a little late.

And I would say to the gentleman, submitting a budget is not controversial. What is controversial to me is the fact that so many of my friends on the other side want to go over this sequester cliff in which millions of jobs will be lost. That to me is controversial. We should be about protecting jobs and creating jobs.

My friends have budgetary plans that would throw people out of work, and I find that unconscionable. I find that unconscionable. We should be about lifting this country up, not trying to put people down.

And the plans that have been proposed by my friends on the other side, including this kind of giddiness about the prospect of going over the sequestration cliff, would cost millions of people in this country jobs. It would hurt our economy.

That's not the way we want to govern. That's what is controversial on our side. We don't want people to lose their jobs. We want people to keep their jobs, and we want to create an economy that creates more jobs.

Executive Office of the President, Office of Management

and Budget,

Washington, DC, January 11, 2013.

Hon. Paul Ryan,

Chairman, Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of

Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Ryan: Thank you for your letter dated January

9, 2013, requesting information on when the Administration

will submit the President's fiscal year (FY) 2014 Budget.

For over a year and a half, the Administration has been

working with Congress to forge agreement on a plan that would

both grow our economy and significantly reduce the deficit.

The Administration continues to seek a balanced approach to

further deficit reduction that cuts spending in a responsible

way while also raising revenues.

As you know, the protracted ``fiscal cliff' negotiations

that led to enactment of H.R. 8, the American Taxpayer Relief

Act of 2012, created considerable uncertainty about revenue

and spending for 2013 and beyond. The Act resolved a

significant portion of this uncertainty by making permanent

the temporary rates on taxable income at or below $400,000

for individual filers and $450,000 for married individuals

filing jointly; permanently indexing the Alternative Minimum

Tax exemption to the Consumer Price Index; extending

emergency unemployment benefits and Federal finding for

extended benefits for unemployed workers for one year;

continuing current Medicare payment rates for physicians'

services through December 31, 2013; extending farm bill

policies and programs through September 30, 2013; and

providing a postponement of the Budget Control Act's

sequestration for two months. However, because these issues

were not resolved until the American Taxpayer Relief Act was

enacted on January 2, 2013, the Administration was forced to

delay some of its FY 2014 Budget preparations, which in turn

will delay the Budget's submission to Congress.

The Administration is working diligently on our budget

request. We will submit it to Congress as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey D. Zients,

Deputy Director for Management.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York, the ranking member of the Rules Committee, Ms. Slaughter.

I yield the gentlelady an additional 2 minutes.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Ms. Slaughter).

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

The issue is not whether the President should submit a budget. He should. And he would have submitted a budget by now, but because of the theatrics that my friends on the other side put us through dealing with the fiscal cliff, which was just solved on January 1, things are a little bit delayed. The issue is why is the House wasting time on this while the sword of the sequester hangs over the American people?

The President can submit any budget he wants. That's what the President has the right to do, just like George Bush submitted whatever budget he wanted to do.

We have a job here in this House, and that is to address this looming fiscal crisis called the sequester. What we're doing here today is doing nothing at all to move that ball forward.

In less than a month, arbitrary cuts are going to go into effect, people are going to lose their jobs, and this economy is going to go into a deeper slump. For the life of me, I can't understand why there's not more urgency. We shouldn't be taking vacations. We actually should be working here and trying to resolve this. This is stupid legislation because it is not addressing the crisis. It is doing nothing to advance the cause of trying to get to a solution. This is just a press release. This is yet another gimmick.

I think the reason why Congress and especially the House of Representatives is held in such low regard is because we spend so much time on trivial matters debating passionately, and we skip over debating the important things. We ought to be doing something important here today. We ought to be trying to avert this sequestration. We ought to be trying to keep people in their jobs. And we ought to be trying to create an economy that will create more jobs, not this theater.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

This is the 113th Congress. We haven't done one thing to solve this fiscal crisis that's looming on March 1st. This is the 113th.

Under the Constitution, when a new Congress begins, we have to start all over again. Okay?

Mr. Speaker, this bill does nothing. It does absolutely nothing. It's a press release.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to ensure that the House votes on Mr. Van Hollen's replacement for the sequester, which was blocked yesterday in the Rules Committee.

My friend from Georgia talks about this being a good rule and a good process. This bill was not even considered by the Budget Committee, which is the committee of jurisdiction. It had no hearing. It had no markup. It mysteriously appeared at the Rules Committee. We wanted an open rule, and we were denied an open rule. Mr. Van Hollen actually had a substantive amendment to replace the sequester. That was denied.

So I want to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Van Hollen, to discuss his amendment.

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

Let me just respond to the gentleman from Texas by saying he's wrong. He's on the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Affordable Care Act had hearings in the Energy and Commerce Committee--and markups. There were multiple hearings on that bill. I'm not sure what he's talking about.

Then to the gentleman from Georgia who says that he didn't mention the fact that the President missed the deadline, I thought he did, but the bill that he's touting here mentions it in these very political, inspired findings. Read your own bill. It's three pages long. I know that may be too much, but we're all told to read the bill.

Look, rather than being here and telling the President what to do-- he's going to submit a budget--we've got to do our job. Our job is to avoid this sequestration because, if we don't, there are millions of people in this country who will be without work. There are

programs that will be arbitrarily cut, and this economy will be hurt. Now, if you want sequestration, then you can continue to take your recesses and do this kind of trivial stuff on the House floor, but we ought to be finding a way to avoid going over this sequestration cliff.

At this point, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

I yield the gentlelady 10 seconds.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We all want to make sure that our children are protected, but embracing a sequester that cuts things like Head Start, that's no way to protect our children.

At this point, I'd like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the gentleman from Georgia how many more speakers he has.

I'm prepared to close as well, Mr. Speaker. I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, this is a very frustrating debate, in large part because it's much ado about nothing. What we're doing here today is a press release. It's doing nothing at all to avoid this prospect of sequestration in which arbitrary cuts will go into play. This is just more talk and talk and talk and talk.

Again, that's one of the reasons why the American people are so frustrated with this place. They want less talk and more work. We should be working. We should be coming to some sort of agreement to avoid the catastrophe of sequestration; but, instead, we're doing this.

Mr. Speaker, I want to put some things in perspective. The Center for American Progress reported that since the start of fiscal year 2011, President Obama has signed into law approximately $2.4 trillion of deficit reduction for the years 2013 through 2022. Nearly three- quarters of that deficit reduction is in the form of spending cuts, while the remaining one-quarter comes from revenue increases. Congress and the President have cut about $1.5 trillion in programmatic spending, raised about $630 billion in new revenue, and generated about $300 billion in interest savings, for a combined total of more than $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction. That's a quote from the Center for American Progress.

So three-fourths of the deficit reduction we've achieved so far was from spending cuts. But my friends on the other side have the nerve to continue to claim that Democrats are ``loathe'' to agree to spending cuts. I mean, give me a break, Mr. Speaker. Give me a break.

The CBO projects the Federal deficit to be about $845 billion, which I think is very high; but it's the first time the nonpartisan office forecast a deficit below $1 trillion. So we are going in the right direction, and the President wants to continue to move in that right direction in a fair and balanced way.

Now, here's the deal. My friends keep on referring to what they did last year which, again, was last year. We have to get them to think about this year because they have to act now; it's a new Congress.

But last year the proposals they came up with to try to bring our budget into balance were all about lowering the quality of life for our citizens. Their budget proposal ended Medicare as we know it. Ended Medicare. It's gone.

My friend from Florida talked about Social Security. Their plan for Social Security is to privatize it. And deep reductions and cuts that provide support for people who are most vulnerable. That's their plan.

And now, we see, because we're not trying to address this latest fiscal cliff, I think they really do want the sequestration to go into effect. I think that is outrageous. I think it's going to be dangerous to our economy. But their plan, by allowing sequestration to go into effect, is basically to try to balance the budget by making more people unemployed.

You know, we will lose jobs. In the defense sector that's already happening. But then we're going to see losses in jobs in other areas. There'll be cuts in education. Police grants are cut. Payments to Medicare providers are cut. And The New York Times reports that even the aid just approved for victims of Hurricane Sandy will fall under the sequester's axe.

I mean, this is how we're going to solve our budgetary problems?

Yes, we do have a big debt. A lot of it has to do with these unpaid- for wars, with these tax cuts that weren't paid for; and it's going to take us a while to get out of it. But as we get out of it, we can't destroy our country. We need a balanced approach. We need to cut where we can cut, we need to raise revenues where we need to raise revenues, but we also need to invest.

Cutting the National Institutes of Health, which will happen if sequestration goes into effect, will not only cost jobs, but it will prolong human suffering. If we could find a cure to Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's disease, not only will we prevent a lot of human suffering, you would end up solving the budgetary challenges of Medicare and Medicaid. There's a value in investing in these things, not arbitrarily cutting them.

Now, last night in the Rules Committee, we tried to bring some substance to this debate. Mr. Van Hollen had his amendment, which was blocked. The one substantive thing that we could have done here today to avoid sequestration was blocked.

So, Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to ensure that the House votes on Mr. Van Hollen's replacement for the sequester which was, again, blocked last night in the Rules Committee.

I ask unanimous consent 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, again, I would urge my colleagues to reject this rule which, again, is illustrative of how closed this process has become in this House. We ought to reject the rule because it is not open. The Budget Committee never even considered this bill.

But we ought to also reject the underlying bill because this is nonsense at a time when we should be doing something real to avoid a real catastrophe in this country, to avoid something that will have an adverse impact on our economy. Instead, you know, we're all fiddling while Rome is burning.

This is outrageous. We can do so much better. We ought to work. You know, you're passing resolutions asking the President to do X, Y, and Z. We ought to pass a resolution to instruct us to do our job, and that's what we ought to do. That's what the American people expect.

So, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Madam Chairman, as we debated yesterday, the bill before us is unfortunately nothing more than a political gimmick at a time when we're facing huge issues with respect to jobs and the economy.

It's very unfortunate that we did not have an opportunity to vote on an amendment that we proposed to replace the sequester--which is now less than a month away and which will do grave economic harm--our proposal to replace that sequester with a balanced mix of cuts and revenue from closing loopholes. But in this body, which says it wants to be transparent in the people's House, we were denied an opportunity to take a vote on something that's very important to the American

people, as opposed to playing the political games we've been playing with this bill.

With that, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished Democratic leader, the Representative from San Francisco and the daughter of Baltimore, the home of the Super Bowl champions, the Ravens.

Madam Chairman, for those Members of this body who were not focused on this debate yesterday, let's make a couple of things clear. The President will introduce a budget, he is going to submit a budget, and he has submitted a budget every year. Our Republican colleagues don't like his budget because he takes a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, meaning that in addition to cuts, he also calls for additional revenue from taking away special tax breaks for special interests. That's number one.

Number two, what this bill does is, number one, require the President to submit his budget in a certain way; and number two, it criticizes the President for submitting his budget late.

Again, for those who weren't part of the debate yesterday, the reason the President's budget is late is because we had to pass the fiscal cliff agreement. We didn't get that done until January 2. And I have to say, Madam Chairman, we got it done despite the overwhelming opposition of House Republicans. We were pleased to get the overwhelming support of Senate Republicans, but House Republicans continue

to take the position that they were prepared to go over the fiscal cliff in order to protect tax breaks for very wealthy people.

That's why the President's budget is late, because as any American family knows, if you don't know what revenue is coming in, you can't put together your household budget. We didn't know what kind of revenue was coming in until January 2.

So, with that, Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Levin.

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

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

This bill is entitled the PLAN Act. What we really need is a plan to avoid the sequester, these across-the-board, indiscriminate cuts that are going to take place on March 1, which we all know are going to hurt jobs and the economy.

We just heard from the Republican leader. Last September, he made a very good point on the floor of this House. He said that if you allow those sequester cuts to take place, you're going to see more than 200,000 jobs lost just in the State of Virginia just in the defense sector. The across-the-board cuts are going to hurt jobs in defense, but they're also going to hurt other jobs as well as important national efforts, whether it's the FBI, whether it's border security, or whether it's medical research at the National Institutes of Health. All those things are going to be cut.

Now, the majority leader just made the point that when the American people are asked what their number one priority is, it's jobs and the economy. So why aren't we doing something about jobs and the economy? Why did the Republican leadership deny us an opportunity just to have a vote on a plan, a plan to prevent that sequester from taking place in less than a month, a plan that would replace that sequester with a mix of long-term, targeted cuts as well as revenues from, for example, getting rid of the taxpayer subsidies for the Big Oil companies?

That's the real plan we need, and yet we haven't seen any plan from our Republican colleagues in this 113th Congress. So, let's focus on what really is important to the American people. The deficit is, of course, important to the American people. As the Republican leader said, it ranked number two. There's no debate there.

The issue all along has been not whether we reduce the deficit but how we do it, making sure, number one, we don't do it in a way that hurts the economy, like some of the austerity plans in Europe, which apparently our Republican colleagues would like us to copy. That hurt the economy. We saw it didn't work in the U.K., and we believe we need to reduce the deficit in a balanced way--cuts but also revenue, by asking very wealthy people to contribute a little bit more and by closing those tax breaks that we heard about from the Republican Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate all last fall.

Those tax breaks are still out there. We propose to eliminate some of those for the purpose of reducing the deficit in a balanced way. That's the plan we need. That's the plan we've offered. Unfortunately, that's the plan we haven't had a chance to even get a vote on.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I think it's important to remind our colleagues that as part of the Budget Control Act and other measures we took over the last several years, we have already cut $1.5 trillion over the 10-year budget period by placing a cap on spending. The President has been very clear, as have Democrats in the Congress. We understand we've got to make some important cuts. We did $1.5 trillion. We can do more. In fact, the substitute amendment that I proposed would eliminate these direct payments for agribusinesses, over $29 billion in unnecessary subsidies.

The question isn't whether we should do cuts. Yes, we should do them. We should do them in a smart way and not in an across-the-board way. But we should also generate revenue by closing the tax loopholes to reduce the deficit.

We heard again from our Republican colleagues throughout the last Presidential campaign about all these tax breaks that benefit very wealthy people. Let's close them to help reduce the deficit, and that's exactly what our substitute would do to help replace the sequester.

I'm now pleased to yield 2 minutes to someone who knows these issues well, a terrific new Member of Congress from the State of Maryland (Mr. Delaney).

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Chairman, we've heard a number of the last speakers complain about the fact that the President's budget will be a little late this year.

Again, for the new Members joining us--and we welcome all of the new Members, those being Republicans and Democrats--in the last session of Congress, we were here until January 2 trying to put together an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff. That was the President's priority--to make sure that we didn't hurt jobs and the economy by going over the fiscal cliff.

The overwhelming majority of our Republican colleagues in this House voted against that plan because they were more focused on protecting tax breaks for very wealthy individuals than about protecting jobs and the economy. That's their choice. Their Senate Republican colleagues made a different choice, but our House Republican colleagues can make the choice that they want.

Now, with respect to the budget, the President will submit a budget, and our House Republican colleagues can reject it or do what they want with it. The issue is not whether he'll submit a budget. He will. The issue is whether or not we would dictate to the President what the form of his budget should take, and that is wrong.

It is also a little curious to hear this newfound support for these sort of balanced budgets from our Republican colleagues. I would just remind everybody that the last time we had a balanced budget was at the end of the Clinton administration. Why? Because, in addition to economic growth, they asked the American people to contribute a little bit more in terms of tax revenue. The Bush administration came in and immediately squandered those surpluses. I think it's important to know that, since 1950, we've had a balanced budget on only eight occasions, unfortunately. The last time we had a Republican President who balanced his budget without inheriting it from a Democratic President was Dwight Eisenhower.

So we are pleased that our Republican colleagues are joining us in trying to get back to fiscal responsibility. We see reducing the deficit as a very important part of that, but we disagree that we should do it by cutting important commitments we've made to seniors, by slashing our investment in our kids' educations, by cutting science and research and things that help power our economy and make us competitive. We think that's the wrong approach. We need a balanced approach that combines cuts with revenues from closing these tax breaks for the purpose of reducing the deficit. That's the kind of plan we need.

I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to how much time remains on both sides.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, again, just to put all this into perspective, I appreciate the sort of newfound vigor with which our Republican colleagues are approaching this issue. I would just remind them that, in the budget they brought to the floor in the last 2 years, it did not balance, according to the CBO, until 2040. Even then, if you read what the Congressional Budget Office said, it wasn't as a result of the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of their policies; it was simply based on assumptions that our Republican colleagues provided to the

Madam Chair, I thank my colleague, Mr. Schrader, and his colleagues for offering this amendment.

I support the overall framework of Simpson-Bowles. I've said that many times. If you look at the balance in Simpson-Bowles between the cuts and the revenue, it's something, I think, that is the model that we should be using in this body. And I do want to submit for the Record an analysis that was done by the Center For Budget Policy Priorities that shows exactly what that breakdown would be.

I don't support every single recommendation within Simpson-Bowles, but I think we have an obligation, if we don't like one of their cuts, to come up with an alternative cut. If we don't like their revenue, we should come up with alternative revenue.

But what the Simpson-Bowles proposal does is it creates a framework saying that we need to take a balanced approach to reducing our deficit.

I was listening to my friend, Mr. Price, explaining his opposition to this. He didn't want to impose requirements on the President; simply ask the President to consider these proposals. And as the President himself has said, he has incorporated many of the proposals from Simpson-Bowles into his own budget, the ones he submitted last year and the one that he will submit this year. So I support the framework, not every recommendation, but the overall framework.

Summary of Updated Bowles-Simpson Estimates

To assess Bowles-Simpson today so that policymakers can

compare it with other plans, one must look at the Bowles-

Simpson savings over 2013-2022, relative to a current policy

baseline. One must also account for the $1.5 trillion in

discretionary spending cuts that policymakers have since

enacted. When that is done, the results show that:

Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to claim time in opposition, even though I will not ultimately oppose the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I support this amendment because this is something we all want to see happen and which the President himself has indicated he wants to see happen. In the last fiscal year budget, in fact, the President, through OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, submitted something called Cuts, Consolidations, and Savings to be considered by the Congress and the executive branch; and he also asked that legislation be submitted on his behalf to help give him more authority to reorganize some of these government agencies, which was introduced during the last Congress by Mr. Barrow, who may well intend to reintroduce that.

Madam Chairman, these are things I think we all would like to see, greater efficiencies that help save money in a smart way. The President has indicated not only his intention but specific proposals to do so, and so we do not object. In fact, I support the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to claim time in opposition even though I am not opposed to the amendment.

I think it is very useful to let everybody in the country know exactly what the debt and deficit will be on a per capita basis. We in Congress of course can do the math. I think it's no problem asking the President to run that calculation as well.

Again, I want to emphasize the fact that there's agreement on reducing the deficit; the real differences here are over how we do it. But regardless of how you want to do it, I think the gentleman has offered a useful amendment. The more information for the American people, the better, and we will not object and in fact support the amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Again, what this amendment does is ask the President, when he submits the budget, to provide certain information about mandatory spending and means-tested spending. In fact, the President already does this in his budget. I have in my hand, in fact, the budget for fiscal year 2013--that's the current fiscal year that we're in now--historical tables that were submitted by the President as part of that budget submission. The categories include mandatory spending, and within mandatory spending they break it down: Social Security deposit insurance, means-tested entitlements, and others. So this is information that the President already provides as part of the budget process. I'm happy to support him continuing to do that.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I will not use all the time. As I said, what this amendment requests is information that, in fact, the President already provides as part of the budget submission. I indicated I have in my hand that information from the last fiscal year's budget. I do think that in pursuit of transparency it's important to point out that when the President was first sworn in his first term, before he put his hand on the Bible, he faced a projected deficit of well over $1 trillion--a record deficit at that time.

As we saw from the Congressional Budget Office in their report just the other day, that deficit is now coming down. As the economy has improved and as the President's policies have begun to take shape, that deficit is on its way down. Is it far enough down? No. And there's a legitimate debate as to the best way to get there, but as part of that debate, certainly the more information, the better. And as I indicated, this information that is being requested is, in fact, already provided to the Congress. So we will not oppose it. In fact, I would support the amendment.

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah).

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

Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).

Madam Chair, it is probably appropriate to refocus ourselves on the bill that we're discussing today, that's before us today, H.R. 444. It simply does one thing. It says to the President: when you bring a budget to Congress, tell us when it's going to balance. That's all it does.

Now, the sequester is an important issue, there's no doubt about it. President Obama's sequester is an important issue. House Republicans have passed two times spending reductions that prioritize in a much more responsible way. We agree that it ought to be much more responsible. The ball is in the Senate's court. The ball is in the President's court.

This bill, though, simply says to the President: when you bring your budget to us, just let us know when it balances. That's important because the last four budgets that the President has brought to this House, to this Congress, have never, ever balanced.

I'm pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. DesJarlais).

Madam Chair, I'm pleased to yield 1 minute to our distinguished majority leader, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor).

Madam Chair, how much time remains on each side?

I want to commend my friend from Maryland on the

other side for trying to change the subject. There's a lot of talk over here about the sequester. That's an important issue. There's no doubt about it. We look forward to that debate.

This is about having the President submit a budget to Congress that balances, and we're concerned about that because the last four budgets that this President has submitted to this Congress have never, ever balanced.

With that, I'm pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson).

Madam Chair, I'm pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to a member of the Budget Committee and the Ways and Means Committee, the gentlelady from Tennessee (Mrs. Black).

Madam Chair, I'm pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to a new Member on our side of the aisle, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Meadows).

Madam Chair, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to another new member of our Conference, the gentleman from Texas, who knows a significant amount about budgets and who is a new member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Williams.

I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to another new member of our Conference, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Bridenstine).

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Sometimes in these conversations and debates, Madam Chair, it's important to set the record straight. My friend from Maryland says that the reason the President hasn't been able to submit his budget on time--by the way, the law is by February 4, the first Monday in February--is due to what happened at the end of last year.

I would remind my colleague that President Obama has missed the budget deadline more than any other President. In the 90 years since the President has been required to submit a budget to Congress by the first Monday in February, President Obama is the only President to miss the deadline 2 years in a row, and he's the only President to miss the deadline 3 out of 4 years in his first term. So that's just to set the record straight.

Secondly, I would remind my friend from Maryland that the last time this country had a balanced budget it was a Republican Congress that did it. In fact, President Clinton vetoed the budget twice and then signed it, but it was a Republican Congress, and we reduced taxes at that time.

I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to our policy chair on the Republican side, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford).

Madam Chair, this is pretty simple stuff. It's what families do across this country. It's what businesses do across this country, and that is to make certain that they don't spend more than they take in. All this bill does is say to the President, When you bring your budget to the Congress, Mr. President, let us know when it balances. And hopefully it's not never, as he's had for the last 4 years.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I claim the time in opposition.

Madam Chair, I appreciate the gentleman's amendment, and although possibly well-intentioned, we're not saying at all that this is just on the President's watch, that this is simply this President that is culpable, but you'd have to ignore the President's fiscal issues that he's had over the past 4 years to think that he didn't have a hand in this.

On taking office, President Obama promised to cut the deficit in half. Madam Chair, the deficit, when the President entered office, was $458 billion. We all know that the deficit last year was $1.3 trillion--hardly in half, not even with new math.

Instead, he's presided over four straight trillion-dollar-plus deficits. Spending is 22 percent higher at the end of this President's first term than it was when he took office. Under his own budget, spending will be 40 percent higher at the end of his second term if Congress were to go along with the proposals he brings forward. And finally, the President is on track to double the national debt by the end of his term in office.

Now, my new colleague from California says that all you've got to do is pass a budget through the Congress and all things will be wonderful, and the House Republicans have passed a budget. And, Madam Chair, it's been a budget that has put us on a path to balance, yes, and we'll do that again this year. But I will remind my colleague that the Senate hasn't passed a budget in nearly 4 years, which is why 2 weeks ago this Congress, this House, passed a bill--No Budget, No Pay--where we finally got the Senate to admit that they hadn't passed a budget. And, oh, yes, by the way, they'll do one this year. We got their attention.

So, Madam Chair, though well-intentioned, trying to change the subject and the issue a little bit, this amendment doesn't--doesn't-- assist in getting us to the point where it is the President's responsibility to tell the American people--in fact, it's only fair for the President to tell the American people when he brings his budget forward, when will it balance.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, what time remains for each side, please?

Madam Chair, I'm pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the vice chair of our conference, the gentlewoman from Kansas (Ms. Jenkins).

Madam Chair, I urge a rejection of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I want to commend my colleague from Oregon and the colleagues that came together to submit this amendment, as I believe it truly to be well-intentioned, but I think it misses the mark. I think for two reasons, specifically, that it ought not be adopted by this body.

First, it unnecessarily restricts the ability of the President to determine how he would balance the budget. Remember, the underlying bill doesn't tie the President's hands in any way. It simply says to the President when you submit your budget to Congress, just let us know when it's going to balance. And if it's not going to balance within the period of time that's defined by the budget window, then tell us when it's going to balance, and tell us what you're going to do to make it come into balance.

And the reason that balance is important, Madam Chair, is not just because it makes numbers, zero equals zero on a page somewhere. It's because it's about the economy, to get the economy rolling again and get jobs being created. That's why it's important.

Secondly, this amendment would have the President build his balanced budget around a foundation that never balances. A lot of talk about Simpson-Bowles, and I commend them for the wonderful work that they did. However, if you get down into the details of that, there are some things in there that just simply will not work. And the biggest thing is that it never gets to balance.

So the underlying bill again, Madam Chair, is crafted very carefully so that it gives the President the greatest amount of flexibility to propose how he believes the budget ought to be balanced.

And finally, maybe the most important thing about this, the inadequacy of this amendment, is that the President has already rejected the findings in the Simpson-Bowles commission. The President's already rejected it, his own commission; said never mind, that's not the way I want to do it.

So we would suggest that allowing the President the greatest amount of flexibility on how he would propose to balance the budget--something he's never done, but we want to leave him the greatest amount of flexibility, so we ought to retain the underlying bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, again, I think the intention of the amendment is sound. However, it's important to appreciate that the Simpson-Bowles approach fails to address the primary driver of spending, and that's health care. And maybe that was why the President rejected it. I don't know.

But the fact of the matter is that the Simpson-Bowles approach leaves in place the President's health care law with its $1.7 trillion in higher spending, soon to be over $2 trillion, and its trillion-plus dollars higher taxes. So I think this amendment, again, ties the President unnecessarily and that it's a step in the wrong direction. I would urge its defeat.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I commend the gentleman once again, but I would point out that there's nothing in the underlying bill that precludes the President from using this as a model if that is what he so desires. But there isn't any reason why we ought to constrain the President to hopefully bring to this Congress a budget that, for the first time in this administration, actually gets to balance. That's what the underlying bill is all about. Mr. President, bring us a budget. Just tell us when it balances, because, oh, by the way, the last four budgets that you submitted have never gotten to balance.

I urge defeat of the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I want to commend my colleague from Louisiana and the chair of the Republican Study Committee for bringing forth this amendment and supporting the underlying bill.

The amendment, as the gentleman from Maryland said, simply provides greater information, more transparency, more information from the President in his budget on the differences between the mandatory and the means-tested in the discretionary side of the budget.

It also, I think, is so important for the American people to gain as much information as possible as we move through this national debate, the national debate of whether or not it is appropriate for the President to bring a budget to Congress that in the past 4 years has never balanced.

The underlying bill, again, urges the President to bring a budget to the Congress that gets to balance and let's the American people know when it does. So I want to commend my colleague from Louisiana for his amendment and urge adoption of the amendment and the underlying bill.

Madam Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.

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

I just have to say to my colleagues that, in looking at this bill, it represents exactly what the American people hate most about this body and this Congress. It's a political gimmick that does absolutely nothing to help create jobs. It does nothing to help boost economic growth. If you read the bill, it is another finger-pointing exercise: blaming the President for the late submission of the 2014 budget and demanding not that the President submit a budget--the President is going to submit a budget--but that he submit it in a form dictated by House Republicans rather than dictated by current law.

Now, our Republican colleagues know very well why the President's 2014 budget is late. It's late because we had a big debate in this country over how to avoid the fiscal cliff, and it wasn't until January 2 that this House and the Senate were able to resolve that issue. If we'd gone over the fiscal cliff, it would have created huge economic problems. It would have created a huge contraction. It would have created a huge loss of jobs.

Now, even though a majority of Republican Senators voted for the agreement to prevent us from going over that fiscal cliff, our House Republican colleagues argued against it and against it, and at the end of the day, they were prepared to let the economy go over that cliff in order to protect tax breaks for very wealthy people. A great majority of our Republican colleagues here in the House voted against that fiscal agreement, but we got it done despite that fact. As a result, the economy has continued to move. Now we need to work to make it move faster, but this bill does absolutely nothing to help do that. That's why the budget is a little late, because most Americans know that, unless you know both what your expenditures are going to be and your revenues, you can't submit a budget, and we didn't know until January 2 what the revenue number would be going forward.

By the way, Mr. Chairman, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee have also been delayed in presenting their backgrounds, which have just come out today but were delayed from when they had planned to do it, and it was because of that very reason.

What's really a shame is that here we are on the floor of the House, debating this gimmick, when we should be doing things to help the economy and help grow jobs. On March 1, less than 1 month from today, we're going to see these automatic across-the-board, meat-ax cuts take place to both defense and non-defense. Now, those across-the-board cuts are going to do great damage to jobs and the economy.

You don't have to take my word for it. Here are the words of the Republican House leader, Mr. Cantor, just a few months ago: ``Under the sequester, unemployment would soar from its current level up to 9 percent, setting back any progress the economy has made.'' According to a study which he referred to, ``The jobs of more than 200,000 Virginians in my home State are on the line.''

And that's just jobs in Virginia. He was just talking about jobs lost from the defense cuts. If we don't act to replace the sequester, you're going to see jobs lost around the country. In fact, we're already seeing what would happen from even the threat of the sequester, because, in the last quarter, we saw the economy slowing. Many analysts have said it's because of the fear of these across-the-board cuts--and not just many analysts. The Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Mr. McKeon, said this in referring to the last quarter economic report: ``This is just the first indicator of the extraordinary economic damage defense cuts will do.''

Mr. McKeon is right. So why are we spending our time today on a bill that doesn't address that at all?

We have not in this Congress, the 113th Congress, had any debate on any measure to replace the sequester--our Republican colleagues haven't brought that to the floor--but it gets worse. Even though our Republican colleagues haven't brought their proposal to the floor of this House to replace the sequester in this Congress, we presented an alternative to the Rules Committee to replace the sequester and to do it in a balanced way, and we were denied an opportunity to have an up- or-down vote here in this Chamber today on that proposal to replace the sequester for the remainder of this fiscal year so that we would avoid those across-the-board, meat-ax cuts and avoid the job losses that both Mr. Cantor and Mr. McKeon talked about.

We had a proposal to avoid all that--not even a vote today--and we proposed to do it in a balanced way, Mr. Chairman: to make some cuts to some of the big agriculture subsidies' direct payments, also with some revenue by closing taxpayer breaks for the big oil companies. Our Republican colleagues continue to stick to the position that they won't close one special interest tax break for the purpose of reducing the deficit, not one. They conceded in the last election that very wealthy individuals benefit from those tax breaks disproportionately, but they don't want to eliminate one of them for the purpose of reducing the deficit in a balanced way, combined with additional spending cuts, which is what our substitute amendment would do. It's important for the people to know that we didn't have a chance to vote on it.

So, Mr. Chairman, it's a sad reflection on this body that we are here debating a meaningless political action and ignoring the real work of the American people in this country to deal with the sequester in a balanced way and to prevent the job losses which Republican Members of this Congress have themselves said are on the horizon if we don't take that action.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

There's no doubt that it's a priority of the American people, 72 percent of the American people, to reduce the deficit. We need to reduce the deficit.

In fact, in the last election, both candidates talked about their plans for how to reduce that deficit in a smart and measured way. The American people spoke, and they said they preferred the balanced approach that the President has laid out that includes a combination of cuts. And, by the way, we did more than $1.5 trillion of cuts through the combination of the Budget Control Act and the supplementals in the last 2 or 3 years. We've already done that. We need to keep making more cuts. And, in fact, our substitute proposal includes additional cuts.

But in the last election, the American people also said that we should close some of these tax breaks for special interests and very wealthy people. And yet our Republican colleagues have taken the position, the ironclad position, that you can't close or eliminate one of those tax breaks that their Presidential candidate and Vice Presidential candidate talked about if you want to use that for the purpose of reducing the deficit. You can't do it.

So, yes, we need to reduce the deficit. The President has a plan to do it. He just doesn't do it the way our Republican colleagues would do it, which is by whacking Social Security and Medicaid, and by shortchanging important investments in our education and in our kids' future.

So, yes, reduce the deficit, but let's do it in a sensible way. And the President has the prerogative of getting to put forward his budget the way he would like to present it to Congress, and then Congress can do its work however it wants.

With that, I yield 4 minutes to my friend and colleague from Maryland, and someone who has been very focused on reducing our deficits in a responsible way, Mr. Hoyer.

I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

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

May I inquire as to how much time remains on each side.

Mr. Chairman, if I could inquire, as I understand, we're doing half of the total time tomorrow. Would the chairman know how much time remains today on each side?

That's my understanding, too.

Mr. Chairman, let me just make a couple comments which are 100 percent accurate, just so people watching this can understand what we're all talking about, since there's a lot of confusion. The President is going to submit a budget. He has submitted a budget every year of his 4 years. Our Republican colleagues don't like the budgets that he submits, but they're free to look at them. They're transparent. They're on the Internet. The President was late this year because we worked frantically to avoid the fiscal cliff and reach an agreement on January 2. You need to know what your revenues are going to be before you can put together a budget, number one.

Number two, the House can take whatever action it wants on the President's budget. You can tell the people you don't like it and you can have your own alternative, as you will. But he's going to submit a budget that's transparent, which is why we shouldn't be wasting time talking about this on the floor of the House when in less than 1 month we're going to see these across-the-board meat-ax cuts take place that our Republican colleagues themselves have acknowledged are going to hurt jobs and hurt the economy, which is why we proposed an alternative, a substitute to prevent those meat-ax cuts from taking place. And, unfortunately, our colleagues who keep saying they want an open and transparent process, put the gavel down and said, no, that this House of Representatives isn't going to have a chance to vote on something to prevent the across-the-board sequester cuts. Instead, they just want to keep on whistling by this problem. They haven't taken it up in this Congress.

So I urge my colleagues to get serious, come back with a plan like ours and that will demonstrate, Mr. Chairman, that we're serious.

I reserve the balance of my time.