Providing for consideration of the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 25) establishing the budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2014 and setting forth appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2015 through 2023; providing for consideration of the resolution (H. Res. 115) providing for the expenses of certain committees of the House of Representatives in the One Hundred Thirteenth Congress; and for other purposes.

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

Last fall throughout this country, we had a vigorous debate. President Obama laid out his vision of how we deal with some of our big challenges with respect to the economy and the budget, and Governor Romney did the same thing. Both of them said the American people face a very important and fundamental choice, and the American people chose.

They chose to support President Obama's vision of accelerating economic growth, putting more people to work, taking a shared- responsibility approach to our long-term deficits so we bring them down in a balanced and smart way, and they rejected the idea that we're going to move the economy forward by giving windfall tax cuts to the very wealthiest in the country and that somehow the benefits of that would trickle down and lift everybody up. They rejected that lopsided approach that balanced the budgets on the backs of everybody but the folks at the very top. It balanced the budget on the backs of our kids' education by slashing important investments.

In that category of spending that we make these important investments for our country and our future, they doubled the cut from the sequester. Those are investments in our kids' education. Those are investments in science and research to help power our economy. Those are investments to help modernize our infrastructure. They cut transportation by 15 percent when we have 15 percent unemployment in the construction industry.

Mr. Chairman, the American people rejected the kind of uncompromising, lopsided approach that we see once again presented here in the House. It is the same thing we've seen for the last 3 years, as if we hadn't even had a debate last fall.

In the Democratic alternative, we focus on the main issue right now and in the future. We don't only want strong economic growth in the future; we want to see accelerated job growth right now. We've seen some momentum in the jobs market in the last couple of months, but the Republican budget will put the brakes on that growth.

The chairman of the Budget Committee can quote economists all he wants. There are economists that say it will do this or it won't do this or it will do that. But we have an umpire here in the Congress. We have a referee. It's called the Congressional Budget Office. They're nonpartisan. They're independent.

They tell us if you follow the approach of the Republican budget and keep the sequester in place through the end of this year, that by the end of this year we will have 750,000 fewer Americans working than otherwise. Why would we want to do that?

They tell us that if you take the approach followed by the Republican budget, that economic growth this calendar year will be cut by one- third. Why would we want to do that?

The Congressional Budget Office also tell us that a full half of our deficit this year is as a result of the fact that there are still lots of people looking for work who haven't found a job, and they project that three-quarters of the deficit next year in 2014 is as a result of

the fact that you have too many people who are unemployed. So let's attack the root of the problem right now and help put people back to work rather than put the brakes on the economy. That's what our budget will do.

This calendar year, in addition to preventing the 750,000 lost, we will generate another 450,000 jobs by investing in the economy. Next year, the difference between our plan and our colleagues' plan is 2 million more jobs under our budget proposal.

We believe that you've got to deal with the budget deficit, and at the same time you also need to focus on the jobs deficit to help deal with the budget deficit.

We also reduce the deficit in a steady, sustained way. We do it with balance. We do it with targeted cuts. But we also do it, Mr. Chairman, by eliminating some of the tax breaks and tax expenditures for very high-income individuals.

We heard from Governor Romney and we heard from the chairman of the Budget Committee last fall and this year that there are trillions of dollars of tax expenditures that disproportionately benefit very wealthy people. Under the Republican plan, they say we're going to get rid of some of your tax expenditures for high-income people, but we're going to bring down your top rate. So in the end, the folks at the very top actually get a big windfall.

We say let's eliminate some of those tax breaks for very wealthy people in order to help reduce our deficit so when you combine that savings with targeted cuts, you can reduce it in a balanced way rather than increasing the tax burden on the middle class, which is what their budget will do.

We also want to make sure we keep our commitments to our seniors and not transfer the risk and cost of rising health care costs onto the backs of seniors as the Republican budget does.

We don't reopen the prescription drug doughnut hole, as the Republican budget does, which means that seniors with high prescription drug costs will end up paying thousands more out of pocket over the period of this budget.

In our budget, we make sure that student loan interest rates, which are set to double in July from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, we make sure they don't double. The Republican budget makes sure that they do. That will make college less affordable to millions of students.

Mr. Chairman, let me conclude by talking about the deficit impacts because the Republican budget does hit this--they say they're going to hit this political target of balance in 10 years. But it's a hoax because they say at the same time that their budget balances, that they're repealing all of ObamaCare, all of the Affordable Care Act.

The reality, Mr. Chairman, is they get rid of all the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. So the millions of Americans who would have had more affordable coverage, they won't get it; and the people who will no longer be excluded from getting coverage because of preexisting conditions, they'll make sure that they're denied coverage because of preexisting conditions because they take away the benefits.

But the dirty little secret, Mr. Chairman, is they keep the savings from the Affordable Care Act, from ObamaCare. Without those savings, that budget doesn't balance.

So if we did what our Republican colleagues here say they want to do, which is this instant--repeal ObamaCare--they wouldn't have a budget that was in balance. You don't have to take my word for it. The Heritage Foundation, a very conservative think tank, just issued this statement: ``Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of this budget''--meaning the Republican budget--``is that it keeps the tax increases associated with ObamaCare.'' It keeps those.

It keeps all the savings in Medicare that were achieved as part of the Affordable Care Act where we achieved them by reducing the overpayments to the private insurance companies by changing the incentive structure to focus more on the quality of care rather than the quantity of care.

Do you remember all those Medicare savings that we heard our colleagues demagog in the last election last fall? They keep all those savings, and their balance wouldn't balance without them.

Our budget dramatically cuts the deficit and makes sure that our deficits are not growing faster than the economy, down to 2.4 percent by the end of the window. We stabilize the debt below where the CBO projects today, we stabilize 70 percent GDP. And, yes, we also will balance our budget in the same year that the Republican budget from last year balanced.

If this were just a race to balance the budget first, then people should vote for the Republican study group proposal--4 years. But if your priority is jobs and economic growth, as it should be as part of a measured and balanced approach to reducing the deficit, then you need to support the Democratic alternative.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Ms. Velazquez), the ranking member of the Small Business Committee, who recognizes how important it is to keep our economy moving forward, not backwards.

Mr. Chairman, actually the Republican budget does follow some of our European friends, but follows them in the wrong way.

The strategy places like the U.K. have followed is an austerity approach--immediate deep cuts. And guess what that did? That sent them back into a recession. And again, the umpire around this place, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said that if you take the approach in our Republican colleagues' budget, you'll have 750,000 fewer jobs by the end of this year. That is not a growth strategy. We cannot afford, here in the United States, the European-style austerity plan that is hurting those economies.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Waters), the ranking member on the Financial Services Committee.

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

First, I want to point out again that our Republican colleagues cannot have it both ways. You can't claim you're going to balance in 10 years and claim that you got rid of all of the ObamaCare provisions, because if you look at this chart, you'll see in the year 2023, 10 years from now, they claim a balance of about $7 billion, right there. And yet if you look at this blue section here and the red section, you've got the revenues from the Affordable Care Act, from ObamaCare, and the savings from Medicare that our colleagues campaigned against last fall, but they kept them right in their budget. Without those items, they don't come close to balance. In fact, they're about $400 billion short, in the 10th year, from balance.

We believe you've got to focus on getting the economy moving right now. That's why we call in our budget for getting rid of and replacing the sequester now, so you achieve the same deficit reduction over a longer, more measured, targeted period of time and don't do damage to the economy. And we reduce the deficit in a steady way so that it's way down below the growth in the economy by the 10-year window; and we do it in a way that is balanced, meaning we ask for shared responsibility. So we do it through a combination of cuts, but also we do say, for folks at the very high end of the income ladder, we can get rid of some of those tax expenditures, tax expenditures that our Republican colleagues have talked about, but not simply to reduce the rates for high-income individuals, but to help reduce the deficit as part of a balanced approach.

Now, if you look at the math on the Republicans' tax reform plan, it drops the top rate for folks at the very top from 39 percent all the way to 25 percent. We know that's going to cost about $4 trillion. They say they're going to make all that money up by taking tax expenditures away just from high-income people. The math doesn't work that way. You're going to have to increase taxes on middle-income taxpayers, or you're not going to hit your deficit target, one or the other.

So in the Budget Committee, we Democrats said, look, let's say to the Ways and Means Committee, when you do tax reform, don't raise taxes on middle-income taxpayers. And we had an amendment--I've got it right here--Protect the American Middle Class from Tax Increase. We said, if you're going to do tax reform, at least make the commitment that you're not going to increase taxes on middle-income families in order to finance tax breaks for the folks at the very top. Every one of our Republican colleagues on the committee voted ``no'' on that amendment. The committee's got lots of policy instructions on other stuff, but a policy request statement about not increasing taxes on the middle class, they all voted ``no.''

So we believe we have to reduce our deficits in a smart and vigorous but also balanced way, asking for shared responsibility going forward, not violating our commitments to seniors by reopening the doughnut hole, not by shredding Medicaid, which they cut by over $810 billion, and which would be one-third less in 2023 than it would otherwise be.

And, by the way, Mr. Chairman, I just want to remind people that two- thirds of Medicaid spending goes to seniors and individuals with disabilities.

So it's not a question of whether we reduce our long-term deficits, it's how we do it, and we do it in a balanced way. If this was just a race to be the first to balance, then you should support not the chairman's budget. Support the Republican Study Group, that other budget. But if your priority is to grow jobs and the economy, then you should support the Democratic alternative budget.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, we actually have a kind of a yardstick that we can use to measure whether these budget approaches have a balanced approach, meaning that they ask for shared responsibility. You have the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission report, and they said we should reduce our deficits in a steady way through a combination of revenue, but also targeted cuts.

This Republican budget is totally lopsided. It provides tax windfalls to folks at the very top, and balances the budget at the expense of everybody else.

What we've proposed, actually, when you take into account the $1.5 trillion in cuts we made over the last couple of years and the $700 billion in revenue from January, and what we have in this budget, we actually have a higher ratio of cuts to revenue than that bipartisan Simpson-Bowles plan when you look at everything that's embedded in it. So that's measured against a bipartisan approach, and that gets us to where we need to be without hitting all the other priorities we have in our country.

With that, let me yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), the distinguished ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, who has looked at these numbers backwards and forwards, and I look forward to his comments.

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

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Do you know what's wrong, Mr. Chairman? What's wrong is to pretend to the American people that you can have it all ways. What's wrong is to pretend that you've got a budget that's in balance in 10 years and pretend that you're getting rid of all of the Affordable Care Act, all of ObamaCare. What's wrong is going around the country demagoguing $715 billion in Medicare savings, which we achieve by ending overpayments to private insurance companies and Medicare, and then using it to balance your budget and then saying, We didn't use it to balance our budget. That's what people don't like, is people trying to have it all ways.

We have taken an approach to steadily and rapidly reduce our deficits in a way that doesn't interfere and hurt economic and job growth right now. And we do it in a balanced way. And what I find astounding is to hear our Republican colleagues talk about the deficit and debt in one breath and then talk about all those tax breaks and expenditures that disproportionately benefit very wealthy people in the other breath and then say they won't close one single tax loophole for wealthy people for the purpose of reducing the deficit--not one dime in their budget for that purpose. And yet they're willing to hit Medicaid to the tune of $110 billion. They're willing to hit the food and nutrition program by over $100 billion. They're ready to hit transportation funding by over 15 percent in this budget window. And yet they're not willing to close one of those more than $4 trillion in tax loopholes to reduce the deficit. I think that's wrong.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Pennsylvania, a member of the Budget Committee (Ms. Schwartz).

Mr. Chairman, I would just point out to my colleagues that the Affordable Care Act, with the reforms it made to Medicare, we extended the life of the Medicare trust fund as part of that effort going forward.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

That means, as in your budget, that we will help reduce the deficit by whatever amount it was. But what we do not do in our budget is fund tax breaks for folks at the very top by raising them on folks in the middle.

Listen, let me say just one other thing here, Mr. Chairman. We've had four balanced budgets in this country in the last 40 years. It wasn't under President Reagan. It wasn't under the first President Bush. It wasn't under the second President Bush. It was 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001. It was under President Clinton. And then President Bush came in and did a big tax cut in 2001, putting us out of balance for a long period of time.

During the period of time when the budget was in balance the last four times out of 40 years, the revenue that was coming in was higher than it is in any year in the Republican budget that's before us now. What that tells you is that their budget approach is trying to seek balance on the backs of everybody else by really cutting into those important investments that have helped power our economy by violating important commitments to seniors and, in the end, by raising taxes on middle-income people. Why else would they not have joined Democrats in sending a policy statement to the Ways and Means Committee that says: When you go about eliminating tax preferences, don't hit middle-income taxpayers in the process.

In fact, Mr. Chairman, if you look at the mortgage interest deduction, for example, the mortgage interest deduction really helps middle-income people--homeowners. So in addition to saying: Ways and Means Committee, when you do tax reform, don't hit middle-income taxpayers, we specifically said: Don't take away the mortgage interest deduction for middle-income taxpayers. Again, all our Republican colleagues voted against that.

They've been talking about tax reform for 3 years now. We've never seen a piece of paper from them as to how they would do it, which is why we wanted to make sure that they don't do it in certain ways that help middle-income people. But no, can't do that.

So let's make sure that as we address our deficit issues, we do it in a way that calls for shared responsibilities, not another round of tax breaks for the wealthy on the backs of everybody else.

I now yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore), one of our distinguished members of the Budget Committee.

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

Mr. Chairman, just to be very clear on what the Senate Democratic plan does and what the House Democratic plan does with respect to revenue, again, we heard from Governor Romney and others last year that there are about $4 trillion in these distortions and preferences in the Tax Code that help very wealthy people. What we say is, we should get out some of that clutter, some of those preferences, and use some of that to help reduce the deficit. And we say at the

same time when you do tax reform, don't touch middle-income taxpayers, and when we asked our Republican colleagues to give us that assurance in the form of an amendment in the Budget Committee, they all voted ``no.''

So, yes, we think that you can eliminate some of the tax breaks and preferences that Mr. McClintock just talked about, and you can use some of them to reduce the deficit. But the Republican budget won't use one dime of those to help reduce the deficit.

I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington State who is both on the Budget Committee and on the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. McDermott.

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

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

We heard earlier about the United States becoming Spain and others have compared it to Greece. The reality is that right now the danger is that we follow the European austerity measures that we've seen do damage to economies like that in the U.K., and that's what our Republican colleagues are calling for in their budget.

Yes, we need to reduce our long-term deficits, but we also need to make sure we keep the facts straight. And in the Republican budget pamphlet this year, they show this big tidal wave of red ink, which I believe the chairman showed earlier today, that's based on an outdated Congressional Budget Office analysis that doesn't take into account much of the deficit reduction we've done over the last couple of years, including the revenue in the fiscal cliff agreement. That's why the organization FactCheck.org said that the Republican budget proposal exaggerates future growth of the Federal debt in a chart contained in their newly released budget plan.

So we need to keep this in perspective, and that's what we do in our budget: we focus on economic growth now and economic growth in the future. And, yes, because of the reduction in the rate of increase in health care costs and using, actually, an assumption that the discretionary parts of our budget and mandatory we assume grow faster than the chairman asked the CBO to project, our budget comes into balance the same year as the Republican budget last year came into balance, but we do it without balancing it on the backs of other essential priorities that are important to the American people.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to a terrific new member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan).

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

Let's start with taxes. What the Republican budget does is provide a windfall tax break for folks at the very top. People listening can do the math. You're dropping the top tax rate from 39 percent to 25 percent right off the bat. That's about a cut of one-third in the top rate for millionaires. That's a huge loss of revenue.

How do they make up that revenue? Well, if you're going to really make sure you don't increase the deficit, math tells you you're going to increase taxes on middle-income people to help pay for those tax breaks, which is exactly why we offered an amendment in committee saying, okay, Ways and Means Committee, when you do tax reform, don't raise taxes on middle income folks. They voted against that. There are lots of other provisions in the Republican budget that provide guidance to other committees, but they didn't want to provide them that guidance.

So the point is that they provide tax breaks to the folks at the very top while leaving middle-income folks vulnerable; but on net, they do not close one tax loophole out of those four trillions to reduce the deficit. Do you

know how we know that, Mr. Chairman? Because their revenue line is constant with the baseline. So Mr. Price is just dead wrong when he says they close tax loopholes to increase revenue for the purpose of reducing the deficit. It's not in there. It's just dead wrong.

Now let's get the record straight about what the Republican budget does to different groups that Mr. Price referenced:

Seniors. Here is what the AARP, the largest organization representing seniors, says about what the Republican plan will do:

The chairman's proposal fails to address the high costs of

health care and, instead, shifts costs on to seniors and

future retirees. Removing the Medicare guarantee of

affordable coverage seniors have contributed to through a

lifetime of hard work is not the answer.

That's the AARP.

The Medicaid cuts. There are $810 billion in cuts. Again, I'll remind people that two-thirds of that goes to seniors and people with disabilities. Here is what the nonpartisan, independent Congressional Budget Office said would be the impact of those kinds of cuts:

It means, because they block-grant the program to States

with a lot less money, States would need to increase their

spending on these programs, make considerable cutbacks in

them or both. Cutbacks might involve the reduced eligibility

for Medicaid and CHIP--that's children's health--the coverage

of fewer services, lower payments to providers, or increased

cost sharing by beneficiaries, all of which would reduce

access to care.

So whether it's in Medicare or in Medicaid, we violate commitments to seniors in this budget.

He talked about kids and education. Their budget would allow in July the doubling of the student loan interest rate from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, making college less affordable. Our budget makes sure there is not that doubling.

Also, we had an earlier conversation with Ms. Moore about the impact of people in poverty. I'll just give you one example:

In the category of the budget that helps with the Women, Infants, and Children program--this is the program that helps pregnant women and women with very young children get nutrition assistance--they double the sequester cut. Then they tell us it's not going to have any impact--not on that and not on doubling the sequester cut on the National Institutes of Health and the research they do. Somehow, magically, all that will be funded even though you double the sequester cut--more than double it--in that category of the budget.

So their budget, while providing these windfall tax breaks to the folks at the very top, and their budget, while slowing down economic growth in the economy right now, also means we undermine other important priorities in our country.

I would now like to yield 2 minutes to a new, distinguished member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman).

Mr. Chairman, just to be clear in terms of the Democratic proposals, if you take our budget proposal here together with the work that we have done over the last couple of years, which reduces spending by over $1.5 trillion, $700 billion in revenue, take that all together, means $4 trillion in deficit reduction over that amount, over the period of the window, and we do it in a balanced way. We don't do it the same time we are providing windfall tax breaks to folks at the very top. We don't do it on the backs of other important priorities. We do it by growing the economy and asking for shared responsibility, so we have shared prosperity in this country.

I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia, a member of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Johnson.

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

I think Mr. Ribble made some very, very important points for all of us in this debate, and that is: the reason you see spending rising in both budgets is primarily because we have so many more baby boomers becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security. In fact, what this chart shows is that, over the 10-year window, you are going to see about a 33 percent increase in the number of people eligible for Medicare and about a 30 percent increase in the number of people who are eligible for Social Security.

So what we say in our budget is that, if we are going to meet our commitments to these seniors but also reduce our budget deficit, we have to do it in a balanced way. Because if we meet these commitments and at the same time are trying to reduce our deficit, one way to do it is the way the Republican budget does: to more than double the sequester cut in all the areas that are important to growing our economy, our infrastructure investment, our kids' education, science and research. They also cut Medicaid, which affects a lot of those seniors on Medicare. About 20 percent of those seniors are also on Medicaid.

But it is at the end of that 10-year window that our Republican colleagues then move to their voucher plan, premium support--I don't care what you call it. The only way you are going to achieve any savings compared to the baseline number, CBO baseline that the chairman showed you, the only way you are going to do it is if you are capping the amount you are going to get so that seniors have to eat the costs and take the risks of rising health care.

There is a better way to address that issue, and that is the way we approach it in our budget. And that is to build on the kind of reforms that we made in the Affordable Care Act in ObamaCare, which have helped and contributed to reducing the rapid rise in per capita health care costs and which, as I pointed out earlier, our Republican colleagues included in their own budget.

So, yes, we have to deal with these drivers of costs, including health care. But the way we propose to do it is not by transferring or offloading those rising health care costs on the backs of the seniors, but by moving Medicare away from a strictly fee-for-service system toward one where we reward the value of care over the volume of care. And that has achieved significant savings, and it has done so without any negative impact to Medicare beneficiaries. So very different approaches to this issue.

Mr. Ribble pointed out there is spending going up that is to meet these commitments. But if you don't take a balanced approach like we do, you can only address those issues by undermining other very important national priorities, priorities that have always had bipartisan support in the past.

I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas, a member of the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Green.

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

I just want to respond to a few of the comments from the chairman with respect to Medicare and health care costs.

As we indicated earlier, we've seen a dramatic slowing in the per capita interest in health care cost. That's a good thing. That's, in part, we believe, a result of changes in the Affordable Care Act and, as a result of that, the so-called Independent Advisory Board that our colleagues misleadingly refer to as a bunch of bureaucrats won't even have any job to do for at least 10 years, probably longer.

Now, if health care costs per capita start rising more quickly, then their task--and this is a group of health experts and others--their task is to propose a way to reduce those health care costs, and they're specifically instructed not to have a negative impact on beneficiaries.

And by the way, it specifically says, if Congress has a better way to do it, go for it. That's what the law says. We think that that's a better approach than handing everything over to insurance companies.

And the Republican plan to give seniors a voucher, premium support--I don't care what you call it, it's bad news because seniors will be getting this thing, but the value of that thing doesn't keep up with the rising health care costs.

Now, the chairman mentioned prescription drug part D. It came in under projected cost. One reason was you had more generic drugs on the entire market, not just the Medicare market. But the other, major reason was, guess what? There were 25 percent fewer people enrolled in part D. So you had fewer participants and so, obviously, it costs less. Twenty-five percent.

Now, it's simply wrong to say that the Republican voucher plan for Medicare is like part D prescription drug, or like the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan, which we've heard about many times before, because the difference is, and it goes to the core of this issue, both those plans, part D and the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan, have provisions that ensure that the premium that is provided by the government, or Medicare, keeps up on a percentage basis with rising health care costs. That's why it's called premium support, and that's why the Republican plan is not premium support because it does not keep up with rising health care costs, if they're going to claim the savings it makes.

And here's a chart that illustrates this. This is current Medicare. Seniors are putting in a certain amount, and they're guaranteed a certain percentage of support from Medicare.

Here's the plan for Federal employees and Members of Congress: Members of Congress and Federal employees put in around 25 percent and the program picks up the other 75 percent. And as costs go up, the Federal Government still picks up 75 percent. Here's what happens with a voucher program where the value of what you get doesn't keep up with the percentage rise in health care costs. You, the beneficiary, the senior, pay more and more. And that's the only way it can work if you're at the same time going to show that congressional budget chart that shows all that spending out into the future. The only way you can bring that down under the plan is to cap the value of premiums. And that's not premium support; that's a voucher. And that's the end of the Medicare guarantee.

I now yield 2 minutes to a great new member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

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

It's extraordinary how many times we have to point out that the Republican budget before us today contains the Medicare savings that were first demagogued last fall during the Presidential campaign. We hear them attacked here on the floor of the House by our Republican colleagues, and yet they're in the Republican budget. In fact, they're in this Republican budget. And what's more, their budget wouldn't balance without them, which is why they cannot have it both ways and claim their budget is in balance and they're getting rid of ObamaCare.

Now, while they're keeping the savings, they are getting rid of all the important benefits in the Affordable Care Act that will provide more affordable health care, which will make sure people can't be denied coverage because of preexisting conditions, will make sure that kids can stay on their parents' insurance policy until they're age 26.

For 3 years in a row, we've had a bill from our Republican colleagues called

Repeal and Replace: repeal ObamaCare, but replace it with something else that provides affordable care. Three years. We've never seen replace. There is no replace. You can look through the Republican budget. There's no replace. Just like for 3 years they tell us they've got a tax reform plan that's going to magically provide these big tax cuts for people and not hit middle-income taxpayers. Not one piece of paper out of the Ways and Means Committee in 3 years.

So, Mr. Chairman, it's a little tiresome to continue to hear people criticize savings that we achieve without touching beneficiaries, which our colleagues include in their budget and which extended the life of the Medicare trust fund by more than 8 years.

I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to somebody who knows a lot about the importance of Medicare and Social Security, the gentlelady from Illinois, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Ms. Schakowsky.

Mr. Chairman, I now yield 2 minutes to another terrific new member of the Budget Committee, the gentlelady from New Mexico (Ms. Lujan Grisham).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Vermont, who's been very focused on these budget issues, Mr. Welch.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, under our budget proposal, the deficit is dropping rapidly, but we also address the jobs deficit so that we make sure more people get back to work. With respect to the Medicare trust fund, I would just point out the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, extended the life of the hospital trust fund by 8 years. And if Republicans did what they said they want to do, which is repeal it, they would shorten the life of the trust fund to 2016. But even though they don't want to tell us, they apparently have kept that in.

I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut who has worked so hard to make sure that college is affordable to students in this country, Mr. Courtney.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond to a couple of things that were just said.

The first is that when President Obama was sworn in--in fact, before he even put his hand on the Bible a little more than 4 years ago, we were losing over 700,000 jobs every month. The economy was actually spiraling downward at a faster rate than it was at the time of the Great Depression. And thanks to the resilience of the American people and the emergency actions taken by the President and others, we stopped the free fall, we turned the corner and there have been 36 consecutive months of private sector job growth, more than 6.4 million jobs created.

We didn't get any help from our Republican colleagues when we had to make tough decisions to prevent the total collapse of the economy. Now that we've seen some momentum in the job market, we have a Republican budget that's going to put the brakes on that growth. That's according to the Congressional Budget Office. By the way, their budget includes the assumption of those continued sequestration levels into the next year.

Let's talk about China for a minute. I got a letter the other day from the CEO of a major biotech company. Here's what he said. He said that over

the last couple of years because of the reduction in our national investment in science and research, he laid off 1,000 people. And because of the continuing sequester, they've imposed a hiring freeze right now. Those are jobs that now will not be created that would have been otherwise if we hadn't had the Republican approach to the sequester.

You know the real kick? I heard Mr. Duffy talking about China. They're hiring people in China. Not because of lower Chinese wages, but because China has decided to make science and health care funding a national priority. In other words, the Chinese are copying the secrets to our success, things that help our economy grow, things that are slashed in the Republican budget. Did I say ``slashed''? Yeah. Because they cut that portion of the budget by more than two times the sequester. That's a fact.

If we're talking about competing with the Chinese or the Indians or the Europeans or anybody else who is out there, one of our global competitors, let's not allow them to borrow the secrets of our success while we're ignoring them here at home.

I now yield 2 minutes to a terrific new Member of the Budget Committee, someone who has been focused on and leading a lot of our anti-poverty efforts, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

I yield the gentlelady another 30 seconds.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The President has been crystal clear. His top priority is to grow the economy, to put more Americans back to work, to strengthen the middle class, to have rising middle class wages and upward mobility in this country. By attacking the jobs deficit, we can also bring down the budget deficit because we know from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that more than half of our deficit this year is due to the fact that you still have a lot of people out of work who are looking for work, which is why it's so counterproductive to adopt the approach that our Republican colleagues do.

By not replacing the sequester, the Congressional Budget Office tells us we will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs just by the end of this calendar year, and those jobs are the most important things to be available to help strengthen the middle class and lift people out of poverty. But in lifting people out of poverty, it's also important to provide a little bit of support that they can stand on as they climb that ladder of opportunity. Unfortunately, this budget cuts into a lot of those legs on that stool of support, and nobody understands this issue better than our colleague.

So she may respond, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Lee).

I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentlelady.

Mr. Chairman, let's be very clear. If you give States one-third of the amount of money that

they are currently getting from Medicaid and ask them to do the same job, which is what this budget would do just 10 years from now, and increasingly down that path, you will, as the nonpartisan, independent Congressional Budget Office said ``reduce access to care.'' That's the bottom line.

With respect to the voucher program, premium support, again, I don't really care what label you attach to it; the impact is the same. If you want to achieve the out-year budget savings that our colleagues claim to achieve, you've got to put a cap on that amount, which is what their plan would do and which makes it entirely different than the plan we have for Members of Congress and Federal employees, and the plan that most people in the private sector have as well.

As this red line shows, the amount of support you would get would drop dramatically relative to rising health care costs, and that's why we don't call it premium support because it doesn't provide support.

I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlelady.

Mr. Chairman, let me just say a word about the health care provided in the Affordable Care Act. That means that you can stay on your parents' policy until you are 26, so if you have a terrible accident the family is not bankrupted. That means that if you have preexisting conditions, you are not denied coverage by the insurance companies.

We keep hearing, ``repeal all those benefits and some day we will get around replacing them.'' We have heard that for 3 years. There is nothing in this budget about replacing.

I think the majority leader asked the right question: Which budget grows the economy? And I would just like to read from what the majority leader said on the floor of this House last year about the sequester. Here is what Mr. Cantor said:

Under the sequester, unemployment would soar from its

current level up to 9 percent, setting back any progress the

economy has made.

Then he cites a study showing that 200,000 Virginian jobs are on the line.

Well, guess what? The Republican plan leaves in place the deep sequester cuts. That is why by the end of this year we will see 750,000 fewer jobs, including a lot fewer jobs in Virginia, as Mr. Cantor acknowledged.

Why in the world we would want to do that when we have people struggling to find work, I don't know. Because in the Democratic budget, we replace the sequester so that we save those jobs. In fact, we invest more in jobs going forward.

On the tax issue--here is a headline from the other day in The Washington Post--a nonpartisan group did a study: ``GOP Tax Cuts Would Benefit Very Wealthy.'' And that is the bottom line. Tax breaks for the folks at the very top--all those loopholes we talked about closing--not one loophole closure to help reduce the deficit in a balanced way.

I would now like to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee, who has been working on these issues and working for working families, Mr. Cohen.

I yield the gentleman another 30 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, I now yield 2 minutes to a terrific new member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a new Member of Congress, who is on the Veterans' Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano).

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Con. Res. 25, currently under consideration.

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

Mr. Chairman, today I rise to bring forward and present the budget resolution for fiscal year 2014. We believe that we owe the American people a responsible, balanced budget, and that is precisely what we are bringing to the floor today. Our budget balances the budget within 10 years, and it does so without raising taxes. Balancing the budget will help us foster a healthier economy, and it will help us create jobs.

In fact, two leading economists at Stanford University today released a study analyzing our budget and its positive effects on the economy and jobs. In the first year, they said it would, ``boost the economy immediately,'' increasing growth of our economy by a whole percentage point, which translates into about 500,000 jobs right away. That's about $1,500 in extra

take-home pay for families who are struggling to get by today.

By the end of the budget window, according to these economists at Stanford University, it would add 3 percent of economic growth to the economy. That's 1.7 million jobs in 1 year alone and about $4,000 more in take-home pay because of higher economic growth. More take-home pay means more control, more freedom, and more prosperity for families.

We are not simply here to balance the budget because we like looking at clean spreadsheets. It is not even an accounting exercise. The reason we are balancing the budget is to improve people's lives. It is to bring needed health to the economy and to bring certainty to families and businesses so they can get ahead.

We know that a debt crisis is coming, Mr. Chairman. We know that it's coming because we've watched what other countries have done when they continue to kick the can down the road and ignore the tough choices they need to make to get our fiscal house in order. We're doing that.

Now, what are we trying to do specifically in our budget? We want to restore opportunity. We want to repair our broken safety nets so that they're designed to get people out of poverty on to lives of self- sufficiency by reforming our welfare programs. We want to make sure that the seniors who are relying on programs as important as Medicare actually get the benefits they organized their lives around. We want to make sure that the next generation, those of us who follow our parents into retirement, actually have a Medicare program we can count on. And we have those bipartisan reforms here.

Everybody needs to pitch in, and everybody needs to propose a solution to our problem because, Mr. Chairman, if we don't tackle this fiscal problem in America, it will tackle us.

Now, to their credit, the Democrats on the Budget Committee are bringing a budget to the floor. To their credit, the Progressive Caucus is bringing a budget to the floor. To their credit, the Black Caucus is bringing a budget to the floor. To their credit, the Senate, finally, for the first time in 4 years, is bringing up a budget.

Budgets are about choices. The problem we have is not now that they're doing a budget--that's good news; that's great--it's what's in their budget. If you take a look at our budget--as I mentioned, our budget balances the budget. We believe a balanced plan is one that actually balances the budget. There is not another budget that's being offered here other than the Study Committee budget that actually balances the budget, other points notwithstanding.

Now, why do we balance the budget? Because we don't want our children to be drowning in debt. We want to make sure that this sea of red ink that the CBO is telling us is coming, we pay off our debt and give our kids a debt-free nation. That's what we do.

Take a look at the other budgets that are being offered. Let's take a look at the Senate Democrats'. That has a tax increase that's about $1.5 trillion; that has a spending increase of about $4.8 trillion off of our budget. If you take a look at the House Democrats', that's a $1.2 trillion tax increase, with a spending increase of about $4.896 trillion off of this budget. If you take a look at the Black Caucus budget, the CBC budget, that's a tax increase of $2.8 trillion, with a spending increase of $5.7 trillion, only to be outdone by the Progressive Caucus budget. That is a $5.683 trillion tax increase with an $8.698 trillion spending increase in their budget.

Taking more money from hardworking families to fuel more spending in Washington is not going to solve our budget crisis, is not going to balance our budget. It's more of the same. And more of the same means we have a debt crisis. When we have a debt crisis, everybody gets hurt. The people who are on the safety net, the seniors who have already retired, they're the ones who get hurt the first and the worst in a debt crisis.

This is a responsible plan. It's a plan for economic growth. It's a plan for tax reform. It's a plan to open up our energy stores that we have here so that we can be energy independent. We have vast amounts of energy reserves that we need to tap so we can put people to work, bring down gas prices, and stretch paychecks further.

We've got to control our spending appetite. We've got to reform programs like Medicare so they're solvent. We've got to reform our safety net so that it works to get people on their feet. That's what this budget does.

In a nutshell, instead of spending $46 trillion over the next 10 years as we are currently poised to spend, we spend $41 trillion. Instead of growing spending on average at 5 percent a year, we grow it at 3.4 percent a year.

So for all of the predictions of doom and gloom and how evil and terrible and horrible our budget is, it increases spending every year by 3.4 percent a year instead of 5 percent a year. The difference is we balance the budget. The difference is we let families keep more of their own take-home pay. The difference is we make sure our kids inherit a debt-free future. The difference is we do what's necessary to create a healthy economy, more take-home pay, faster economic growth, and better jobs. That's why we are here, to balance the budget.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to say the gentleman from Maryland is right: yes, we do balance the budget. Guilty, and proud to be guilty of that. We think balancing the budget is important.

More to the point, in the revenues we are saying we don't like this current Tax Code, so we can raise the same amount of revenue as the government with a better tax system, one that is pro-growth, one that creates jobs. That is precisely what the Ways and Means Committee is doing. That does not include the ObamaCare taxes, but it includes replacing the current revenue code that hurts jobs and hurts economic growth.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 3 minutes to a senior member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett).

Mr. Chairman, at this time, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to respond to my friend from Maryland.

He keeps saying that the CBO says this plan is going to cost 750,000 jobs. That's an analysis done on the sequester starting with looking at calendar year January through calendar year December. Well, where are we? This budget doesn't deal with fiscal year 2013. It starts in October. So he's using a comparison of a statistic that they use, the same kind of economic short-term analysis they used to say that the stimulus would create millions of new jobs. They're using the same kind of analysis and say the sequester will cost these jobs, and it's a cut that isn't even in this budget.

More to the point, the Senate Democratic budget has the same appropriations number we have in our budget for fiscal year 2014. The point is what the CBO does say over the long term, if you

achieve this kind of deficit reduction that we are, a million new jobs a year by the end of the budget window--a 1.7 percent faster economic growth. CBO says that about this budget, about achieving this kind of deficit reduction. Stanford economists. You can create a million jobs a year. So you're seeing a consistent theme here: cutting spending and growing the economy and creating jobs.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell), a senior member of the Budget Committee.

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

So here's what my friend is saying, and I have three problems with what my friend from Maryland said. I have a problem with what he said in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end of what he said about all of what is happening here.

Here's his plan for economic growth: borrow more money and go and spend that money. Remember the stimulus? They're saying do it again. Then raise taxes. That's going to help the economy. Oh, and it's a balanced plan.

Here's the problem: their balanced plan doesn't balance the budget. We actually asked the CBO--they're claiming they will balance the budget in 2040. The CBO doesn't verify that. They're having to make assumptions that the CBO won't even back up to claim that they can somehow balance the budget.

But when I look at their deficits in their budget, yeah, they get the deficits going down in the first few years, and then it starts going back up. How on Earth do you tax $1.2 trillion, net increase spending, and claim you're balancing the budget?

Look, we've been trying this economic program for a while. We tried the borrowing and the spending. That didn't work. We just hit the economy with a $1.6 trillion tax increase. The

economy's not roaring right now. And what they're saying is let's do that all over again.

We are saying, fix the Tax Code. Replace it with a pro-growth tax system that helps small businesses, that helps job creators, that helps families. Get government spending appetite under control. The government is supposed to be spending 5 percent a year, on average, over the next 10 years. That's too much. That's more than the family budget gets. We say bring it down to 3.4 percent a year.

And so when you take a look at all of the smoke and mirrors, all of the claims, none of the Democratic budgets that are being brought to the floor here ever, ever balance the budget. How is that a balanced plan?

Balancing the budget is what every family does. Balancing the budget is what every business does. Balancing the budget is what every local government does. Surely our Federal Government can do this.

And one of the key ingredients to growing this economy, to making American businesses, big and small, competitive so that they can create jobs and give people more take-home pay, is to reform our tax system.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Camp), the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, who is in charge of reforming our tax system.

I yield the gentleman an extra minute.

I yield 3 minutes to a distinguished member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Rokita).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

The gentlelady from Pennsylvania said that we're ending Medicare as we know it. I've got news for you: ObamaCare ended Medicare as we know it.

And what our budget does is it takes those statements from Medicare and makes sure it stays in Medicare, that it doesn't go fund another program. Stop the raid of Medicare, make sure that those savings, as the gentleman says, are necessary and worthwhile, and stay with Medicare to make it more solvent, to extend the life of the trust fund and not double-count it, to raid it to spend on ObamaCare.

Loopholes. I enjoy this conversation, because what we keep hearing is: close loopholes for the purpose of deficit reduction. What it really means is: take more money and spend it in Washington. We're saying: close loopholes to lower tax rates for everybody.

The problem with our Tax Code is it's not fair. If you have access, if you have good clout, you can get a loophole in the Code and pay lower taxes. If you're a family sitting home in Janesville, Wisconsin, you're paying whatever tax rate. We are saying the person or the business that has the same amount of income should pay the same kind of tax rate.

With that, I'd like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Williams), a member of the Budget Committee.

Will the gentleman yield?

Does that mean that money is not going to fund ObamaCare, and does that mean there's a $716 billion hole in the funding of ObamaCare?

Mr. Chairman, I think the reference to Plato reveals a mindset that the country ought to be run by a handful of philosopher kings instead of the people.

I yield myself 10 seconds to simply say this budget, this plundering, evil, cutting budget increases spending, on average, 3.4 percent a year instead of 5 percent a year.

With that, I'd like to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to say that was pretty good scaremongering if I ever heard any.

Like I said, the whole purpose of balancing the budget is to prevent a crisis from happening in the first place. What happened to Europe? They kicked the can down the road. They spent more than they could take in. They borrowed until they couldn't borrow at affordable rates, and then a crisis hit. We know that's where we're headed.

Look, the federal budget is growing at about 5 percent a year, and the family budget is growing at about 2\1/2\ percent a year. We want to get the family budget on course with the federal budget or vice versa.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Tennessee, a member of the Budget Committee and the Ways and Means Committee, Mrs. Black.

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to say I simply dispute my friend from Wisconsin's interpretation.

This is the chart the gentleman from Maryland was talking about. Guess where we got this chart from? The Congressional Budget Office. It's the most recent numbers they've given us. Will they give us new numbers this summer? Yes. And guess what? It's still going to show a whole bunch of red ink. We can't wish away this debt problem. One year of spending and $3 for every $2 that you're taking in, you've got a problem. We've got to deal with that.

We know we're giving the next generation an inferior standard of living. If we keep down this path, we will have a crisis, yes. That's not fearmongering. The gentleman was talking about the fiscal commission. Erskine Bowles, President Clinton's chief of staff, says this debt is a cancer on society, that we will have a crisis. The problem is: there are Democrats who agree with the facts; it's not the Democrats who are writing these budgets, though. That's our problem.

Mr. Chairman, we're going to have to come together sooner or later to deal with this. That's why I want to yield 4 minutes to the vice chair of the Budget Committee, a gentleman who's offered lots of wisdom on this committee, the doctor from Georgia (Mr. Price).

I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman.

I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Chairman, another chart. The red line shows where spending is going. These are Congressional Budget Office numbers. The green line shows our historic revenues. The blue line shows the additional revenues that President Obama has called for. He has already gotten a big chunk of this--he just got $617 billion--but even if we got all the tax increases that President Obama and his allies in Congress are calling for, it wouldn't even pay for a fifth of all the deficit spending that's coming.

This is where spending is going. We are spending ourselves into a debt crisis. We will never, ever balance the budget if we keep spending growing at the pace it's growing right now. We have to do something about this because, if we don't, our families will receive a bankrupt country; economic growth will slow; and our kids will be guaranteed a diminished future. We owe it to our countrymen, to our economy, to our kids to get this under control.

With that, I would like to yield 3 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee, also a member of the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Nunnelee).

There are too many points to refute, so I won't bother trying.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Ribble.

That was very entertaining.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

There are two ways to deal with Medicare essentially. And I think most people would agree, Medicare has a big problem. It's going bankrupt. And the gentleman from Maryland talked about demographics and health inflation.

ObamaCare changed Medicare as we know it. ObamaCare puts a board of 15 unelected bureaucrats in charge of Medicare. These bureaucrats, by law, are given the assignment to require Medicare cuts each and every year to hit the targets that will lead to denied care for current seniors.

We disagree with that. We think patients and their doctors should be in charge of their health care. We believe in choice and competition so that seniors have guaranteed coverage options to make sure that they can have a plan that best meets their needs.

Now, is this some pie in the sky theory?

I yield myself an additional 1 minute.

Let me show you a chart.

By the way, a voucher is, you get a check and then you go buy something. No one's proposing that. It's a good poll-tested word.

Premium support is a bipartisan solution, the only bipartisan idea offered on how to save Medicare. It's how the prescription drug law works today.

When the prescription drug law was passed, it was expected to cost about $100 billion when we began, on an annual basis. What happened to the actual cost?

It came down 41 percent below cost projections. Let me say that again. The prescription drug law came in 41 percent below cost projections. Name me a government program that comes in 41 percent below cost.

Why did this one do that?

I'll tell you why. Seniors got to choose the plan that meets their needs.

The plans, the drug-providing plans, had to compete against each other for the seniors' business. They compete, so they lowered their prices, they improved their quality. Customer satisfaction is at an all-time high. And lo and behold, costs went down.

I yield myself 1 minute.

I enjoy the back-and-forth on Medicare. Let's not forget that under our proposal there's no cap on Medicare growth for current seniors. We don't have the cap like ObamaCare does. ObamaCare caps Medicare and then has this board of 15 bureaucrats decide how to affect current seniors to make it live within its cap to its price controls. We don't do that. We say leave Medicare alone. People like my mom organized their lives around this program and retired on it. Don't change a thing. Don't put some cap with bureaucrats price-controlling it. The premium support we're talking about, that's for future seniors. And if you're poor, if you're sick, if you're middle income, you get a lot more subsidy--total coverage for poor people--than the wealthy.

I keep hearing all this talk about wealthy. We say the wealthy should pay more for their own premiums than everybody else. That helps us save Medicare for the next generation. These are ideas that actually have bipartisan support--the only bipartisan idea on how to save Medicare versus the rationing from the IPAB board.

With that, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Tennessee, a member of the Budget Committee and a member of the Commerce Committee, Mrs. Blackburn.

I yield myself 1 minute.

The gentleman is correct in saying that the savings that are in the Affordable Care Act for Medicare we apply back to Medicare. That's correct. We think that money should stay in Medicare to extend its solvency and not be raided from Medicare to spend on ObamaCare.

He says we keep the savings but we don't keep any of the benefits. President Obama said that premiums would go down by $2,500 if we passed ObamaCare. They've gone up by $3,000, on average. I don't call that a benefit.

The costs of the bill have gone from $938 billion to $1.88 trillion. It's a budget buster. It doesn't pay for itself. I don't think that's a benefit.

Next year, young people are expected to see their premiums go up by 145 percent to 189 percent. I don't think that's a benefit either.

So, yes, we don't want these benefits. We don't think turning Medicare over to a board of 15 unelected bureaucrats to cut it in ways that will surely lead to denied care for current seniors is a benefit. That's why I want to yield 2 minutes--well, that's not why, but I also want to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Stutzman), a former member of the Budget Committee.

I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), a member of the Budget Committee and also the Appropriations Committee.

I yield myself just 30 seconds to say that austerity is what we're trying to prevent from happening. That's the irony of this debate.

Austerity is what happens after the debt crisis hits. Austerity is what is happening in Europe. Austerity is cranking up taxes, slowing down your economy and cutting benefits on senior citizens after they've retired. That's what austerity is. That's what they call it.

We're preventing that. We're preempting that. The goal of this budget is a reasonable plan to balance the budget, to grow the economy, and to create more take-home pay so families can prosper.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to a new member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Rice).

I yield myself 30 seconds to say the interest rate cliff in student loans was put in law by the Democrats in the first place.

If we bring legislation to the floor that is paid for to deal with it like we did last year, I would assume we have every reason to believe that we'll pass it.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to a new member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Duffy).

Mr. Chairman, let me yield myself 1 minute.

Look, I very much appreciate the gentlelady from California and where she comes from on this issue. I believe her heart is in the right place. We, too, want to make sure that we get rid of poverty. We, too, want to make sure that people get on with their lives, get on that ladder of life so that they can get out of poverty and on to good lives. That's our aim here.

Now, here is what we see. We have spent trillions of dollars on this war on poverty. We're spending $1 trillion a year at all levels of government to fight poverty, and what have we gotten for this? We have 46 million people in poverty. The poverty rates in America are at a generational high. So rather than measure our poverty-fighting efforts by how much money we throw at programs, by inputs, why don't we start thinking about measuring it by outputs, by how many people we are helping to get out of poverty? By any measurement, this isn't working.

I yield myself another minute to say that we need to rethink our premise here. Are we simply perpetuating poverty by treating its symptoms; or shouldn't we look at what has worked in the past--what communities are doing to make a difference--and get behind those ideas?

Let's fight poverty by taking the root causes of poverty in order to break the cycle of poverty and to get people out of poverty. Those are the ideas that we are talking about here. This is not a numbers thing. This is not a budget-cutting exercise. This is taking those ideas that were so successful in reducing child poverty in the welfare reform and applying them to the other programs that have not been reformed.

Giving States more flexibility, having work requirements and job- training requirements and block grants and time limits, what did that do? All the predictions of doom and gloom were there, but we lowered child poverty. We helped get single moms back to job-training programs so they could get back to work. This is why we reform job-training programs. This is why we call for reforming our safety net--because our goal, like her goal, is to get people on with their lives so they can reach their potential.

With that, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Stewart).

Mr. Chairman, Federal spending rises each and every year by 3.4 percent under this budget instead of 5 percent.

With that, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Hartzler), a member of the Budget Committee.

I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor), the distinguished majority leader.

Mr. Chairman, I would just note for the record that funding on discretionary levels like that are set by the Appropriations Committee, not the Budget Committee, so those levels will be set later by the Appropriations Committee.

I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).

Mr. Chairman, at this time I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from North Carolina (Mrs. Ellmers).

At this time, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Yoder), a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 122 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my good friend, the ranking member from New York, pending which time I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, Mr. Speaker, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

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

Mr. Speaker, that was a mouthful as the Clerk was reading through this resolution, and it was an exciting mouthful. I'm not sure that folks actually were able to get from just the prose the excitement that is in this rule today.

What this rule provides for is two very important things. I'm going to take them in order of my personal passion, but they're both equally important. Number one, this rule provides that every single Member of this House--not just Republicans, not just Democrats, not just folks who are favored, not any particular category--but every single Member of this House who represents a constituency back home had an opportunity to submit their own budget for the United States of America.

So often, the problem in this town is not enough good ideas, Mr. Speaker.

We don't have that problem today because every Member of the House that chose to submit a budget is going to have their budget considered and debated on the floor of this House if we pass this rule today.

Now, that is only five budgets, Mr. Speaker, five plus the Budget Committee's mark, because it's not easy to put together a budget. A lot of folks talk a good game about what they would do if they were king for a day; but when you try to craft your own budget, you've got to put, literally, money where your mouth and ideas are.

In this rule, we make in order a Congressional Black Caucus substitute budget, a Progressive Caucus substitute budget, and a substitute budget by the ranking member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen). We make in order a budget introduced by Mr. Mulvaney from South Carolina that tries to capture the essence of what the Senate is working on right now, and we make in order a budget produced by the Republican Study Committee. All of those exist as an alternative to the budget that was produced by the Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I have the great pleasure of sitting on the Budget Committee. What you see here in my hand is the Budget Committee report. We produced this on March 15. It's bound and it's published. They did a very nice job. It's been proofread, and the minority has had a chance to add their views. That was March 15 that we produced this budget.

But as we sit here today with March quickly leaving us, what we do not have yet is a budget from the United States President. I only point that out, Mr. Speaker, to say I understand that it's hard to produce a budget. I know because I produced one in this cycle. I had the great pleasure of working with a team that produced the Republican Study Committee budget and produced the House budget. So in a time period where the President has failed to follow the legally required mandate of introducing a budget by the first week of February, I've had the great pleasure of producing two budgets.

My friends on the Progressive Caucus have produced a budget. My friends on the Congressional Black Caucus have produced a budget. My friend, Mr. Van Hollen, has produced a budget. And I think it is fair when we ask in this debate why we have been denied a chance to look at the President's budget. We didn't see it in February. We didn't see it in March. Word has it now we might see it in April.

It's hard work to produce a budget, but it's important work. In fact, it's legally required work. I take great pride not just that the House will meet its statutory deadline, but that we're meeting it in this very open and honest forum as this rule proposes.

But the second thing this rule does, Mr. Speaker, is it provides for consideration of the committee funding resolution. This Congress doesn't have a penny to spend except for pennies that we take from the American taxpayer. That's the only place any revenue comes into this United States Government. Part of that revenue goes to fund this very institution.

Thrift begins at home, Mr. Speaker. Before you and I arrived in this body, Mr. Speaker, the committee process here in this House was authorized to spend $300 million a year. Now, the committees do amazing work. It's important work to produce reports like this Budget Committee report, and they do the oversight on the executive branch. I don't for a minute suggest that the work that the committee structure does isn't critical to the functioning of our Republic. But every single account in the United States Government has to be looked at, examined, critiqued, and reformed if we are to get our fiscal books back in order.

The very first committee funding resolution you and I had a chance to vote on, Mr. Speaker, we reduced that committee funding from $300 million back in the 111th Congress down to around $260 in the 112th.

Here we come down again to $240 million in this resolution. In the 26 now short months that you and I have served in Congress, Mr. Speaker, this body has examined its own books and reduced its spending by 20 percent on committees. That is not an easy task. That's not a task that came lightly. That's a task that has taken tremendous effort by both the majority and the minority.

But my question is, Mr. Speaker, if we can do it, as the American people expect us to do, what could the executive branch do? If we in the people's House can take 20 percent out because our constituents have demanded that we view every single dollar with an eye toward thrift, what could the executive branch do if only they would partner with us as we begin the leadership right here in this body?

None of the easy decisions are left, Mr. Speaker. The only decisions left to be decided in this budget, to be decided in this rule, are the hard decisions. We have provided in this rule the opportunity to consider every alternative that Members have proposed to decide these solutions, Mr. Speaker.

With that, I encourage my colleagues to support this rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds just to refer the gentlelady to the House Budget Committee report.

If she were to read just the first few pages, she would see that spending increases under this budget by $500 billion in the next 5 years and by $1.5 trillion over the next 10. I promised myself I would count how many times we heard the words ``extreme cuts'' applied to what is a half-trillion dollars in new and additional spending, but I confess I've lost track already today.

With that, I would like to yield 5 minutes, Mr. Speaker, to the chairman of the Rules Committee, a man who crafted this rule that has allowed all ideas on the budget to be considered today. He would be the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. If I can just ask my colleague from California before she leaves, and I have the great pleasure of serving with her on the Budget Committee, and I would certainly disagree with most of her characterizations about the work product there, and look forward to dispelling those tomorrow, but today with this rule, I heard you encourage our colleagues to reject this rule. This is, of course, a rule that has made every single idea of every single Member who had a budget plan in order. Does that not satisfy the gentlelady's need for a full and open debate on our budget priorities?

I'm happy to yield to the gentlelady.

Reclaiming my time, I would not ignore those at all. I believe we have made priorities of those in this budget. I look forward to debating that tomorrow.

With that, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), another one of my colleagues on the Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes to speak to accusations of forces of darkness. I've found in my time that light is one of those great illuminators. How convenient in that route.

And I would just refer folks to the budget that's posted online. It's budget.house.gov.

Mr. Speaker, as you know, the budget report is there that goes through line item by line item by line item and increases spending, not by the 5 percent that current law would do it, that current law that is sending our children and our grandchildren to bankruptcy, but increases spending by 3.5 percent instead. And within that, the gentlelady from Ohio, Mr. Speaker, is absolutely right. We've got to make priority choices about where it is we want our dollars to go.

But I would say to the gentlelady--and I know her heart is pure as she talks about the investment and where she wants to make it in this country--tell me what it is that you and I are willing to pay for today, and let's make that investment.

You know, I think about Hurricane Sandy, for example, all those families in need that we wanted to help; and, you know, we didn't raise a single penny here to do it. We asked our children and our grandchildren to pay for every nickel.

I don't need encouragement to visit those food banks. I've been there already, and I know exactly what the gentlelady's talking about.

I'd be happy to yield to the gentlewoman.

Reclaiming my time, indeed I have. I've seen our neighbors there filling those needs as well.

Again, it is so frustrating to me, Mr. Speaker, in this body, we do not argue about who are the poorest and the neediest among us. We know with certainty who those folks are. What we argue about is whether it's your and my obligation to feed and clothe those folks, or whether we should pass that obligation along to our children and our grandchildren.

And I say, Mr. Speaker, it is immoral. It is immoral for us to ask our children and our grandchildren to pay bills for charity that you and I are not willing to do ourselves today.

I'm so pleased that this rule has made every idea available on the floor of the House for a vote today, but we must choose to do it ourselves. The time for passing the bill to our children and grandchildren is long gone.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds just to say to the gentlelady, my sister and brother-in-law and two beautiful nieces live in Athens, Ohio, one of the poorest regions in southern Ohio. I know exactly what the gentlelady is saying.

We do have to make these choices, and I commend our friends in the Congressional Black Caucus budget and the Progressive budget for laying out their guidelines for raising taxes by $4 and $6 trillion, respectively, to try to pay for some of those priorities; but even in those budgets, they still never balance.

I'm saying that you and I today, from the great wealth that is in this country today, have a chance to either pay for things that we think are important or borrow money from our children and our grandchildren to pay for things that we think are important. You and I are closer to death than we are to birth. These bills are going to be paid by our children and our grandchildren. And today, for example, the President's budget, we've never seen a budget that projected paying back even a penny over the next 75-year window.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds, Mr. Speaker.

I would welcome the opportunity to work closer across the aisle than we are here today to address those needs that we all agree on. I would say to the gentlelady, our disagreement is not on whether or not those needs exist; it's whether or not you and I are obligated, morally, spiritually, as a function of our community, to serve those needs or whether we can pass that bill on to others.

I know the gentlelady has a strong passion for doing that. I hope she would join with me so that we can do it together, not ask someone else to do it.

I would be happy to yield to the gentlelady.

Mr. Speaker, at this time it is my great pleasure to yield 5 minutes to a new member of the Rules Committee, but a senior member and leader of this House, the gentleman from Texas, Dr. Burgess.

I will say to the gentlelady I do not have further requests for time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to thank the gentlelady for being with me on the floor today.

I'll say that we sometimes have some controversy in the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker. There's a lot of responsibility that lies in the Rules Committee. With 435 folks here in this Chamber, and we all would like to have our say--and we'd all like to have our say probably more than once--the Rules Committee is tasked with managing that debate.

I'll tell you, I think the rule we passed last night is the best rule we've done all year along. Now, my colleague from New York may think I'm damming it with faint praise. But I would say that having this open debate that we will have tomorrow on budgets is about the best we can do in this institution, Mr. Speaker. To allow every single idea, every single individual from the most junior Member who was just elected 2 months ago to the most senior Member who has been here 40 years, if you have a budget idea, you get to have it heard on the floor of the House. In this case, Mr. Speaker, that's going to be six budgets we're going to look at tomorrow.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I believe having an open process is important. We made in order the Progressive Caucus budget. That Progressive Caucus budget raises taxes by $5.7 trillion--unashamed, unabashed. Tough economy; let's raise taxes by $5.7 trillion, and let's increase spending even more than we are today. I'm glad that that budget is going to be here on the floor.

The Congressional Black Caucus raises taxes $4.2 trillion. Mr. Van Hollen's substitute raises taxes $1.2 trillion.

As you saw from the chart that the chairman of the Rules Committee had on the floor of the House earlier, Mr. Speaker, we don't have a tax problem in this country, we have a spending problem in this country. If we took everything from everybody, we still wouldn't have enough money to pay for all of the promises that previous Congresses and previous Presidents have made. What that translates into is fear.

We can do better for the American people than election after election to scare them with the looming bankruptcy of programs that they depend on. Yet we know the Social Security Disability Insurance program-- already out of money, Mr. Speaker. The Medicare program--which my mom and dad depend on--going out of business in 2023. The Social Security retirement program, Mr. Speaker, not enough money to fund future promises. We have a chance to either ignore those promises or embrace those challenges.

I will tell you we do not have a crisis in this country; we have an opportunity in this country to do the things that we have long known we needed to do.

In 1983, Mr. Speaker, Republicans and Democrats came together, extended the life of the Social Security program and provided certainty and security to another generation of America's seniors. We have an opportunity tomorrow to do the same thing for the Medicare program, or to kick the can down the road and ensure uncertainty, crisis, and fear in yet another generation of Americans who depend upon these programs.

I urge all my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, to support this rule that will allow every single idea to be considered tomorrow. And when you come to the floor tomorrow, choose that budget that makes the tough decisions.

It takes no courage at all to let someone else pay the bills, Mr. Speaker. It takes no courage at all to let the next generation sort out the problems. The courage is coming together today to say, even though the weight is going to fall on our shoulders to solve the problem, we owe it to the next generation. We owe them nothing less.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support this rule. I yield back the balance of my time and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 122, I call up the resolution (H. Res. 115) providing for the expenses of certain committees of the House of Representatives in the One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in very strong support of House Resolution 115, which is providing for the expenses of certain committees of the House of Representatives for the 113th Congress and which authorizes committee budgets for the 113th Congress.

Earlier this month, Mr. Speaker, the Committee on House Administration held two very lengthy and very informative days of hearings with our chairmen and with our ranking members from all of the 19 House committees. Each of them testified about their respective budgets, the commitment to uphold the longstanding two-thirds, one- third allocation between majority and minority offices; and most importantly, Mr. Speaker, they talked about doing more with less, which is a topic that we are all very, very familiar with.

This funding process and these discussions significantly impact the legislative process as these committees are where, of course, the legislation that comprise much of our work begins, where our vital oversight functions occur, which is why throughout this process we adhered, Mr. Speaker, to two very important principles. First of all, we said we need to live within our means, and then prioritizing the finite resources that we have provided to us

in the Congress by hardworking American taxpayers.

As we all know, sequestration went into effect on March 1, 2013, and Congress must live with further cuts, just as every other agency of government must live with similar cuts. As a result of the sequester, the total committee authorization level must be reduced by approximately 11 percent, in the 11 percentile range. And that means if we authorize above that amount, then we will have to take the money from somewhere else.

When ensuring that committees have adequate resources, obviously, we have to consider their legislative objectives; we have to consider their anticipated workload and authorize the finite resources available in a way that best suits the needs of the House of Representatives as a whole.

Although the sequestration is not certainly the ideal way to cut spending, cuts are imperative. They must happen. Our government is too big, too involved, and too costly. As those who are charged with the care of taxpayers' dollars, we need to lead by example, and we must control our spending. We must live within our own means.

Now, this may be a far more strict budget than many had hoped or anticipated, but like so many Americans, we are coping with our circumstances, and we are making cuts to our budgets in a way that any American business or American family would have to, as every local unit of government, every State around the country has had to do. Certainly during these very trying economic times, we also have to make value judgments and budget accordingly.

To match the available post-sequestration funding level, the total authorization amount for House committees must be reduced, as I say, by about 11 percent from the 2012 level; and, therefore, with very few exceptions, each committee authorization has been reduced, again, within that 11 percent range or certainly within a percentage point or so of the 11 percent.

Based on the anticipated workload for the 113th Congress, the Budget Committee, the Committee on Ways and Means, and the Select Committee on Intelligence have been given very much smaller reductions, a very slight reduction from the 11 percent. But every committee certainly will be faced with important oversight responsibilities for 2013. However, given that getting our economy moving again and defending this Nation are the foremost priorities that we face, the dire need for tax and entitlement reform to help grow our economy, to create good-paying private sector jobs and the increasing cyberthreats to our digital infrastructure, it was determined by our committee that these three committees certainly are the tip of the spear in doing some of the most important work for the American people.

We must remain, as well, committed to leading by example in cutting government waste, rooting out inefficiencies, and conducting essential and efficient oversight of our vast administrative agencies.

House Resolution 115, Mr. Speaker, we believe fulfills that mission. I would also point out that this House resolution not only reduces committee expenditures, but it also authorizes total committee funding for the 113th Congress at a level which is lower than 2005. I think that bears repeating--a level lower than 2005. By comparison, overall nondefense discretionary spending by the executive branch has actually increased 16.7 percent since 2008--quite a big difference there.

As I said before, as chairman of the Committee on House Administration, I certainly understand the challenges of stretching committee resources, and I have a very deep appreciation for every committee's ability to absorb these cuts and their commitment to functioning at a high level, even with the reduced resources that they have, and that is due certainly in no small measure to the outstanding leadership that we have with each committee chairman and each ranking member on all of our committees, really, all committed to delivering a very high level of service to the American people.

Some of my colleagues, I know, have voiced their opposition to this measure calling for a freeze in committee spending. They say that freezing spending for committees at 2012 levels is a more balanced approach. But since sequestration, we just don't have the money to cover a freeze. We do not have the money.

So I would simply state that spending beyond our means, in my opinion, is not a balanced approach. In fact, I would say it's a bit irresponsible. As I said before, every American family, every small business, every State and local unit of government must live within their means, and so must the U.S. House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, again, this resolution has required us to make some very difficult but very necessary decisions. And I want to personally thank, and certainly all of our committee members thank, each chairman and each ranking member who testified before our committee, and our committee staffs as well, who are often unrecognized for the vital work that they do.

I would urge, Mr. Speaker, all of my colleagues to support House Resolution 115, living within our means and prioritizing our finite resources like the rest of America.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure at this time to yield as much time as he may consume to an outstanding member of the House Administration Committee, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Rokita).

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

The fact of the matter is that this is all the money that we have to spend.

Believe me, I am sympathetic to the arguments that it would be nice if our committees didn't have to make any cuts. Again, if we don't make some cuts because of the sequestration, this money has to come from somewhere else. I guess we're sort of looking for other ideas of offsets for those who are saying that we should not pass this resolution.

What kinds of things would they offset?

We've certainly watched the White House close tours to groups because they said the sequester impacted the Secret Service's ability to protect the President when the American people came into the White House. I don't know if they're suggesting we should close the Capitol Building or what have you. I don't think that kind of suggestion would go very far.

But, again, where do you offset if you're not going to cut any spending here?

I will also say this: I come from southeast Michigan, which arguably was ground zero during the most painful economic transition, certainly in my lifetime, that happened in our Nation here recently, and we're trying to get ourselves out of that. We were number one in all of the categories you didn't want to be number one in. If I'd have told our local county or our local units of government that they'd have to cut 11 percent, they would say thank you, because they've cut anywhere from 30 to 40 percent. There were just incredible amounts of cuts that happened. Furloughs have happened with employees. That has been going on for years, actually. That's my neighborhood.

When we think about the amount of borrowing that we're doing as a Nation--as everybody knows, we are now to the point of $16 trillion in national debt with no end in sight, and we've been running deficits for, certainly, the last 5 years of well over $1 trillion and, in many cases, $1.5 trillion annually, and we're borrowing 42 cents on every dollar that we spend--if we do not have the political will to make any kind of cuts ourselves to where we can't even cut our own committee budgets here in the House while these kinds of cuts are being absorbed by other areas, I just think that this resolution will be a very vivid demonstration of the differences of what we think ``leading by example'' actually means.

I will tell you as well, as a grandmother, I do not want to look at my two little grandchildren and say, Hey, do you mind paying the bill, because I don't have the political will. I just can't do it. Too hard for me. I don't want to break a sweat here. Would you mind paying?

I'll tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I just cannot get to that place. I think this resolution is very, very important. I recognize the painful cuts that are happening. It's not easy. That's why the American people sent us here--to have the political will and to make the hard decisions. I would hope that my colleagues would support this resolution.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the minority whip's comments. I have great regard for him as well. I thought it was interesting, Mr. Speaker, listening to him talk about the President's sequester as an irrational kind of a thing. Of course, it was the President's idea. I don't dispute that it is not the best way to cut spending. Many may say it's an irrational approach. Again, the President's sequester, the President's idea.

I yield to the gentleman.

I thank the gentleman for pointing out the sequencing of the sequester, the President's sequester, the President's idea of the sequester, and I appreciate that. I still say with the President's sequester that what's going to happen with this vote is a very vivid demonstration, again, of who is actually committed to doing more with less. My colleague, the gentleman, the minority whip, also has given us sort of a historical lesson of various things in his observation of the way things had gone earlier on, and I would point something out as well since we are talking about committee budget cuts.

In 2007 when the other party, the Democrats, took control of this House, they immediately increased the amount of spending on committees by 8.9 percent, almost 9 percent; immediate increase. Then in 2009 as they kept control of the Congress, again they increased committee spending, that time by 8.9 percent. Now keep in mind, this was at a time--which I had mentioned previously, being from southeast Michigan-- everybody else, it seemed like, certainly every State government, every local unit of government, every school district, many, many businesses, certainly American families, were making cuts. That was not happening here with committee spending.

In 2010, this House shifted control. The Republicans took control. And what did we do with committee spending as a way to show that we wanted to do more with less, that we understood that we needed to get a handle on this out-of-control Federal spending, we actually cut committee budgets by 9.5 percent for the 112th Congress, and as we are debating now, another 11 percent cut that we're looking at.

This is at the same time that the House, under Republican control, has also cut what we call our Members' representational allowances, our MRAs, which has been very painful for all of us as well. We cut 5 percent, then in the 6 percentile. Now just a couple of weeks ago, effective immediately with the sequester, another in the 8 percentile cuts for all of us. All of us are doing more with less. And believe me, I understand there's no sympathy for Members of Congress, but I certainly point that out.

At the same time if you look at non-defense discretionary for the executive branch, almost a 17 percent increase during that same time. So I just think when we look at this resolution, we see how important it is. Again, I am not minimizing how painful it will be for the committees, but it's really the new reality, I think, and it's important for those of us here in the people's House to do the people's work with the amount of money that we have available, and to do it to the very best of our ability. And I know certainly Republicans and Democrats are committed to doing that.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, it's my pleasure, at this time, to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton).

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

First of all, I certainly want to thank Mr. Vargas for controlling his time. Mr. Speaker, he did a very good job. We certainly welcome him to the committee and look forward to working with him, as we also thank the ranking member, Mr. Brady, for his extraordinary work on behalf of the committee, and we look forward to continuing to work with him.

Obviously, we have a bit of a disagreement, Mr. Speaker, on the committee budget cuts here; but I certainly would also applaud the work of all of our chairmen of our committees, as well as all of the ranking members, who very diligently went through their budgets trying to make the appropriate cuts and will continue to do that now, when this resolution is certainly passed, as we go forward, I think, for all of us, really, trying to create a fiscally responsible level of funding here and, again, something that allocates resources in the very best way that we can, that allows this House to complete its work on behalf of the American people.

Again, Mr. Speaker, I would say, I believe that we are leading by example with this resolution today, and we need to show that the important work of government can certainly be done, and we can do it well with less. Doing more with less, that's a very well-used term, but it is certainly appropriate for this, during times of tight budgets.

So I would urge all of my colleagues to support this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Through numerous budget resolutions and campaign pledges and appearances on Sunday talk shows, the majority has made clear that their vision for America is a vision that says the Nation can no longer care for our seniors, that we must halt vital scientific research and that we should let our bridges and schools crumble because we can't afford to invest in the future.

In short, I believe that it is an extreme and cynical version for America and one that I strongly reject.

For more than a decade, the needs of our country were neglected while the majority led two unfunded wars and gave unaffordable tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, and we now have the cost for the last war in Iraq of $3 trillion borrowed. In all the discussions on the deficit and what bad shape we are in, nobody ever talks about that war and how that has kept us from rebuilding the infrastructure in the United States that cries out for it.

These two decisions unraveled the balanced budget achieved by President Clinton and exploded our Nation's debt. Now after a decade of reckless financial management, the majority is proposing another budget that is as unserious as it is extreme.

Take, for example, the field of scientific research. More than 50 percent of our economic growth since World War II can be attributed to the development and adoption of new technologies, yet the budget proposes drastic cuts to research at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, among others.

As any scientist will tell you--and I am one--you cannot turn research on and off like a faucet. Across the Federal Government, researchers are on the brink of discoveries that could cure diseases or open entire new fields of commerce. But under the majority's budget, that valuable research will be ended and these important discoveries will probably not be made in the United States.

The majority wants to impose such cuts on top of cuts contained in the sequester, even though the effects of the sequester are just beginning to be felt. For example, in the coming weeks, airport control towers will begin to close, affecting flight schedules and stranding travelers. Many of these towers are located in the rural parts of our country where there are no other alternatives for long-distance travel.

In addition, border patrol agents will be furloughed, which not only affects security but the success of our economy. According to the Congressional Research Service, more than $1.3 billion a day in trade crosses the U.S.-Canada border. This trade is dependent upon the effective operation of our border security agents. The effects of the sequester are already impacting trade by causing backups at the border and leaving goods and supplies stranded en route to their destination.

Furthermore, it is often forgotten that 5 years after I-35 collapsed above the Mississippi River, we have still failed to repair our crumbling infrastructure.

Earlier today, the American Society of Civil Engineers released a 2013 report card for America's infrastructure. They found that one in eight bridges in my home State of New York is structurally deficient and one in nine

bridges across the United States is the same. A very prominent engineer stated just this past week that there are bridges in major cities in areas of the United States which he would not cross for fear of falling into the water. At the same time, more and more engineers and transportation experts are warning that our bridges will soon be too unsafe to cross unless we act.

These bridges aren't alone. Everything from schools to airports to train stations and highways are literally crumbling before our eyes.

Water systems in many of the major cities in parts of the United States are almost a century old and almost unusable.

Think, Mr. Speaker, for a moment, think of the jobs that would be created, as badly as we need them to put people back to work, if we could not decide to starve again our country's needs and instead start to rebuild the needs and put people back to work.

I think it's inexcusable that instead of responding to the crisis that we have, the majority spent the last 2 years lurching from crisis to crisis and repeatedly introducing legislation such as today's budget legislation that guts investment in the Nation's infrastructure instead of putting us back to work rebuilding the country.

A telling illustration of the failed approach is that they have included the repeal of the Affordable Care Act as the central tenet of their budget proposal. During the 112th Congress, the majority held more than 30 votes in the last 2 years just to repeal the Affordable Care Act, eating up valuable time and costing taxpayers millions of dollars in the process. Despite this expensive folly, the majority wants to do it again. In order to balance the budget, the majority believes we should repeal the lifesaving law and once again legalize health insurance discrimination based upon preexisting conditions, force young adults off their parents' health insurance and open the doughnut hole for our Nation's seniors.

Mr. Speaker, before we were able to pass the health care bill, eight States and the District of Columbia in the United States considered domestic violence to be a preexisting condition and insurance companies were not required to cover victims. Are we going to go back to that if this repeal is achieved?

The majority also wants to cut financial assistance to students in need. The budget cuts Pell Grant assistance by $83 billion over the next 10 years and allows the interest rates on need-based student loans to double. In a time when we are falling so far behind all other industrial countries in the number of persons who go to college, the United States that used to be first now is about 12th.

By all objective measures, drastic and extreme cuts such as these can be seen as unnecessary cruelty not needed to balance the budget. Indeed, just this past weekend both Speaker Boehner and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said on Sunday television shows that this Nation does not face a debt crisis. When asked about it yesterday, Chairman Ryan indicated that, yes, he had said that.

So despite saying that to everybody, scaring America half to death, keeping businesses from being able to plan the future, they continue to promote a dystopian vision of the future in order to convince Americans that we have to adopt their extreme policies today. It is under this guise that the majority proposes their most extreme transformation of America's social safety net in today's budget.

Once again this year, the majority proposes to end Medicare as we know it and turn the promise of guaranteed health care into a voucher program. Unlike Medicare, the majority voucher program would not guarantee seniors access to the health care they need. I think we thoroughly discussed that last year when it failed and certainly during the last election when it failed. This would drive senior citizens into the market with a defined income that they could use to buy their own insurance if they were physically or mentally able to do so.

This is the same failed proposal, and it has been opposed by Americans, as I said, at the ballot box. But we continue today to defy the wishes of the American people with a quest to end Medicare as we know it, and it should be a telling reminder of where priorities lie.

These extreme cuts stand in sharp contrast to the tax reform contained within their budget. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in order to enact the majority's tax reform and to not increase the deficit, middle class families would have to pay $3,000 more a year and the wealthiest Americans receive a $245,000 tax break.

Once again, the majority has shown they would rather take away vital programs from our Nation's most vulnerable than raise a single dollar in taxes on America's wealthiest citizens.

Mr. Speaker, such a budget is neither original nor serious, nor is it acceptable to the American people. We've been down this road before, and it is discouraging and dangerous that the majority insists that we go down it yet once again. I strongly urge my colleagues to oppose the majority's budget proposal and today's rule.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield 3 minutes to a member of the committee on the budget, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), a member of the Appropriations Committee.

I yield the gentlewoman another minute.

I'm pleased to yield another minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), a member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

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

I yield the gentlelady 1 additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time. May I inquire from my colleague if he has further requests.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, my Democrat colleagues and I have spoken at length today about the dangerous shortcomings of the budget proposal of Mr. Ryan. Fortunately, Representative Chris Van Hollen, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, has an alternative proposal that significantly reduces the Nation's deficit while creating jobs and protecting programs like Medicaid and Medicare. And unlike the majority's proposal, Mr. Van Hollen's budget repeals the sequester, which is estimated to cost the Nation 750,000 jobs this year.

Mr. Van Hollen has repeatedly tried to avert the sequester. He has come to the Rules Committee numerous times with proposals to replace the sequester with responsible budget cuts and has been repeatedly denied the opportunity to have an up-or-down vote on the House floor.

By voting for Mr. Van Hollen's budget, every Member of this Chamber can vote to do away with the sequester. On behalf of the thousands of Americans who are facing pay cuts, furloughs, and job losses, I urge my colleagues to repeal the sequester today and vote to balance the budget in a responsible way.

Mr. Speaker, while the majority would like you to believe that a looming debt crisis is imminent, it is simply not true. Even this last weekend, both Speaker Boehner and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said on television there is no immediate budget crisis facing our Nation. Please think of that, my colleagues, as you vote.

In acknowledging this reality, it is important to realize that it is possible to make investments in our economy today, create jobs, repeal the sequester, and still reduce our deficit in a responsible and balanced way.

In closing, I urge my colleagues not to be scared by the rhetoric that sometimes we hear. Instead, I urge my colleagues to support one of the multiple

budget proposals that reduce our deficit responsibly while creating jobs today and protecting the important programs like Medicaid and Medicare for generations to come.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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