Providing for consideration of the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 96) establishing the budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2015 and setting forth appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2016 through 2024, and providing for proceedings during the period from April 11, 2014, through April 25, 2014.

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

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

Madam Speaker, budgets are moral documents. These annual documents are really statements of who we are as political parties and as groups and as people. They represent our values. They tell a story about what we believe in and how we would govern.

I had thought that I had come here today to say that this budget before us, the Ryan budget, is simply bad or that it is misguided. Madam Speaker, it is much worse than that.

This is an awful budget. It takes our country in the fundamentally wrong direction.

It seems as though every year we shake our heads wondering how the latest Ryan budget could possibly get worse than the previous year's efforts. And yet, time after time, the Ryan budget manages to pull it off.

This budget is cruel, but sadly, it is not unusual.

The gentleman from Georgia says he can't contain his smiles when he talks about this budget. I don't think there is anything to smile about.

Year after year, the Ryan budget does more and more damage to the social fabric of our Nation. Year after year, it puts the wishes of the rich ahead of the needs of the poor. And year after year, it sacrifices the reality of desperately needed investments at the altar of theoretical deficit reduction.

Let's look at the details. The Ryan budget includes deep cuts. How deep? $791 billion below the sequester number. $791 billion below sequester. That is amazing, Madam Speaker.

Now, I voted against sequester because of the damage it would and it did inflict on our economy. This budget would actually cut nearly $1 trillion on top of the sequester. I thought we wanted to end sequester, not make choices that are even worse.

But that is not the end of the story. According to one estimate, 69 percent of the Ryan budget cuts come from low-income programs. It would shred the safety net. The programs that keep millions of Americans out of poverty and help provide millions of Americans with health care, that will provide millions of children with school meals and early childhood education, received the lion's share of the cuts. That is what the Ryan budget does.

In fact, according to the same estimate, $3.3 trillion of the Ryan budget's $4.8 trillion in non-defense cuts come from low-income safety net programs like Medicaid, SNAP, school breakfast and lunch programs, Head Start, the Supplemental Security Income program, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Child Tax Credits.

Sixty-nine percent of the total non-defense cuts come from these life-changing, indeed, lifesaving programs.

The Ryan budget is successful at one thing: it deepens the divide between the rich and poor in this country. It successfully makes life harder for those who are already struggling to make ends meet.

If you are hungry in America, you would see food benefits cut by $137 billion.

If you are a middle class college student in America, hopefully you can win the lottery, or have a rich uncle, because Pell grants would be cut by $125 billion by freezing the maximum grant and cutting eligibility.

If you are a low-income working mother in America who gets health care through Medicaid, you would join at least 40 million Americans who will become uninsured by 2024 after the Ryan budget cuts at least $2.7 trillion from Medicaid.

And if you are a middle class family with kids in America just trying to get by in this sluggish economy, you would see your taxes go up by $2,000.

But if you are fortunate enough to be very rich in America, you lucked out. It is time to pop the champagne because you make out like a bandit. The oil companies keep their tax breaks. Businesses can keep putting money in overseas accounts just to avoid paying taxes here in America.

And if you are a millionaire?

Get ready for a big fat check from Uncle Sam. That is because anyone making $1 million a year will see a tax cut of at least $200,000.

On top of these disastrous policies, the Ryan budget, once again, goes after seniors. This version, once again, ends the Medicare guarantee and reopens the Medicare prescription drug doughnut hole.

As a result of these cuts, seniors will see their traditional Medicare premiums soar by an average of 50 percent. As AARP says:

Removing the Medicare guarantee of affordable health

coverage for older Americans by implementing a premium

support system and asking seniors and future retirees to pay

more is not the right direction.

Now these policies have real world ramifications. Last week, Madam Speaker, an incredibly strong and courageous group of women called the Witnesses to Hunger returned to Capitol Hill to talk about their struggles as low-income, working women trying to make ends meet.

It takes guts to come here to Capitol Hill to tell your story and challenge Members of Congress to do better, and that is exactly what these impressive women did. They told their stories. They talked about their struggles, and they challenged us to do more to help so they don't fall back into poverty.

These women, and the millions of Americans like them who work hard every day, don't earn enough to make ends meet. They are having to choose between rent and food and electricity.

These women and their children aren't line items in our budget. They aren't statistics in our reports. They are people, people who just want to have a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and an education system that will help their children learn and succeed.

They want to go to college and not have to worry about losing their scholarships just because they are a single mother and need to work a night job to feed their child.

These women, and millions of Americans, would be hurt, they would be devastated by the Ryan budget. I am glad there are people who are able to make a lot of money in this country. I have nothing against rich people, but we shouldn't penalize those who are struggling.

Madam Speaker, we should be providing ladders of opportunity to help people get out of poverty and move into the middle class. When people need a helping hand, we should provide that assistance, whether it is a job training program, early childhood education, health care, or something as simple and as basic as food.

These aren't handouts; they are hand-ups. They are investments in our future, and we should be providing opportunities to strengthen our communities and the middle class through job creation, higher education, and advancing research and innovation.

This is a great country. We have done great things, but we have begun to think small. That is what the Republican majority has succeeded in doing. They have got us to start thinking small rather than big. We don't tackle big problems anymore. We use deficit reduction as an excuse to do nothing.

What we need to do is tackle big issues like ending hunger. We should tackle the issue of ending poverty. We should want to strive for a country that benefits not just the few who are rich but the many who are poor.

The Ryan budget would set us back. It would do real damage to millions and millions of real Americans, our neighbors, our friends, our fellow parishioners.

As Pope Francis has written in his Papal Exhortation:

I ask God to give us more politicians capable of sincere

and effective dialogue aimed at healing the deepest roots,

and not simply the appearances of the evils in our world.

Politics, though often denigrated, remains a lofty vocation

and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks

the common good.

Inasmuch as it seeks the common good. This budget, this Ryan budget, this Republican budget, or whatever you want to call it, does not seek the common good. This budget fails that basic test that Pope Francis outlined. It does not seek the common good. It deserves to be defeated.

We can do so much better in this Congress and for our country. I am ashamed that this is what we are debating here today, that this is the Republican vision for our future.

This the wrong way to go. Democrats and Republicans should say ``no'' to this.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I think one of the differences between what the Republicans have proposed and what Democrats are proposing is that what they propose is just one thing--cuts. Cuts and cuts and cuts in programs for the most needy in this country, and more tax cuts for the most wealthy.

What the Democrats have proposed is a more balanced approach. Yeah, there needs to be some sacrifice, but we also understand the importance of investment.

If you want to find a way to balance the budget, why don't we find a cure for Alzheimer's disease? Not only would that help improve the quality of life for millions of people, but it would also eliminate all the fiscal problems that Medicaid has.

Let's find a cure for diabetes. Let's find a cure for cancer.

Why aren't our energies devoted toward investing in medical research?

And yet the Ryan budget that we are now debating would devastate medical research in this country. It would devastate it.

We have researchers coming in to visit us who are telling us that China is offering them a better package to do their medical research, Singapore. I want these cures to be found here in the United States. I want to invest in that research that will not only save people's lives, but create jobs and also save money.

Yet, my friends on the other side, they devastate investments in medical research. They devastate investments in scientific research. They devastate investments in transportation.

Their way is one way: cut programs that help the most needy, and give tax breaks to the Donald Trumps of the world. Donald Trump doesn't need any more help. Middle class families, those struggling to get into the middle class, do need help.

Madam Speaker, I am going to urge that we defeat the previous question, and if we do, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 4415, the House companion to the unemployment insurance extension bill passed by a bipartisan majority in the Senate just yesterday. Representative Kildee introduced this bill just hours after Senate passage.

Today, on Equal Pay Day, my amendment will also bring up H.R. 377, Rosa DeLauro's Paycheck Fairness Act. It is shameful that women in America still make an average of only 77 cents for every dollar earned by their male colleagues. The Paycheck Fairness Act will require equal pay for equal work.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) to discuss our proposal.

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

Madam Speaker, I think what you just saw on the floor is frustration. In the supposedly open House that my colleagues brag about--erroneously, I should add--this issue of comprehensive immigration reform has failed to be given a day on the floor.

The United States Senate, in a bipartisan way, passed comprehensive immigration reform, a bill that would, by the way, raise close to a trillion dollars over the next 20 years to pay down our debt, and yet we can't even get it scheduled on the House floor. The leadership here continues to block it, and Mr. Caardenas and Mr. Polis last night in the Rules Committee thought that, given the fact that there is such an incredible savings here, it was relevant to this.

And, by the way, the Rules Committee can do whatever it wants to. The Rules Committee could issue the necessary waivers to allow this to happen. There is no reason at all why this couldn't have been brought up today except that a majority in the Rules Committee said no. I mean, that is the reason why.

So what you see is frustration. What you see is frustration not just by Democrats. There are people on the Republican side who, as well, would like to see us debate comprehensive immigration reform, and instead we are blocked at every single avenue. So that has to change; otherwise, you are going to see more of the kinds of displays that you just witnessed.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I want to agree with my friend from Oklahoma that Mr. Ryan has given us a choice. He has presented us a budget that would end Medicare as we know it; it would slash the social safety net to smithereens; it cuts SNAP by $137 billion; and it would damage the National Institutes of Health and transportation funding. Pell grants would be cut. I could go right down the list. Yeah, I know we have got a choice here, and people ought to understand what that budget is all about.

My friends on the other side may be proud of this. Again, I find that puzzling, because the notion that the only way to balance the budget is by hurting poor people or hurting the middle class, I don't agree with.

You talk about sacrifices. Why are all the sacrifices on the backs of middle-income families or on the backs of the poor in this country? The rich get a tax cut. The rich get a tax cut. Middle class families get a tax increase. Poor people get their food stamps taken away from them. Why is that always the choice that you provide Members of this House? Why are those the only people that sacrifice? I just find it unconscionable, quite frankly.

With that, Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I would just say to the gentleman from Florida that national defense includes more than the number of weapons we have in our arsenal. It also include the quality of life for our people here at home, and these programs that he is denigrating, like SNAP, for example, I should remind him there are an extremely high number of military families that rely on SNAP to get by and a high number of veterans who do as well.

Basic food, they are looking for helping with putting food on the table. So before anybody denigrates those programs, understand that they contribute to our national defense as well. They are feeding our military families and veterans because our returning veterans can't find jobs that pay a livable wage.

At this time, it is my pleasure to yield 6 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), the distinguished ranking member of the Rules Committee.

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman.

I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

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

Madam Speaker, I insert in the Record a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities entitled ``Ryan Budget Would Slash SNAP by $137 Billion Over 10 Years, Low-Income Households in all States Would Feel Sharp Effects.''

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question and to vote ``no'' on the underlying bill.

The Ryan budget will create a government without a conscience. It is cruel. This budget is a rotten thing to do to poor people; it is a rotten thing to do to the middle class. It is an outrage.

So please, again, vote ``no'' on the previous question, and vote ``no'' on the underlying bill.

This really is an embarrassment. We could do so much better in this Chamber. The people in this country deserve much better than what we are giving them.

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

[From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Apr. 4, 2014]

Ryan Budget Would Slash SNAP by $137 Billion Over Ten Years

Low-Income Households in All States Would Feel Sharp Effects

(By Dorothy Rosenbaum)

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's budget plan

includes cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance

Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) of

$137 billion--18 percent--over the next ten years (2015-

2024), which would necessitate ending food assistance for

millions of low-income families, cutting benefits for

millions of such households, or some combination of the two.

Chairman Ryan proposed similarly deep SNAP cuts in each of

his last three budgets. The new Ryan budget specifies two

categories of SNAP cuts:

It includes every major benefit cut in a House-passed

version of the recent farm bill that Congress ultimately

rejected when enacting the final farm bill. The Congressional

Budget Office (CBO) has estimated the House cuts, which

amount to $12 billion over the 2015-2018 period, would have

terminated benefits to 3.8 million low-income people in 2014.

After a difficult two-year process, Congress just two months

ago, on a bipartisan basis, passed a farm bill that rejected

these House cuts and reauthorized SNAP and other Agriculture

programs for five years.

It would convert SNAP into a block grant beginning in 2019

and cut funding steeply--by $125 billion (or almost 30

percent) over 2019 to 2024. States would be left to decide

whose benefits to reduce or terminate. They would have no

good choices--the program already provides an average of only

$1.40 per person per meal, primarily to poor children,

working-poor parents, seniors, people with disabilities, and

others struggling to make ends meet.

Ryan Block Grant Would Force States to Cut Food Assistance Deeply

Since 90 percent of SNAP spending goes for food assistance,

and most of the rest covers state administrative costs to

determine program eligibility and operate SNAP properly,

policymakers couldn't achieve cuts of this magnitude without

substantially scaling back eligibility or reducing benefits

deeply, with serious effects on low-income families and

individuals. Table 1 provides state-by-state estimates of the

potential impact of the block grant proposal.

Cuts in eligibility. If the cuts came solely from

eliminating eligibility for categories of currently eligible

households or individuals, states would have to cut an

average of 10 million people from the program (relative to

SNAP enrollment without the cuts) each year between 2019 and

2024.

Cuts in benefits. If the cuts came solely from across-the-

board benefit cuts, states would have to cut more than $40

per person per month in 2019 to 2024 (in nominal dollars), on

average. This would require setting the maximum benefit at

about 77 percent of the Thrifty Food Plan, the Agriculture

Department's (USDA) estimate of the cost of a bare-bones,

nutritionally adequate diet. (Under SNAP rules, the maximum

benefit--which goes to households with no disposable income

after deductions for certain necessities--is set at 100

percent of the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan.)

The impact of such a change would be pronounced. All

families of four--including the poorest--would face benefit

cuts of about $160 a month in fiscal year 2019, or more than

$1,900 per year. All families of three would face cuts of

about $125 per month, or about $1,500 per year. Of course,

policymakers could shield some households from such deep

cuts, but then other households would need to bear even

larger cuts in order to produce the $125 billion in block-

grant savings.

While states might not seek to hit the Ryan targets through

eligibility cuts or benefit cuts alone, these examples

illustrate the magnitude of the reductions needed. States

would have few other places to achieve the required cuts; as

noted, about 90 percent of SNAP expenditures are for food

assistance.

Proposed Cuts Rest on Inaccurate Claims

Chairman Ryan bases his proposed SNAP cuts on a series of

inaccurate claims about SNAP program growth, work

disincentives, and waste, fraud, and abuse.

Spending growth. Chairman Ryan justifies deep SNAP cuts in

part by claiming that the ``explosive growth [of SNAP and

other low-income programs] is threatening the overall

strength of the safety net'' and ``SNAP spending is forecast

to be permanently higher than previous estimates even after

the recession is long past.'' While SNAP spending did grow

substantially during the recession, it has begun to decline

as a share of the economy and is expected to continue

shrinking over the coming decade.

SNAP grew because of three factors: the depth of the recent

recession, which made more people eligible; improvements in

reaching eligible households (particularly working-poor

families); and the 2009 Recovery Act's temporary benefit

boost (which ended in November 2013). As Figure 1 indicates,

CBO projects that SNAP will return to pre-recession levels as

a share of the economy

(gross domestic product) once the economy fully recovers. The

program does not contribute to the nation's long-term budget

problem because it is projected to grow no faster than the

economy over time.

Work and dependency. Chairman Ryan also justifies cutting

SNAP and turning it over to the states by implying that SNAP

doesn't encourage recipients to work. Yet the number of SNAP

recipients who work while receiving SNAP has more than

tripled over the past decade. Furthermore, CBPP analysis

finds that the large majority of SNAP recipients who can work

do so, and many more rely on SNAP when they are between jobs

or looking for work.

Among SNAP households with at least one working-age, non-

disabled adult, more than half work while receiving SNAP and

more than 80 percent work in the year prior to or the year

after receiving SNAP. The rates are even higher for families

with children: more than 60 percent work while receiving

SNAP, and almost 90 percent work in the prior or subsequent

year. Only 4 percent of households that worked in the year

before receiving SNAP did not work the following year.

Moreover, SNAP already has work requirements. Adults

without children face a harsh three-month time limit if they

are unemployed and not participating in a qualifying

employment and training program. States can apply for a

waiver from this requirement during a weak economy when jobs

are not available by submitting detailed Department of Labor

data showing high unemployment in local areas or statewide,

but the number of areas qualifying for a waiver is falling as

the economy recovers, and CBO expects the number of such

areas to shrink markedly over the next few years. (The Ryan

budget would eliminate these waivers immediately, even for

areas with double-digit unemployment.) In addition, states

have broad authority to operate employment and training

programs, and the recent farm bill includes a major

demonstration program for states to test innovative

approaches to providing employment and training services that

raise recipients' earnings and reduce their reliance on

public assistance.

Waste, fraud, and abuse. Finally, Chairman Ryan justifies

his SNAP proposals based on charges that SNAP is rife with

waste, fraud, and abuse. The reality is that SNAP has one of

the most rigorous quality control systems of any public

benefit program and a very low error rate. Despite the recent

growth in caseloads, the share of total SNAP payments that

represent overpayments or payments to ineligible households

fell to a record low of 2.77 percent in fiscal year 2012. In

addition, USDA has cut ``trafficking''--the sale of SNAP

benefits for cash, which violates federal law--by three-

quarters over the past 15 years. Only 1.3 percent of SNAP

benefits are trafficked. USDA has also permanently

disqualified thousands of retail stores from the program for

not following strict federal requirements. When cases of SNAP

fraud are reported in the news, it is because the offenders

have been caught, evidence that states and USDA are

aggressively combating fraud.

Benefit Cuts Would Primarily Affect Low-Income Families With Children,

Seniors, and People With Disabilities

The Ryan budget documents assert that Congress could

achieve the required savings by capping federal SNAP funding

and ``allow[ing] states to customize SNAP to the needs of

their citizens'' through a block grant. That description

leaves the mistaken impression that the program is not

serving a population that is overwhelmingly poor and that

savings could be achieved without significantly harming

millions of vulnerable Americans.

Unlike most means-tested benefit programs, which are

restricted to particular categories of low-income

individuals, SNAP is broadly available to almost all

households with very low incomes. Cutting SNAP thus would

affect broad swaths of the low-income population. Currently,

46.8 million people receive SNAP to help them feed their

families. Census data show that in 2012 (the latest year for

which these data are available), 46.5 million Americans lived

below the poverty line, and 64.8 million lived below 130

percent of the poverty line, SNAP's gross income limit.

The overwhelming majority of SNAP households are families

with children, seniors, or people with disabilities. Seventy

percent of SNAP participants are in families with children;

more than one-quarter are in households that include senior

citizens or people with disabilities.

SNAP households have very low incomes. Eighty-three percent

of SNAP households have incomes below the poverty line while

they are receiving SNAP assistance (about $19,800 for a

family of three in 2014). Such households receive 91 percent

of SNAP benefits. Two of every five SNAP households have

incomes below half of the poverty line. Such individuals and

families have little flexibility in their monthly budgets to

cope with deep reductions in food assistance.

Low-wage workers rely on SNAP to boost their monthly

income. Millions of Americans live in working households with

earnings that are not sufficient to meet basic needs. In

2012, some 39 million people (1 in 8 Americans) lived in a

working family with cash income below 130 percent of the

poverty line. Low incomes like these--which typically reflect

low wages or limited work hours--can leave families unable to

afford necessities like food and housing on a regular basis.

SNAP benefits play a crucial role in boosting such families'

monthly resources: in 2012, a typical working mother with two

children on SNAP earned $1,148 per month ($13,700 on an

annual basis) and received $307 per month in SNAP benefits.

If the Ryan proposal had been in place in 2012 and was

implemented via across-the-board cuts, this family's monthly

benefits would have been cut by $110 per month--or about 36

percent.

SNAP Benefit Cuts Would Increase Hunger and Poverty

SNAP cuts of the magnitude that the Ryan budget proposes

would almost certainly lead to increases in hunger and

poverty. Emergency food providers report that more people ask

for help in the latter half of the month, after their SNAP

benefits run out. Under the Ryan budget's steep funding cuts,

a typical household's SNAP benefits would run out many days

earlier, placing greater strain on household finances (and on

emergency food providers) and significantly increasing the

risk of hunger.

Deep SNAP cuts also would cause more families and

individuals to fall into poverty and push poor families

deeper into poverty. Currently, SNAP helps lessen the extent

and severity of poverty; Census Bureau data on disposable

family income that include the value of SNAP and other non-

cash benefits and taxes show that:

SNAP lifted 4.9 million Americans above the poverty line in

2012, including 2.2 million children.

SNAP kept more children--1.4 million--from falling below

half of the poverty line in 2012, more than any other

program.

The Ryan SNAP cuts would thus have a sharp, adverse effect

on millions of the lowest-income Americans. Moreover, they

would not occur in isolation. The Ryan budget contains steep

cuts in other low-income assistance programs, compounding the

effects of the SNAP cuts. Many vulnerable families would lose

health coverage, housing assistance, and other important

supports such as child care at the same time they faced SNAP

cuts.

Cuts Could Be Even Larger Under a Block Grant

Block-granting SNAP, as Chairman Ryan proposes, would

eliminate its ability to respond automatically to the

increased need that results from rising poverty and

unemployment during economic downturns. Annual federal

funding would remain fixed, regardless of whether the economy

was in a recession or how severe a downturn was. As a result,

the House Budget Committee staff's estimate that the Ryan

plan would cut SNAP by $137 billion over ten years may

understate the magnitude of the cut--the cuts would be still

more severe if the economy performs less well over the coming

decade than CBO projects.

If a SNAP block grant had been in effect in 2013 at funding

levels set in 2007, before the recession, federal funding in

2013 would have been about 50 percent below actual funding

that year (excluding the Recovery Act benefit boost).

Furthermore, under a block grant, SNAP would not be able to

respond to natural disasters. Hurricane Sandy victims in New

York and New Jersey obtained temporary food aid through SNAP

in 2013, as did victims of disasters in five other states.

Also, under a block grant, many states would likely shift

funds away from food assistance to other purposes when they

faced large state budget shortfalls. SNAP includes several

non-food components, such as job training and related child

care; a block grant structure would enable states to divert

funds away from food to these purposes and withdraw state

funds currently spent on these services.

Finally, because of its capped funding structure, a block

grant like the one Chairman Ryan proposes would reverse the

recent progress made, on a bipartisan basis, to improve SNAP

participation among eligible low-income households. Viewing

SNAP as an important work support and health and nutrition

benefit, the last three Administrations, as well as governors

from across the political spectrum, have sought to boost

participation rates--especially among working-poor families

and low-income elderly people, the two groups with the lowest

participation rates. Overall, the efforts have paid off. SNAP

reached 79 percent of all eligible individuals in a typical

month in 2011 (the most recent year for which these data are

available), a significant improvement from 2002, when the

participation rate bottomed out at 54 percent. Participation

among eligible low-income working families rose from 43

percent in 2002 to about 67 percent in 2011. For the elderly,

it improved more modestly--from 26 percent in 2002 to about

39 percent in 2011.

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

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

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

We are looking forward to the debate on the budget over the next couple of days. Chairman Ryan mentioned that the critics of this budget call it draconian. I would just point out to the gentleman that the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee just referred to the budget that is before this House as draconian.

Now, the chairman and I do agree on one thing, which is that these budgets that we bring before this Congress reflect our different visions of America. They reflect the choices that we make. They show what we care about, and they show what we care less about. They are fundamentally different blueprints for the future of this country.

The President has presented a budget that will boost job growth, sharpen Americans' competitive edge, and expand opportunity in the United States of America. Now, we have before us the congressional Republican budget, and of all of the Republican budgets that we have seen on the floor of this House since 2010, this one is the worst for America.

Many will argue, Mr. Chairman, that we should not be taking this budget seriously because, after all, we have a short-term bipartisan agreement and that the Senate would never pass this budget, but I urge the country to take it seriously because what it tells America is what our Republican colleagues would do to the country if they had the power to do it.

If they could impose their will, this is the budget that they would impose, so we need to look hard at the consequences. What does it mean for America? What choices does the budget before us make for our country?

At its core, it rigs the rules of the game for very wealthy and very powerful special interests at the expense of everybody else in the country and at the expense of other priorities in the country.

For example, if you are a multimillionaire, under this budget, you will have your top tax rate cut by one-third, all the way from 39 percent, where it is today, down to 25 percent. That is an average tax break for millionaires of $200,000. That is great for people who are well off.

What does this budget do to the rest of this country? It guts vital investments in our children's future, it squeezes the middle class, and it violates important commitments to our seniors.

Now, let's step back because the chairman mentioned the economic benefits of this budget. The reality is that our economic competitors around the world will eat our lunch if we pass this Republican budget. It provides for perverse tax incentives that ship American jobs overseas while shortchanging investments in jobs right here at home.

As we will see over the next couple of days, it guts important investments that historically have helped power our economy, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tells us that, in the next couple of years, this is going to slow down economic growth, that it is going to slow down job growth. One estimate puts the job loss at 3 million jobs.

At a time when we need to be modernizing our national infrastructure--the backbone of our economy--this budget slashes the transportation budget by $52 billion in this year alone, stopping new projects, throwing construction workers off the job.

It will condemn the United States to a potholed road of economic decline, and it refuses to include one thing that the Congressional Budget Office says will help boost our economy right now, which is to pass bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform.

Mr. Chairman, as this budget provides these windfall tax breaks for the folks at the very top, let's see what it does to others in our country.

We all depend on our kids getting a good education. It is good for families. It is good for the country. The saddest part about this budget is that it casts a dark shadow over the American Dream, and it violates the fundamental promise that every hardworking American should have a fair shot at success.

At a time when we should be investing more in education in the United States, all told, if you look at early education--K-12--and college education, this budget cuts it by $370 billion below current services. That has devastating impacts on everything from Head Start to Early Head Start to K-12 to college.

Let me just mention one of the things it does to college student loans. It starts charging college students' interest while they are still in college, before they have gotten out and gotten a job. That saves $40 billion in this budget--actually, a little more than that--in the same budget that provides huge tax breaks to the wealthiest in this country.

So much for wanting to address the lack of upward mobility in America; rung by rung, this budget knocks out the steps of that ladder of opportunity. If you are to the manor born, you are going to be just fine under this budget, but for everybody else, tough luck and worse.

Let's look at seniors as our next example. Those on Medicare will immediately pay more if they have high prescription drug costs, right? The chairman mentioned that the Democratic budget cut Medicare and turned it into something else.

The reality is that the savings that were achieved in Medicare by ending

some of the overpayments in the Democratic budget were recycled to strengthen key parts of Medicare, including to close what has been called the prescription drug doughnut hole.

The Republican budget here reopens the prescription drug doughnut hole. If you are a senior with high prescription drug costs, it is $1,200 more per year, on average, as a result of this budget.

Seniors who have been able to get preventative health services without having to put down copayments will no longer get those screenings, and now, they will be at risk of not getting the treatment and care when they need it.

On top of all of that, it ends the Medicare guarantee by creating a voucher program. For seniors who decide to stay in the traditional Medicare program, they will see their premiums hiked by 50 percent when that goes into effect. They can stay, but they will have to pay big time to stay. That is not the Medicare guarantee.

Middle class families--I mentioned that this budget cuts the top tax rate for millionaires from 39 percent to 25 percent. That is a 30 percent tax cut, but it says it is going to do that in a deficit- neutral manner, so it is simple math, Mr. Chairman.

If you are going to do that, you are going to squeeze middle class taxpayers. In fact, this budget pretends that Chairman Camp and the exercise he went through in the Ways and Means Committee--the fact- based exercise--never happened because what Chairman Camp found was that you couldn't bring that top rate down to 25 percent without squeezing middle-income taxpayers.

That is why he had a top rate of 35 percent in his plan, and yet this says let's go to a 25 percent top rate. That means $2,000 more in taxes for a family with kids to finance the tax breaks for the folks at the very top.

This budget reserves, perhaps, its cruelest blow for those who are seeking to climb out of poverty into the middle class, to have an opportunity to participate in the American Dream.

In the last election, the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, said he really didn't care about the 47 percent. This Republican budget sets out to prove that statement. If you look at this budget, it is an assault on Americans who are struggling to climb out of the middle class.

We had a big debate in this Congress about food nutrition programs. The Republican plan called for $40 billion in cuts. It ended up being $8 billion. In this budget, it is $137 billion.

Millions of more kids will go hungry as a result of cutting that safety net, and that is why faith-based groups that have looked at these Republican budgets over the last 3 years have said that they don't meet the tests of a society that cares for the least of these.

I want to close by asking a question because our Republican colleagues say the goal has to be 10 years to hit this political target. It is interesting because the Republican budget 3 years ago didn't balance until around 2040, but now, we have this sort of political target that they have to hit.

If it is so important to hit that, why do they ask everything of our kids and of our seniors and of struggling families and of nothing from very powerful special interests?

This budget does not close one special interest tax break for the purpose of reducing the deficit, not one--not a special interest tax break for hedge fund owners, not a special tax break for big oil companies. We have a race to hit their political timetable here, but we are not going to ask those special interest groups to pay one dime to help reduce the deficit.

Here is the really strange thing: after all is said and done, this Republican budget does not balance in 10 years if, at the same time, the Republicans claim to be repealing the Affordable Care Act. It just doesn't add up. The math isn't there.

What this Republican budget does is this: it gets rid of all of the benefits in the Affordable Care Act. It gets rid of the tax credits that help Americans purchase affordable care. It gets rid of the provision that says you can stay on your parents' insurance policy until you are 26.

It gets rid of the provisions that say you cannot be denied coverage because you have a preexisting condition. It gets rid of all of the benefits.

Guess what it keeps? It keeps all of the tax revenue from the Affordable Care Act.

You don't have to take my word for it. This is The Heritage Foundation. This isn't some liberal group.

Here is what they say:

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of this budget is that it

keeps the tax increases associated with ObamaCare.

It is what they said about last year's budget. This year is exactly the same. This budget also keeps all of the savings from Medicare. It doesn't recycle any of those savings to strengthen it as the Democratic budget does, but it keeps them.

If you actually look at this chart, you will see that, in 2024, when the Republican budget claims to balance, without the revenues and the savings from Medicare, it doesn't come close to balancing.

So our Republican colleagues have got to choose. Either you claim to have a balanced budget and you recognize that you support all of the revenues and savings in the Affordable Care Act or not, but you can't have it both ways. The sad thing is, after hitting everybody but the very wealthy in this budget, they still can't achieve what they claim is their goal.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

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

I would just point out that I think it is useful to look at this through the perspective of history, because the last time we had balanced budgets in this country was at the end of the Clinton administration, and shortly after that, when President Bush came into office, we saw back-to-back tax cuts.

The theory at that time was if you dropped the top tax rate on high- income individuals, it will trickle down to everybody else and power- charge the economy. The only problem is that didn't work. It did not work at all. The trickle-down theory of economics did not work. We didn't get that boost of economic growth. What we did get was huge, huge deficits as far as the eye could see.

And so the problem with this budget is that it is a U-turn back to that philosophy--the idea that we are going to provide these tax cuts and it will create a big boost of economic activity. But reality has shown that it doesn't work that way. We should be building our economy from the middle out and from the bottom up. The top-down approach doesn't work.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), a distinguished member of the Armed Services Committee.

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

Mr. Chairman, I think, for the people who may be watching this, and for our colleagues, the question is, how do we achieve the priorities that we hope we all want to achieve, which is jobs growing faster, the economy growing faster, and deal with the long term deficit and debt in a responsible manner?

The glaring problem with the congressional Republican budget is that they don't call for any shared responsibility. They don't ask the most powerful special interests to contribute one dime by closing a single tax break, not one. And because they shelter the most powerful and the most wealthy, everybody else has to take a hit in their budget.

As a result, the entire country takes a hit because those are investments in our kids' education, in basic science and research that are important to help power our entire economy.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee), a terrific new member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the gentleman another 30 seconds.

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

I would just point out that we hear a lot about the global aggregate numbers, but the distribution of those cuts is important.

If you look at the portion of the budget that we have, historically, used to invest in education, to invest in innovation, to invest in places like the National Institutes of Health, that portion of the budget is cut by 24 percent relative to the bipartisan Ryan-Murray agreement. And it is cut from there.

So the part of the budget that does a lot of damage that we are focused on in terms of future investments, really does mean that we are going to be less competitive as a country. It will dull our competitive edge. And I will tell you, our economic competitors will be cheering.

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

Mr. Chairman, I am glad the chairman of the committee recognized that there are about $1 trillion worth of tax expenditures. What does that mean?

That means tax preferences in the Tax Code. $1 trillion a year, he said. That is right.

And yet, the Republican budget doesn't close one penny of those tax expenditures to help reduce our deficit, not one. It says we have to reserve all those tax loophole closures to cut the top rate for millionaires by one-third, from 39 percent to 25 percent. That is what they want to do with all the tax expenditures.

Because they refuse to get rid of one of those tax expenditures for the purposes of deficit reduction, their budget does hit all these students.

What is honest is to tell students who are going to college right now that this budget is going to charge them over $40 billion more in interest because now they are going to have to pay interest while they are still in college, even though it doesn't close one of those tax expenditures for very wealthy people to help meet the targets and reduce the deficit, not one.

So, as we look at the priorities in this budget, we have to ask ourselves, why is it that this Republican budget doesn't call for any shared responsibility?

Why is it that it does provide tax breaks to folks at the very top at the expense of the rest of the country?

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

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, let me just point out to the gentleman that the President's budget has two things in it. First of all, it actually calls for a fund to increase defense spending for readiness in fiscal year 2015, which is not included in the Republican budget.

Number two, in the outyears, the President also grows our defense spending; and as the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense have testified, those investments will make sure that the United States is second to none.

In fact, the next 10 countries after that, together, spend much less on defense than the United States, and we will continue to have that additional robust defense spending to make sure that we are strong, but we also need to make sure that our economy is strong to support that kind of budget, and if you have got the important investments that have helped make the economy grow over time, you will not get that.

Now, I will just respond to the gentleman's comments on revenue. Anytime the economy is growing, if you have a certain tax rate, you are going to get more absolute dollars of revenue in, but I mentioned that the last time we had actually had a balanced budget in this country was in the year 1998 through 2001.

If you look at the amount of revenue that was coming in during that period as a percent of the economy, you will find that revenue was 19.2 percent in 1998, 19.2 percent in 1999, 19.9 percent in 2000, and so on, way ahead of the amount of revenue as a percentage of the economy that this Republican budget calls for in year 10, even though, between now and then, we will have millions more Americans on Medicare and Social Security.

So, again, they just can't bring themselves to close one of these special interest tax breaks, not one for the purpose of reducing the deficit and contributing to our economic well-being.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I would just note that it is this Republican budget here in the House of Representatives that divides America. And when we point out that this is a budget that protects tax breaks for the very wealthy at the expense of everybody else, our colleagues say, oh, no, no, that is dividing America. But what we are explaining is the Republican budget, and that is, unfortunately, what it does.

The chairman originally said that only in Washington is an increase really a cut. I would just point out that in the President's defense budget, it goes from $521 billion in fiscal year 2015 to $646 billion 10 years from now--hardly a cut, in fact, quite an expansion going forward.

I am now pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Castro), a distinguished member of the Armed Services Committee who has focused a lot on defense.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, I now am very pleased to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), a terrific member of the Budget Committee who is focused on lots of important issues including the challenge of poverty in America.

I yield the gentlelady an additional 30 seconds.

I yield the gentlelady an additional 10 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman referred to tough decisions. Well, it is true that the House Republican budget is really tough on our kids' education. It cuts deeply into early education, Early Head Start, and Head Start. It cuts very deeply into K-12. That includes Title I and special education for kids with disabilities. As we have talked about, it charges college students higher interest rates.

And it is true that the Republican budget is tough on seniors on Medicare, because if they have high prescription drug costs, the Republican budget reopens the doughnut hole so they will face $1,200 more per year on prescription drugs.

So it is tough on kids' education, and it is tough on seniors.

I will tell you who it is not tough on. It is not tough on powerful special interests, people who are spending millions of dollars right now on TV advertising trying to influence people's votes. It is not tough on them at all. As I said, this budget calls for cutting the top tax rate by, fully, 30 percent.

Now, during the Budget Committee debate, the Democrats said, okay, the only way you can do this mathematically, if you are cutting the top rate by 30 percent, from 39 percent to 25 percent, is if you do it in a deficit neutral way, then you are going to be increasing taxes on middle class taxpayers and families to finance those tax cuts. And so we said to our Republican colleagues, if that is not what you intend to do, let's at least pass an amendment telling the Ways and Means Committee that one of our principles is at least maintaining the current progressivity of the Tax Code so we don't increase taxes on middle class families or lower-income families to finance the tax breaks for the folks at the top, called the Protect the American Middle Class from a Tax Increase amendment.

Republicans said no to that.

They have got all sorts of other instructions to the Ways and Means Committee in their budget, like reducing the top rate by a third for millionaires; but when it came to instructing the Ways and Means Committee not to increase the tax burden on middle class Americans, they said no to that.

So, yes, this Republican budget is tough on the middle class. It is tough on seniors, and it is tough on our kid's education; but for folks at the very top, they just don't ask for any shared sacrifice. We are just pointing that out. It is a fact in their budget.

The chairman talked about all those tax expenditures, $1 trillion a year worth. Not one of those tax expenditures are closed for the purpose of reducing the deficit.

Now, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), a Member of Congress who has worked hard throughout his entire career to try and make sure that our country grows and that every American has opportunity, the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Chairman, it is now my privilege to yield 2 minutes the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), a fighter for working Americans and a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, it is now my privilege to yield 4 minutes to a fellow Marylander, Mr. Hoyer, the Democratic whip, who has spent a lot of time focused on budgets to empower our economy and to make sure we do so in a fiscally responsible manner.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), a member of the Budget Committee and the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire how much time is remaining on each side.

Does the chairman have any further speakers?

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

I yield the gentleman another 30 seconds.

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

We all believe in a growing economy, and we all believe in greater prosperity. The issue is how do we make sure we have that prosperity as a country.

We have two very important strains in the American character. One strain is the entrepreneurial strain, the self-reliance strain, and that has helped generate great prosperity in this country.

It has helped unleash huge amounts of potential; yet we have also learned as a country that there are some things we can do better by working together than if we are just hundreds of millions of people who are separately operating on their own, with things like investing in our national infrastructure, with things like investing in a world- class college system, with things like working and investing in medical research, so that we are the world's leader in those areas.

Those are what have made us a world economic power and that have allowed us to support our military.

The problem with the Republican budget is that it ignores that part of the American character. We keep hearing from our colleagues about all of those tax expenditures that are out there, but I just have to go back, Mr. Chairman, to point out that they don't close one of those tax loopholes for the purpose of helping to reduce the deficit.

Because they make that decision--because they decide to say: we are not going to touch those very powerful special interests and the very wealthy--their budget mathematically has to come after other people in the country, after the middle class, after seniors, after our kids' education, after our infrastructure. That is what this is all about.

Our budget and the President's budget dramatically reduce the deficit. They reduce the debt as a function of a share of the economy in the outyears going down. The Republican budget didn't balance until 2040 just a few years ago.

So the issue is whether you are going to be driven by the ideological target or whether your fundamental focus will be jobs and opportunity. That is what ours does.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) control the balance of the time.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Con. Res. 96.

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

Mr. Chairman, I am here to rise in support of H. Con. Res. 96, for the fiscal year 2015.

This is the fourth year we have done this--this being bringing a budget to the floor to balance the budget and pay down the national debt.

This is exactly what our economy needs today. We ask the Congressional Budget Office to look at this kind of deficit reduction. What would it do? Well, it is very clear that it would promote economic growth.

In 2024, economic output would be 1.8 percent higher than it otherwise would be. What does that mean? That means by getting our fiscal house in order, by balancing our budget, paying off our debt, and reducing the deficit, take-home pay for Americans will be $1,100 higher than it otherwise would be if we don't do something like this. That is just part of our budget.

We also call for more job creation, economic growth policies like tax reform, and energy development. All of these things would help get our economy back on track.

I also understand that there is a lot of confusion about what is going on in our budget. I would like to spend a few moments sort of clarifying and clearing up some of that confusion.

First, our budget does repeal ObamaCare. Let me say it again. Our budget does repeal ObamaCare because we think it is going to do great damage to our economy, to our budget, to health care. We don't keep the tax hikes in ObamaCare. Instead, we propose revenue neutral comprehensive tax reform. Our critics like to claim we are keeping it. What we are saying is let's scrap this Tax Code in favor of a better Tax Code, including replacing ObamaCare taxes with pro-growth tax reform to create jobs, increase take-home pay, and get this economy growing.

Second, we end the raid on Medicare. The dirty little secret that the other side won't want to talk about is the fact that they turned Medicare into a piggy bank for ObamaCare. They raided $716 billion from Medicare to pay for ObamaCare. We say that those savings from Medicare need to stay with Medicare to make it more solvent, and if some of those savings from Medicare are doing damage to the Medicare provider network, like reducing access to things like Medicare Advantage, then we have a mechanism in here to make sure that we can fix that, just like we did for the SGR, otherwise known as the ``doc fix.''

We think we need to save and strengthen this program, not only so that it is there intact for those in the near retirement, but for future generations who are facing a bankrupt program if we don't do something to reform it.

Second, we don't slash the safety net. If anything, we strengthen the safety net.

This administration has made all sorts of promises that it has no way of keeping, or it has made all sorts of promises and it is not telling us in any way how they are going to keep these promises. It has promised major expansions in programs like Medicaid and Pell grants. How they plan to pay for it, we have no idea. We refuse to be complicit with the demise of these programs.

We spend $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years on Medicaid. Under our budget, program spending will continue to rise by population plus inflation. We grow the program each and every year after fiscal year 2016 onward. We simply slow the growth rate by giving Governors and State legislators more flexibility to customize these programs to meet the unique needs of their populations instead of cramming down their throats some one-size-fits-all Washington-knows-best approach, which has been failing the Medicare population in our health care provider network.

This budget spends $600 billion over the next 10 years on food stamps. It is a program that has quadrupled since 2002. We propose to give Governors more flexibility so that they can customize this program to meet the needs of their populations, but not until 2019, until CBO says the economy will have recovered by then.

CBO says that the Pell grant is going bankrupt. It is going to face a fiscal shortfall in 2016 and every year thereafter. So instead of making all these Pell promises that the government has no way of keeping, the budget maintains the current Pell award, $5,730, throughout each of the next 10 years and funds it.

Our budget all told cuts $5.1 trillion in spending over the next 10 years. We do this by cutting waste, by cutting abuse, by stopping the age-old Washington practice of spending money we just don't have, and by making much needed reforms to government programs.

Our critics call this draconian. Look at it this way. On the current path, we are set to spend $48 trillion of hardworking taxpayer dollars or borrow it from the next generation--$48 trillion over the next 10 years. Under this path, we will spend $43 trillion.

By contrast, under the current path, Federal Government spending is slated to rise by 5.2 percent on average for the next decade. Under this budget, it will rise by 3.5 percent over the next decade. Hardly draconian.

Mr. Chairman, there is nothing compassionate about making promises that the government cannot keep. When that bill comes due, it is going to hurt the vulnerable, the first and the worst, and the voiceless. This is why we need to get spending under control.

Let me show you what we are proposing in a nutshell. The red shows you our national debt. Our national debt is on course to hit catastrophic levels. Our national debt is going to hit these catastrophic levels which guarantee that the next generation of Americans inherit a bleak future, a lower standard of living, a burden of debt that they cannot have a high standard of living with.

We in our generation have to make tough choices. We have got to face up to this issue. What we are saying here with this budget is, the sooner we get on top of our fiscal problems, the better off everybody is going to be.

We are saying, if we get ahead of these problems now, we can phase in reforms, such as Medicare reforms that don't even affect people in or near retirement. The sooner we tackle these fiscal problems, the better off everybody is going to be, the faster the economy grows, and the more we can guarantee that the next generation inherits a debt-free future.

We have never given the next generation a diminished future in this country before. That is the great legacy of this Nation, work hard and make tough choices, so that the next generation can be better off. We know, without a shadow of a doubt, that that is not going to be the case.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, we know that, in a couple of years, the debt starts taking back off, and we are back to $1 trillion deficits. Our tax revenues are at an alltime high this year. The problem is that spending is outpacing that. The sooner we can get our fiscal house in order, the sooner we can create jobs and get economic growth.

The sooner we can bring solvency to our safety net, to our social contract, the more that people can depend on these programs, and the sooner we can bring these reforms to get our spending in line with our revenues, the faster we can pay off this debt.

Just like a family, a government that lives beyond its means today necessarily has to live below its means tomorrow. We want to make right by the next generation. We want to grow this economy.

We want to create jobs and increase take-home pay, and we want to get people to work. That is what this budget is designed to do, and that is why I am proud to bring this balanced budget to the floor.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to say: you can't have it both ways.

That is interesting. You can raid Medicare by $716 billion to pay for ObamaCare and then count that money as if it is going back to Medicare, counting the same dollar twice. That is not our word. That is the word of the Congressional Budget Office and of the actuaries, themselves, at Medicare, which is what the other side did with ObamaCare.

Look, apparently, the only way to revive and protect the American Dream is to bring our debt from $17 trillion to $24 trillion and, on the way there, raise taxes on hardworking Americans another $1.8 trillion, and if you are not for that, you are against the American Dream.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry).

Mr. Chair, at this time, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to say, wow, that sounds horrible. Good thing it is not true. Only in Washington is a slower increase in spending awful, blood-curdling, cut- throating, terrible, and draconian cuts.

If we are going to get our fiscal house in order, what we are saying in this budget is, instead of increasing spending 5.2 percent a year on average, let's do it by 3.5 percent a year on average--hardly draconian.

And by the way, maybe people closer to the problems, like our States, might have a better idea on how to help people in their communities. Those are the principles we are talking about here.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Roskam), the chief deputy whip.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time remains between both sides?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Lance).

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

As the Ryan of the Ryan-Murray agreement, look, I wish that the Murray side of the agreement would have agreed to these out-year numbers. That didn't happen. That agreement is a 2-year agreement, so to compare this budget and the baseline against that of the 24 cut, that is not accurate.

Here is the problem, Mr. Chairman. We are spending money we don't have. We are going through the budget, program by program, line by line, and trying to reform these programs so that they can better deliver on their promises.

We are looking at certain programs, say, like food stamps, and saying, some States have some pretty innovative ideas on how better to deliver these services.

There have been some wasteful and fraudulent activities that needed to be gotten at so that we don't waste taxpayer money.

We think it is important to encourage able-bodied adults who do not have dependents to go to work. When we did that in welfare reform in the 1990s, it worked. People went to work.

By the way, child poverty dropped by double digits. Single moms went to work. It helped reduce poverty. We want to replicate that kind of success with these kind of reforms on these kinds of programs.

When they talk about education, this administration, and this Democratic budget, is making a bunch of empty promises. They are promising the world in Pell grants, but they are not funding that world.

We are saying, let's keep Pell and let's fund it, and let's keep it where it is, but let's fund it throughout the decade. I would rather take a full-funded promise than an empty promise any day. I think that is more honest with our students.

The other part I think we have to look at is, we are feeding tuition inflation. If we just keep pumping more and more borrowed money, empty- promised money into the system, what we are getting out of it is higher tuition.

Why don't we look at why tuition is going up so much in the first place?

Gosh, when we look at that, we are learning the Federal Government is part of the problem. Let's fix that.

Mr. Chairman, we do go through these things line by line.

The gentleman likes to talk about tax reform. What he won't tell you is specifically what this tax reform bill does, because we don't have a specific tax reform in here because this is the budget.

The Ways and Means Committee does specific tax reform. That is where the loophole closers are.

We are saying the outline of it is to get tax rates down on businesses, small and large, so they can compete.

There are $1 trillion in loopholes every year that they can work with to get those tax rates down. So to suggest that this, all of a sudden, does these tax breaks for millionaires and does this for these other people and does that, they are just making that stuff up.

What I think we ought to do is put the rhetoric aside and balance this budget.

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

Yielding myself 15 seconds, the shared responsibility we are asking for is let's fix these problems within our generation and not pass it on to the next generation.

With that, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford), the policy chair of our conference.

I yield myself 2 minutes, Mr. Chairman.

The first priority and responsibility of the Federal Government is to secure our Nation and to provide for the common defense of our Nation.

The gentleman from Maryland mentioned the President has this proposal for this year that would have violated our bipartisan budget agreement. It is a proposal that holds hostage defense for higher taxes and more domestic spending, but worse than that, we had a hearing in the Budget Committee about 2 years ago.

Then-Secretary of Defense Panetta, along with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, came and testified; and they said to our Budget Committee: This is as far as we can go, we can't cut any further without doing damage to our military.

That is effectively where the Republican budget is. That is not where this year's Obama budget is. The President's budget, which is also replicated by the Democratic substitute, cuts the military far lower than that. They are bringing the Army and the Marines to a level we have not seen since before World War II. They are shrinking our Navy to a size we have not seen since before World War I. They are shrinking our Air Force to a level we have never seen before.

They are cutting compensation for our men and women in uniform, not to save money for other parts of the military, like readiness and training and equipment, but they are cutting compensation, cutting force structure, cutting personnel, cutting equipment, cutting defense--not to reduce the deficit, but to spend it on more domestic spending.

The Joint Chiefs have said that now, with this budget submission, it represents a moderate risk of actually affecting our national security. They have never said that before. They have said we have had a low risk.

I yield myself 15 more seconds to say, of all the problems that we have in the President's budget, it hollows out our military, sends the wrong signals overseas, and we are not going to do that.

With that, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Price, the distinguished vice chair of the Budget Committee.

I yield to the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say there are different visions. We don't think we should take more money from hardworking taxpayers to spend it in Washington and then borrow more from our children. We think we should balance the budget and pay off the debt.

We are going to see a lot of budgets coming to the floor here offered by the other side, which is great. It is their right. I am glad they are offering alternatives.

Mr. Van Hollen's Democratic budget will have a $1.8 trillion tax increase, just like the President's new $1.8 trillion tax increase. The Progressive Caucus budget, they have the candle here: a $6.6 trillion tax increase they are encouraging.

I yield myself an additional 15 seconds.

Spending by the other side, what they are saying is let's just have a bidding war on how much we can raise people's taxes. Let's even raise spending more. And nobody else is offering a budget that will ever balance the budget. So the idea here is borrow endlessly, never balance it, and give our children an inferior standard of living.

With that, I would like to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Nunnelee), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Chair, at this time, I would like to yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentlelady from Missouri (Mrs. Hartzler).

Mr. Chairman, I would like to insert into the Record a very specific recitation of the Center for Budget Priorities' claim that the gentlewoman mentioned, and at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Black), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee.

Responsible Spending Restraint and Reform--Response to the Center on

Budget and Policy Priorities

In Brief:

A smaller increase is not a spending cut.

Under this budget, spending will grow, on average, by 3.5

percent a year over the next decade--on the current path, it

will grow by 5.2 percent.

This budget spends $3.5 trillion on Medicaid over the next

ten years. We increase spending every year from fiscal year

2016 onward.

This budget spends $600 billion on food stamps over the

next decade. And it does not convert SNAP into a block grant

until 2019, when the economy will have recovered.

This budget maintains the current maximum Pell award

($5,730) throughout each of the next ten years of the budget.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities claims the House

Republican budget ``gets 69 percent of its cuts from low-

income programs.'' Instead, the House GOP budget grows them

at a more sustainable rate.

On the current path, the federal government will spend

roughly $48 trillion over the next ten years. By contrast,

this budget will spend nearly $43 trillion.

On the current path, spending will grow, on average, by 5.2

percent a year over the next decade. Under this budget,

spending will grow, on average, by 3.5 percent a year.

Nearly $43 trillion is enough. Increasing spending by 3.5

percent instead of 5.2 percent is hardly draconian.

President Obama and his party have made promises they can't

keep--they've promised huge expansions to safety-net programs

that ultimately would bankrupt them.

Medicaid: This budget repeals Obamacare--including the

law's massive expansions of Medicaid, which are

unsustainable. Instead, this budget spends $3.5 trillion on

Medicaid over the next ten years. We grow the program every

year from fiscal year 2016 onward. We simply slow the rate of

growth and give states the flexibility to meet the unique

needs of their people.

SNAP: This budget spends $600 billion on food stamps over

the next decade. By capping open-ended federal subsidies and

allowing states to develop new, innovative methods, the

budget's gradual reforms encourage states to reduce rolls and

help recipients find work. The budget also doesn't covert

SNAP into a block grant until 2019, when the economy will

have fully recovered. The budget also calls for time limits

and work requirements like the reforms that helped reduce

poverty nationwide in the mid-1990s.

Pell Grants: Congressional Democrats and the President have

pushed Pell Grant spending to unsustainable rates. The

Congressional Budget Office reports the program will face

fiscal shortfalls starting in 2016 and continuing through

each year of the budget window. We need to reform the program

so it can keep its promises. This budget brings Pell spending

under control and makes sure aid helps the truly needy, not

university administrators. At the same time, this budget

maintains the current maximum Pell award ($5,730) throughout

each of the next ten years of the budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

I want to rest the mind of the distinguished minority whip at ease. Chairman Rogers does support this budget. His comments in 2013 aside, he is a supporter of this budget. This budget balances using CBO numbers.

I would also say this. All these complaints about spending cuts or slower increases in spending aside--this budget, by the way, doesn't specify that NIH is going to have all of that--all of these reductions in spending or reductions in the increase in spending will pale in comparison if we have a debt crisis, if we have a bond market incident, if we have an interest rate shock.

If we keep kicking the can down the road, the solution then will be so much uglier, so much more draconian, than any of this hyperbolic rhetoric even suggests.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Tennessee, Dr. Roe.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Montana (Mr. Daines).

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

I do not have any further speakers at the moment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

I think there is this view that the pie of life is fixed, that society is static--the economy, a fixed pie--and that we here in Washington should decide how to redistribute the slices of the pie.

We reject that whole, entire premise. Life is dynamic. The economy is dynamic. We want to grow the pie for everybody. You don't grow the pie--grow opportunity or grow the economy--if you drive this country to a debt crisis, if you continue spending way beyond your means, if you spend money we

don't have that is taken from the next generation.

This President has already raised taxes $1.7 trillion. The top effective tax rate on successful small businesses is almost 45 percent. The tax rate on big businesses, like corporations, is 35 percent.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself an additional minute.

Our competitors, the countries we compete with, tax their businesses at 25 percent. When we tax ourselves a lot more than our foreign competitors tax themselves, they win, and we lose.

What we are hearing from the other side is that $1.7 trillion tax increase is not enough. Let's go farther and tax another $1.8 trillion.

Then this rhetoric about winners and losers and the few and the this and the that is a notion that all of the good ideas come from Washington. It is a notion that goes beyond the idea that government needs to play a supporting role in our lives, in fulfilling important missions like health and retirement security and a safety net, to government needs to play the commanding role in our lives, that it needs to dictate these things, that government runs the economy, that government decides who wins and who loses.

Guess what, Mr. Chairman? When you do that, the interest groups that they are all complaining about, they are the ones who call the shots up here.

What we are trying to do with this budget is to get the basics right. What we want to do is to make sure that we can make good on these very important missions of health and retirement security, and we want to make sure that people get to decide how it is done in their lives.

We want to make sure that American businesses have what they need to compete and survive and grow and to create jobs in this global economy. What we want to make sure is that we don't live beyond our means so that our kids live below their means. We want to grow this economy.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself an additional minute.

We have got a big debt. We all know that. The question is: Who owns our debt? Who is in control of our future?

We already know we are asking a lot from the next generation, more than any other generation has before. Back when I was born in 1970, 6 percent of our national debt was owned by foreigners. In 1990, when I was in college, 19 percent was owned by foreigners. Today, 47 percent of our national debt is owned by foreigners. They control half of our debt.

That is not in our country's interest. Relying on other countries to cash flow our country--to cash flow our budget--is not smart economics, and we know we are taking control of our country and are ceding it elsewhere.

This is why we have got to get this debt under control, for our kids, for our grandkids, for our economy, and for our sovereignty.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert).

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 544 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

General Leave

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

Madam Speaker, it is budget week. I have been trying to contain my smile all week long. I have the great pleasure of sitting on both the Budget Committee and the Rules Committee here in this House. The rule that we have before us today, House Resolution 544, does candidly what I think my friend from Massachusetts and I came here to do, and that is to have an open debate on the floor of the House about absolutely everyone's ideas.

I want to tell you what that means, Madam Speaker, because we sit on the Rules Committee, my friend from Massachusetts and I, and part of that responsibility is deciding whose voice gets heard and whose doesn't. It is a very solemn responsibility, one that neither of us takes lightly. I believe we would both say that whenever possible we should err on the side of having more voices instead of less. What we have today, Madam Speaker, is a rule that provides for absolutely every budget alternative written, drafted, and presented in this House, every one.

I want you to think about that, Madam Speaker, because this ought to be a place where we debate ideas. This ought to be a place where we talk about what tomorrow looks like, how can we make tomorrow better than today. And on this day, we will be voting on a rule that will make every single alternative idea available for robust debate on the floor of this House.

Now, the underlying bill is the bill that came out of the Budget Committee. Again, Madam Speaker, in full disclosure, I am a member of that Budget Committee. I am proud of the work that that committee put out.

Some folks call it the Paul Ryan budget. I take umbrage at that. I sit on that committee. I work shoulder to shoulder with Paul. I am going to call it the Budget Committee budget. I hope at the end of this budget week it will be the House-passed budget, because I think it reflects the priorities of this institution, and I think it reflects the priorities of the American people.

If it does not reflect the priorities of any Member in this Chamber, they will have alternatives to vote on. One of those alternatives is written and drafted by the ranking member of the Budget Committee, the lead Democrat on the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), that substitute amendment made in order today.

The Congressional Black Caucus, Madam Speaker, comes together to put together a list of priorities, a full substitute budget, has done that for a number of years, has done that again this year. This rule makes that Congressional Black Caucus substitute in order for a vote.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus, Madam Speaker, they have presented a budget. Now, their budget is one that raises taxes by $5 trillion over the next 10 years. It is not going to be one that I support here on the floor of the House, but it is absolutely a legitimate list of priorities, as I talked about earlier, priorities that affect the young people of this Nation. We are going to get a vote on that budget here on the floor of this House.

The Republican Study Committee, Madam Speaker, of which I am also a member, a proud drafter of that budget document, that vote, espousing the absolute fastest path to balance that we will be hearing in this institution during budget week, Madam Speaker, will get a vote on the floor of this House.

Finally, a budget presented by Representative Mulvaney of South Carolina but intended to replicate the budget written by the President of the United States of America. It is a funny thing in constitutional government. Of course we have article I, legislative branch; article II, executive branch. Certainly, we have different responsibilities, but I don't think there is anyone in this Chamber who would say the President hasn't invested an incredible amount of time and energy presenting his budget. It wasn't here on time, but it did arrive here. It is a complete budget, and it deserves a hearing. No one on the Democrat side of the aisle picked up that budget to present it until Representative Mulvaney did. Again, I think that is part of the robust debate that we must have.

All together, we are going to have 4 hours of debate on these budget alternatives. That is in addition to all the regular order that has already gone on in committee, in addition to the hours that we have invested in the Rules Committee already, 4 hours here on the floor of this House.

Why is that important, Madam Speaker? Because I think what I will hear on both sides of the aisle is that these budgets represent a statement of values. Who are you going to take the money from? Who are you going to spend the money on? How are you going to invest in the future? How are you going to prevent the future from being eroded by payments on debt after debt, after debt, after debt? These are the discussions that we are going to have.

Just 10 years ago, Madam Speaker, the public debt in this country was $7.3 trillion. Today, it is $17.5 trillion--all of the debt that we have racked up in the history of this country through 2004 more than doubled in just the last 10 years.

Madam Speaker, there may be folks in this Chamber who say that is a debt worth making, that the investments that we are creating by borrowing this money from our children and spending it on the generations today, that that is worth doing. I say no. I say our obligation to our children tomorrow, to our grandchildren tomorrow is not to advance ourselves at their expense. I think our obligation is to pay down that debt, but that is a legitimate discussion that we are going to have over the next several days.

The $10 trillion on the Nation's credit card in just the past 10 years, Madam Speaker, let there be no doubt that that is the gravity of the conversation that we are having today.

I remember back in 2012, Madam Speaker, President Obama said in an interview with ABC News: ``We don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next 10 years, it's going to be in a sustainable place.'' In 2012, the President predicting that for the next 10 years the crisis won't come, that the crisis will be out beyond year 10. Madam Speaker, he may be right, but that was 2 years ago, and there are only two bills, two budgets that we have before us this budget week that even balance in that 10-year window.

This is a debate worthy of this Chamber; this is a debate worthy of America. And I hope that by the end of budget week, Madam Speaker, by the time we take our vote on final passage, irrespective of which substitute has passed or whether the House-passed or committee-passed budget remains, that we have a document that represents not just this institution's values but that represents our constituents' values, that represents American values, that is true to the obligation that we all have to protect the opportunities of the generations of tomorrow.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes to say to my friend from Massachusetts, I believe we share many of the same priorities. But because of past Congresses, because of past administrations, because of past decisions that have been made in this Chamber, we are on track to spend $6 trillion on interest over the next 10 years.

Madam Speaker, that is opportunity to fulfill every single one of those goals my friend from Massachusetts laid out that is frittered away by the borrow-and-spend behaviors of the past.

There is no disagreement in this Chamber about the commitment to a hand-up. The disagreement is about how much further out of reach we put opportunity and success by trading away future opportunities for spending today.

I have great respect and admiration for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have said yes, let's do raise taxes by $5 trillion. Yes, let's do reset our priorities. Let's actually describe a pathway to a balanced budget. It is not an easy pathway to get to, but it matters.

It doesn't matter because it's a number, Madam Speaker. It matters because every year we don't balance the budget we steal opportunities from our children, and that is undeniable.

The debate is, Do the investments today outweigh those stolen opportunities from tomorrow? Or do the savings today that ensure that opportunity for tomorrow represent the best course of success that we can provide, again, for our children and grandchildren, about whom there is no disagreement about our strong and steadfast commitment?

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I do not yield for that purpose. All time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

Madam Speaker, I seek time for debate.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Madam Speaker, there are often reasons to come to this floor and instruct the Rules Committee about how the Rules Committee could do better. We do the very best we can, but we accept constructive criticism from all comers.

The rule that is before us today is an example of what has gone right, not what has gone wrong. The rule that is before us today makes in order every single budget that was offered to the Rules Committee.

Now, I don't dispute that there are lots of different agendas that are being pursued here on the floor at this time; but for the budget agenda, for the openness agenda, for the full debate agenda, we have a rule before us that has made in order every single substitute offered in the Rules Committee, which happens to be five substitutes in addition to the base bill, but had there been more, we would have made more in order.

Again, there are lots of things that we can come to the floor of the House and disagree on, but this rule, to bring those disagreeing budgets to the floor, should be a point of great pride for both sides of the aisle.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Parliamentary Inquiries

Madam Speaker, at this time, it is my great pleasure to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions), the chairman of the House Rules Committee.

Madam Speaker, all time is yielded for the purpose of debate only.

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions), the chairman of the Rules Committee.

Madam Speaker, at this time, it is my great pleasure to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), a member of both the Rules Committee and the House Budget Committee.

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

Madam Speaker, at this time, it is my great pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Nugent), a former sheriff, a member of the class of 2010, and a member of the Rules Committee.

I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx), the secretary of the Republican Conference.

Madam Speaker, I advise my friend from Massachusetts that we have no further speakers remaining, if he is prepared to close.

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

You couldn't tell it from the acrimony that has been expressed over the last hour, but this is a good day. There are so many opportunities we have to come to this House and be disappointed with the bills that are here before us.

Why? Because we have different ideas, we have different ideas. My constituency, different from the constituencies of so many of my other colleagues, I don't question that they do their best to serve their constituencies, but in serving their voters, they harm mine and sometimes vice versa.

Today, that is not the question. We don't have a choice between the lesser of two evils. We don't have a choice against my way or their way. We have a rule that allows for absolutely every Member of this Congress to write their own budget. Think about that, Madam Speaker. We are talking about the budget of the United States of America, $3.5 trillion.

Now, everybody doesn't write their own budget. It turns out we have more in common than we have that divides us around this institution, Madam Speaker. We have six budgets that we are going to be voting on.

That is every single budget that was submitted, but it is only six budgets. One came out of the House Budget Committee, one came out of the Republican Study Committee, one came out of the Congressional Black Caucus, one came from the Progressive Caucus, one came from the ranking member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Van Hollen, and one came from Mr. Mulvaney representing the President's budget.

By golly, Madam Speaker, if you can't find something that you believe in, in that continuum of budgets, you are not looking hard enough.

Here is the thing: budgets are about choices; budgets are about priorities. The budgets of previous Congresses and previous Presidents have run up a debt the size of which servicing, even at these lowest teaser interest rates in American history, will suck out 18 months of productivity over the next 10 years.

I do not question my friend's commitment to the SNAP program, but understand that decisions of the past, paying the interest alone, require the SNAP program be closed completely for 18 months.

I do not question my friend's commitment to national security, but the budgets and the priorities of past Congresses have borrowed us into such a state that paying interest alone would require us to close our military for 18 months over the next 10 years.

We could not agree more that this budget week is about choices and priorities, and I tell you the choices and priorities of past Congresses and past Presidents are trading away hope for the next generation of Americans. They are trading away opportunities to serve Americans who need to be served today.

They are trading away security that folks should be able to have in a land as great as America; but because of decisions that this body, the Senate, and the White House have made over the past decades, that security is no more.

Not the budget-passed budget, Madam Speaker, the Budget Committee budget brings us to balance. We will begin to pay down that debt. We will reclaim those opportunities for those future generations.

Don't we owe it to them, Madam Speaker, not to advance ourselves at their expense? I think I know what the answer to that question is. We are going to be debating it over the next 3 days here on the House floor, and I hope my colleagues will agree with me, at the end of that process, that we owe it to them to do better today.

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

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

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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