Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time is remaining on both sides?

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 3\1/2\ minutes to a member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford).

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the chairman of the House Republican Conference, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

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

Let me just start by saying this, Mr. Speaker, from this debate it's very clear that we have a difference of opinions. We have different philosophies on how to address these issues, but we are coming up to a deadline that we all must recognize: default.

So what this has done is it has brought our two parties together. So I would just like to take a second to reflect for a moment that we have a bipartisan compromise here. That doesn't happen all that often around here; so I think that's worth noting. That's a good thing.

First off, as my colleague from Texas has just said, this is a down payment on the problem. It's a good step in the right direction, and it is a huge cultural change to this institution.

Both parties got us in this mess. Both parties are going to have to work together to get us out of this mess, and the real problem, I would add, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that we spend way more money than we take in. We have to address that.

To my friends on the left, I think they would like to take comfort in the fact the way these spending cuts are designed and the way the sequester is designed.

To my friends on the right, we are cutting spending. We have been trying to get discretionary caps in law for years. I have been here 13 years trying for it every year, this is the first time.

When we ran Congress the last time we were in the majority we couldn't even get it with the Republican Congress. Now we are getting discretionary caps. That's a big achievement.

Number two, we used to just rubber stamp these debt limit increases. We used to sneak these debt limit increases in budget resolutions. Now it's out here in plain sight.

And what are we doing? We are actually cutting spending while we do this. That's cultural. That's significant. That's a big step in the right direction. We are getting two-thirds of the cuts we wanted in our budget, and, as far as I am concerned, 66 percent in the right direction is a whole lot better than going in the wrong direction.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move a call of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford) a member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

I enjoyed listening to the talking points from my friend. I just don't think they apply to this bill.

Russian roulette. This is the second piece of legislation we've brought to the floor to responsibly raise the debt limit while cutting spending. Manufactured crisis. Who went on television to scare senior citizens that their Social Security checks might be in doubt? The President of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, the cuts in this bill were agreed to in a bipartisan group. The level of cuts in this bill that go into effect immediately are $2 billion off the Senate majority leader's cuts in his bill. These were agreed to on a bipartisan basis. We're cutting spending not as much as we want, but at least we're cutting spending. Russian roulette is raising the debt limit without getting borrowing under control. A manufactured crisis is trying to scare seniors and the country into giving this government another blank check to keep spending money we don't have.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Hampshire, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Guinta.

At this time, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole).

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

The gentleman, my friend over from Maryland, keeps talking about the Reid plan, the Senate majority leader over in the Senate. His plan. I've got the CBO score, too. It says it's a $2.7 trillion increase. That means it doesn't raise the debt limit less than we cut spending, so it cuts less. But more importantly, $1.3 trillion of that money is accounting tricks and budget gimmicks.

Mr. Speaker, the American people are tired of all of the accounting tricks and the budget gimmicks that go on in Washington. Let me explain what $1.3 trillion of this does. It says that imagine that we're at war for 10 years in Afghanistan and Iraq at surge levels. We assume we're going to be fighting this war for 10 more years with over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and, oh gosh, wait. We're going to withdraw our troops in 2014. Trillion dollars in savings.

I've got a better idea. Let's pass a bill to cover the Moon with yogurt that will cost $5 trillion today. And then let's pass a bill the next day to cancel that bill. We could save $5 trillion. Wait. I got a better idea. Our debt is $14 trillion. Let's come up with a new plan to spend $14 trillion, then rescind it the next day and let's save $14 trillion.

This stuff is fiscal fantasy. You can't make this stuff up, Mr. Speaker. Suggesting that we're going to be in a war at these levels for 10 more years when everybody knows we've already decided not to do that, that does not get us $1.3 trillion in spending cuts. Only in Washington can you add up math like that. We need real spending cuts.

I yield myself an additional minute to say this is getting serious, Mr. Speaker, very serious. We can't keep spending money we just don't have. Now 42 cents of every dollar coming out of this place is borrowed money. It doesn't just threaten our children and grandchildren any more. It is hurting our economy today.

Half of that money is coming from other countries like China. Why on Earth do we want to give the President a blank check to keep doing that, giving our sovereignty and our self-determination to other countries to lend us money to fund our government. Those days have got to end.

This bill doesn't cut as much as we want. We passed a budget cut $6.2 trillion in real spending cuts. This cuts about a trillion.

Let's cut this trillion, bank that money, and then go cut some more. That's what we're trying to do to be responsible.

The problem in this town is not that we don't tax Americans enough. The problem is we're spending way too much money.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas, the chairman of

the House Republican Conference, Mr. Hensarling.

I yield myself 2 minutes at this time, Mr. Speaker.

This legislation before us today is a down payment. Does this cut the amount of spending we need to save the country from a debt crisis? No. Our budget does do that. This is two-thirds of the spending cuts we called for in this category of spending, discretionary spending. Is it 100 percent of the cuts we asked for? No, it's two-thirds of the cuts we asked for.

What does the President's budget do? It actually spends $130 billion more. I will take two-thirds of the step in the right direction instead of going in the wrong direction, the President's plan.

The Congressional Budget Office, we asked them to take a look at the President's framework. The CBO director told me under oath that they can't score speeches. This plan rejects the President's fiscal demands for tax increases, and it rejects his political demands for a blank check to get him through the election.

What we are doing here today is getting serious about getting spending under control. The spending cuts that are in this bill were already agreed to by bipartisan talks. Why are people hiding from that? This is the second bill we will have passed to avoid a default. That's responsible. It has been 820 days since the Senate even tried passing a budget.

The President, as we know, has yet to offer a plan to fix this problem. We passed a budget to fix this problem. We passed a plan to deal with the debt limit. And now we are passing another plan, based upon mutually agreed to spending cuts that get two-thirds of the cuts we already called for in this category of government. That's reasonable. That's responsible. And that is what we should be doing. Instead, we hear all this empty rhetoric and all this call for a blank check and all these accounting gimmicks and budget gimmicks from the other side who are trying to do everything they can to do anything but cut spending.

I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire of the Chair how much time remains on either side?

I will continue to reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

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.R. 2560.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 355, I call up the bill (H.R. 2560) to cut, cap, and balance the Federal budget, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz), a member of the Budget Committee, control 30 minutes; the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett), the vice chair of the Budget Committee, control 30 minutes; and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan) control 30 minutes of debate.

With respect to the remaining time, I will reserve the balance of my time and turn it over to the gentleman from Utah.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Platts).

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Hurt).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds only to say that the only place where our budget mentions oil is when we say we want to drill for more of it in our country. We don't address the tax issue. In fact, what we call for is eliminating loopholes to lower tax rates. We save Medicare, and guarantee the program is there for people 55 and above--more importantly, contrary to the current law, which takes Medicare away from current seniors as they now know it.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the House Republican Conference chairman, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis).

At this time I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Bachus.

I yield myself 30 seconds to simply say, I think the gentleman threw Social Security in there for good measure in the budget. That is assumed. Underneath these caps, it doesn't address Social Security. It probably should.

But, more to the point, Mr. Speaker, guess what ends Medicare as we know it? The current law, the President's health care law. It raids $500 billion out of Medicare to spend on another program, and then puts a board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of price controlling and, therefore, rationing Medicare for current seniors. Medicaid's going bankrupt. If you want these programs to succeed, you have to reform these programs.

Leaders see the problem and fix the problem. That's what we propose to do.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Nunnelee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say, I hope the gentleman joins us in supporting our plan, then, because our plan says let's get rid of all those tax loopholes. Let's make the tax code flatter and fairer. Let's get tax rates down for all Americans and for businesses so we can grow our economy.

I will not.

Here is the deal, Mr. Speaker. When we tax our businesses at higher rates than our foreign competitors tax theirs, they win; we lose. Some companies utilize loopholes and pay no taxes. Others pay the second- highest tax rate in the industrialized world.

Yielding myself 15 more seconds, I would simply say, Mr. Speaker, that the goal here is to get rid of all these loopholes so whoever you are, no matter what you make, you pay the same amount of tax rates.

We need to reform this Tax Code so we create jobs. If we simply raise taxes, raise spending, borrow more money, we lose jobs. This debt is a threat to our current economy, and the Tax Code is a current threat to our economy.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Ms. Buerkle).

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Walberg).

May I inquire as to the division of time between the two.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute, if we're going into recalling history, just to simply say that the ``corporate tax loophole'' is a provision that was in the President's stimulus bill drafted by Democrats, passed by Democrats, not supported by Republicans. The ``oil tax subsidies'' were the result of a bipartisan legislation responding to a WTO suit which said that all American producers, manufacturers, domestic producers get lower tax rates if they produce something in America.

What the other side is simply saying is, no, let's just raise that tax on just oil and gas, not on any other manufacturer, and that is a subsidy for oil and gas.

Mr. Speaker, these provisions are so infinitesimally small, they're just fundamentally un-serious. They're just an attempt to score political points to try and dodge coming up with solutions to solve the problem. We have a debt problem we have to deal with; we have a deficit problem we have to deal with. If we don't deal with it, we're going to lose more jobs.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).

I yield the gentleman an extra 15 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Dold).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Mulvaney), a member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California, the chairman of the Government Reform Committee, Mr. Issa.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to simply say, if we're talking balance, let's remember the fact that a big tax increase is already coming in current law.

Let's remind ourselves of the fact that in 2013, you have $800 billion in taxes with the health care law. The President is promising another $700 billion in tax increases. We've got a $1.5 trillion tax increase coming, hitting small businesses square in the bottom line. It's putting a chilling effect on jobs, and in the interest of balance, they want to put more tax increases on top of that.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Canseco).

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Utah, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Chaffetz.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

I have no further requests for time, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, here's our problem. We have a crushing burden of debt that is coming to hit our economy. This is what it all comes down to. We are driving our country and our economy off of a cliff. The reason is because we are spending so much more money than we have.

We can't keep spending money we don't have. Forty-two cents out of every dollar coming out of Washington--it's borrowed money. Let's take a look at where it's coming from. We're borrowing it, 47 percent of it, from other countries--China number one. Mr. Speaker, you can't have sovereignty, self-determination as a country, if we are relying on other governments to cash-flow half of our deficit.

This is where we are.

Here is the problem we have right now, Mr. Speaker. We have a leadership deficit. I keep hearing about the President has got a plan; the President is offering balance. The President hasn't offered a thing yet--nothing on paper, nothing in public. Leaning on reporters at press conferences is not leadership. Giving speeches, according to the CBO, is not budgeting.

The President did inherit a tough problem--no two ways about it. What did he do with this problem? He drove us deeper into debt: $1 trillion of borrowed money for stimulus that was promised to keep unemployment below 8 percent, that went up to 10, and now it's at 9.2; a stalled economy; a budget the President gave us that doubles the debt in 5 years and triples it in 10 years.

That's not leadership.

What has the other body done in the Senate, our partners on the other side of the aisle? Mr. Speaker, it has been 811 days since they bothered trying to pass a budget. Congress has gone for 2 years without a budget.

What did we do when we assumed the majority? We passed a budget. We wrote a budget. We did it in daylight, not in the backroom. We drafted it. We brought it through the committee. We had amendments. We brought it to the floor. We debated it and we passed it.

That is what we've done.

When you take a look at our problem, Mr. Speaker, you have to address what is driving our debt. Here are just the cold, hard facts: 10,000 people are retiring every day. The baby boomers are here, and we're not ready for them. Far fewer people are following them into the workforce. Health care costs are going up four times the rate of inflation. The Congressional Budget Office is telling us Medicare goes bankrupt in 9 years. Medicaid is already bankrupting our States. These are the drivers of our debt. By the year 2025, three programs--Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare--plus our interest, consume 100 percent of all Federal revenues. By the end of this decade, 20 percent of our revenues goes to just paying interest.

This is unsustainable.

So what does our budget do? What does the document that we passed that shows leadership on this issue do?

It saves these programs.

For Medicare, we say you're already retired if you're retired. If you're about to retire, we don't want to pull the rug out from under you. You organized your life around these programs, so let's keep it as is; but in order to cash-flow that commitment, in order to make good on that promissory note, you have to reform it for the next generation. Let's do it in a way that looks like the commission that President Clinton offered, a system that resembles the one we have as Members of Congress: where we get to choose the plans that meet our needs, where we don't subsidize wealthy people as much, and where we subsidize low- income and sick people a whole lot more. That's what a ``safety net'' is.

We fix it and we save Medicare.

What does the law do that the President does? It raids a half a trillion dollars from Medicare. It puts a new board in charge of price controlling and rationing care to current seniors, and it does nothing to save it from bankruptcy.

These are the issues that have got to be dealt with.

Mr. Speaker, we keep hearing about balance. We keep hearing about the need to raise taxes as we cut spending $3 for $1 or something to that effect. The red line shows Congressional Budget Office projections on spending. The green lines are taxes. Basically, what this says is there is no way you can tax your way out of this problem. We asked the Congressional Budget Office. If we tried to do that--have balance, raise taxes--the tax rates on the next generation would be this:

The lowest income tax bracket that lower income people pay, which is 10 percent now, goes to 25 percent. Middle-income taxpayers would pay a 66 percent rate. The top tax rate, which is what all those successful small businesses that create most of our jobs pay, would go to 88 percent. That's according to the Congressional Budget Office. That's the path we're on right now.

This is unsustainable.

What is needed is leadership, and the reason we're talking about this debt limit increase is that we've seen none--none from the President, none from the other body. So, if we're not going to have a budget process, how on Earth are we going to get spending under control so we can solve this problem?

Our budget, this cap and this cut, gets the debt paid off. It puts us on a path to prosperity. It closes loopholes to lower tax rates to grow jobs. It says that the genius of America is the individual, is the business, not our government. It maintains the American legacy of leaving the next generation better off, and we know, without a shadow of a doubt, we are leaving the next generation worse off. In the good old days of 2007, we used to say that this debt was a threat to our children and our grandchildren.

Not so anymore.

It is a threat to our economy today.

Pass Cut, Cap, and Balance. Save this country. Grow the economy. Save the Nation for our children and our grandchildren.

Mr. Speaker, I submit the following exchange of letters:

House of Representatives,

Committee on the Budget,

Washington, DC, July 19, 2011.

Hon. Dave Camp,

Chairman, Committee on Ways and Means, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Camp: Thank you for your letter regarding

H.R. 2560, the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011, which is

expected to be considered on the floor this week. The

Committee on Ways and Means makes a valid point that certain

provisions in this legislation are in your Committee's

jurisdiction. I appreciate your decision to facilitate prompt

consideration of the bill by the full House. I understand

that by foregoing a sequential referral, the Committee on

Ways and Means is not waiving its jurisdiction.

Per your request, I will include a copy of our exchange of

letters with respect to H.R. 2560 in the Congressional Record

during House consideration of this bill. We appreciate your

cooperation and look forward to working with you as this bill

moves through the Congress.

Sincerely,

Paul Ryan,

Chairman.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I rise in opposition to the motion.

Mr. Speaker, I have fantastic news. All of the gentleman from Georgia's concerns have already been addressed in this legislation.

Let me simply refer you to section 317 where it says: ``Exempt from direct spending limits, section (b)(3), veterans benefits and services, which is all of function 700.'' Let me refer you to section 318 that shows when it comes to sequester, which is basically an enforcement mechanism on spending caps, exemption, veterans benefits. Veterans benefits are explicitly preserved in this legislation just as they are with the budget that we had passed that this cap and cut conformed to.

So make no mistake, Mr. Speaker, there are no cuts to veterans in here, because we agree the men and women out there fighting on the front lines for our freedom have been given promises to benefits like health care and others, and those promises all are to be kept.

That is why we've already taken care of the gentleman's concerns so the recommit is unnecessary because we preserve the benefits explicitly.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I rise today to provide an explanation of my support for a waiver of the Cut-go point of order on the Manager's Amendment to H.R. 1249, the America Invents Act. No matter how well-crafted a budget enforcement tool may be it can never be immune from all unintended consequences.

There are two reasons I support this waiver. First, the violation arises from an anomaly associated with converting this program from discretionary to mandatory. Second, the Manager's Amendment does not cause an increase in direct spending relative to current law.

With respect to the first point, CB0 currently records PTO fee collections on an annual basis with the enactment of the relevant appropriations bill. As a result, CBO shows no deficit impact from PTO for fiscal years after FY 2011 if the funding and fee collections remain subject to the appropriations process--what we call ``discretionary spending.''

The reported bill would have provided permanent authority to the PTO to collect fees and spend the fee collections. We call spending that is provided through permanent law ``mandatory spending.'' CBO estimated this permanent authority for FY 2012-2021 would reduce mandatory spending by $712 million. The savings, however, are the result of CBO's estimate that the agency will not be able to spend the fees as quickly as they are collected, not from spending reduction.

This should be obvious because the whole rationale of this bill was to ensure the expenditure of all PTO fee collections. If the reported bill was mandating that all PTO collections be spent, how can it produce budgetary savings? It doesn't. The only savings are paper savings, resulting from an accounting change and not an actual reduction in spending.

The Cut-go rule was designed to prevent the total amount of mandatory spending in the Federal Budget from increasing by requiring a corresponding spending reduction for any proposal to increase direct spending, and not offset with an increase in revenue as was common practice under Pay-Go.

Ironically, the Manager's Amendment would prevent a discretionary program from turning into mandatory spending, but because Cut-go is measured relative to the reported bill and not to the baseline, it triggers a Cut-go violation. Cut-go was not intended to favor mandatory spending over discretionary spending.

With respect to the second point, the Manager's Amendment maintains the same basic fee and spending structure as the underlying legislation but keeps the program discretionary. CBO estimates the bill, with the Manager's Amendment, would decrease the deficit by $5 million over ten years, unrelated to the PTO classification. The Committee could have avoided a Cut-go point of order if it reported out a separate bill that reflected the Manager's Amendment.

I do not take waiving budget points of order lightly, but in this case it is justified.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to section 301 of H. Con. Res. 34, the House-passed budget resolution for fiscal year 2012, I hereby submit revisions to the budget allocations set forth pursuant to the budget for fiscal year 2012. The revision is for new budget authority and outlays reported by the Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Defense, which are designated for the Global War on Terrorism. A corresponding table is attached.

This revision represents an adjustment pursuant to sections 302 and 311 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as amended (Budget Act). For the purposes of the Budget Act, these revised allocations are to be considered as allocations included in the budget resolution, pursuant to section 301 of H. Con. Res. 34.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I understand why this might be confusing to my friends on the other side of the aisle. After all, they didn't bother to pass a budget last year. Our friends on the other side of the Rotunda in the Senate didn't bother to pass a budget this year. We have a budget crisis. We've got a $1.5 trillion deficit. We've got a debt that is getting out of our control. And what do you do when you have a problem like that? You pass a budget.

The reason we're doing what we're doing today is because our partners on the other side of the Rotunda in the Senate didn't pass a budget. House Republicans did. We passed a budget. And we're acknowledging and living within that budget. If our friends on the other side of the aisle bothered to pass a budget, we wouldn't be in the situation where we are today.

Now, let's discuss about what our budget does and what it does not do. Number one, because we have a debt crisis, we think we have a moral obligation to our constituents, our children, and our grandchildren to put our budget on a path to balance and to pay off our national debt. We also think we need to put our economy on a path to prosperity so we can get job creation.

Let's, for a moment, talk about Medicare. Medicare as we know it is already gone. Our friends on the other side of the aisle, when they passed the Affordable Care Act, they stopped the Medicare status quo. Under the President's new health care law, that ends Medicare as we know it. It does two things: It raids Medicare, and it rations Medicare. It takes $500 billion from Medicare to spend on the President's new health care law. It doesn't take that money to extend its solvency.

Just like people have complained for years we're raiding the Social Security trust fund and we should stop doing that, the President's health care law does that to Medicare now.

The second thing it does, starting next year, the President will appoint 15 unelectable, unaccountable bureaucrats to put in charge of Medicare, to price control and to ration Medicare for current seniors. What's worse is the President and the Senate still have yet to put out a plan to save Medicare to prevent it from going bankrupt.

We stop the raid of Medicare in our budget and make sure that half a trillion dollars stays in Medicare to advance its solvency.

I will not yield.

Number two, we repeal the rationing board so that we don't put bureaucrats in charge of determining what kind of health care benefits seniors do or do not get; and, number 3, we save Medicare.

The way in which we do this is this. We say that if you are on Medicare, if you are 10 years away from retiring at 55 and above, government already made a promise to you. We want government to keep that promise.

So under our budget we keep that promise. We stop the raid, we repeal the rationing board. And for those of us who are 54 and below, who have a bankrupt system that we right now cannot count on, we reform it so that it works like the system Members of Congress and Federal employees have. It's a system that looks like Medicare Advantage or the drug benefit that works today, where seniors get a choice of plans offered to them by Medicare, guaranteed coverage options from which they can choose, and Medicare subsidizes that plan. It doesn't subsidize people as much if they are wealthy, and it subsidizes them a lot more if they are low income, if they are sick.

This saves Medicare. This puts Medicare on a path to solvency and, more importantly, by saving it for future generations we can keep the promise to the current generation. We repeal the rationing board, we stop the raid, and we save the program.

That's what our budget proposed to do, but with respect to this rule, we are talking about discretionary spending. We are talking about paying the bills this year for all those different government agencies.

We simply think Congress should function the way the Founders envisioned it where we actually pass budgets, we actually scrutinize spending, and we actually finance government's functions and its agencies. We are not dunking our responsibility; we are passing our budgets. Because we are deeming those numbers in this year's bill, it is simply because of the fact that nobody else around here seems to be bothered with passing budgets.

The President hasn't put out a plan to fix the problem and the Senate has, for a second year in a row, failed to even pass a budget. We are leading, we are saving Medicare, we are getting the debt under control, and we are working to create jobs in this economy and we are governing by actually paying the bills and passing our appropriation bills.

Revisions to the Allocations of the Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Resolution

Related to Legislation Reported by the Committee on Appropriations

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to sections 301 of H. Con. Res. 34,

the House-passed budget resolution for fiscal year 2012, I

hereby submit for printing in the Congressional Record

revisions to the budget allocations set forth pursuant to the

budget for fiscal year 2012. The revision is for new budget

authority and outlays reported by the Committee on

Appropriations, Subcommittee on Homeland Security, which are

designated for the Global War on Terrorism. A corresponding

table is attached.

This revision represents an adjustment pursuant to sections

302 and 311 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as

amended (Budget Act). For the purposes of the Budget Act,

these revised allocations are to be considered as allocations

included in the budget resolution, pursuant to section 301 of

H. Con. Res. 34.

Paul Ryan,

Chairman, House Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Angela Z. McCollough, an employee of the Congressional Budget Office who is retiring next month after nearly 40 years of exemplary public service. In August of 1975, after spending three years at the Environmental Protection Agency, Angie started her career at the Congressional Budget Office--just a few months after CBO was founded. From 1975 until 2008, she served as the secretary and administrative assistant to the Assistant Director of the Natural Resources and Commerce Division (since renamed the Microeconomic Studies Division). In October of 2008, Angie was promoted to Executive Assistant to the CBO Director.

Angie has been an invaluable member of the CBO team and over the years has exemplified the very best qualities of public service upon which the Congress and the Nation so heavily depend. Angie received two CBO Director's Awards--in 1984 and again in 2003. She has also received several STAR awards for her work in the Microeconomic Studies Division and the Office of the CBO Director. Angie was honored in 2001 for her role in recreating CBO's timekeeping and payroll system and for ensuring that CBO's employees were paid during that difficult period in the Fall of 2001 when the Ford House Office Building was closed for the anthrax investigation in the weeks following the tragic events of 9/11.

Angie is one of the longest serving employees in the history of the Congressional Budget Office. Her tenure at CBO spans the agency's lifetime. She has served under all 8 CBO Directors. And throughout her time at CBO Angie has set the standard for dedicated public servants throughout the Federal Government. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor today to acknowledge Angie's time at CBO, to thank her on behalf of the Congress and the Nation for her years of dedicated service, and to wish her all the best in what we hope and trust will be many years of a well- deserved and fruitful retirement.

I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

First of all, I want to start off by commending Mr. Van Hollen. It's not always that the minority offers an alternative budget. In fact, I know there are a lot of pressures not to do that. So I think Mr. Van Hollen is to be commended, and his very capable staff, for actually proposing an alternative. That's important. It's important that we bring ideas to the table so we can have a real debate about ideas. I want to start with saying that.

Number two, we just have a different definition of ``fiscal responsibility,'' I suppose. This budget, relative to the mark, to the base budget we're talking about, increases spending by $4.5 trillion, raises taxes by $2 trillion, and it adds $2.4 trillion to the deficit compared to the base bill we're talking about here.

It does exceed the President's budget in debt reduction, in deficit reduction, and so the gentleman is to be commended for that, but I personally think the President's budget is a pretty low water mark. It exceeds it by raising taxes another $210 billion and also cutting defense by $614 billion above the cuts that are in the base, our budget, and in the President's budget.

Secretary Gates has warned us that such cuts would leave the military unable to meet its current missions. And using his words: ``Setting indiscriminate targets to scrimp on defense is math, not strategy.''

I think it's very important that we recognize our priorities. Number one, national defense is the primary responsibility of the Federal Government. When our war fighters tell us this doesn't allow them to have the tools to keep them safe, the equipment they

need to prosecute their jobs, I think that's not responsible.

When our economy is struggling to get out of a very deep recession, over $2 trillion in tax increases I just don't think is responsible.

On the alternative, I think what we are offering is responsible. Our budget does four basic things. It gets the economy growing. It keeps taxes where they are and prevents massive tax increases. It saves our Medicare and Medicaid programs. It fulfills the mission of health and retirement security for all Americans by guaranteeing that people who have retired and are about to retire keep what they have, what they have organized their lives around, and then reforms these programs so that they're solvent and sustainable for the next generation. Number three, it repairs our social safety net so that it works. And it, number four, pays off our debt. That's what we do.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 seconds to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Griffin).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to our distinguished chief deputy whip, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Roskam).

I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, let's talk about Medicare for a moment. It's not as if we don't have a problem. We know Medicare is going broke in 9 years. We want to make sure that the people who have retired and who are 10 years away from retiring can bank on the promises that have been made for them.

But to keep that promise, we have to reform it and save it for the next generation. So that's why we have a plan that says for people 54 and below, you too will have a plan of guaranteed Medicare coverage from guaranteed Medicare plans that you get to choose from. Choice and competition works.

A prescription drug benefit, a bunch of plans that compete against each other for the seniors' business, came in 41 percent below cost projections. Why? Because it's not a government-run program. It's not a bunch of bureaucrats.

What is the President proposing? What are the Democrats proposing? Here's what they have proposed for current seniors. The President just gave us a glimpse of it 2 days ago. He wants to take this board of 15 people he appoints on this rationing board, and they make the decisions. They price-control Medicare. They ration Medicare, $480 billion, almost $10,000 per senior on current seniors.

We are saying, don't do this to seniors, get rid of the rationing board and don't delegate Medicare decision-making to 15 people appointed by the President with no congressional oversight. Let the 40 million seniors in Medicare be in charge of their Medicare program. More importantly, we save Medicare, prevent its bankruptcy.

What does the other side do? They sit by and watch the program go bankrupt.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee, the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a distinguished member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Garrett of New Jersey.

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

First, let me start off by saying that the only way the word ``oil'' is mentioned in this budget--it is not in the Tax Code--it is that we want to drill for more of it in this country so we can lower gas prices and get ourselves off foreign oil.

Let me address Medicare briefly. I have here the Federal Employee Benefit Handbook that everybody in Congress, every Federal employee has. Nowhere in this book does it say voucher. Look at all of these plans we get to choose from: Kaiser, Aetna, Humana, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Coventry, pages and pages of choices and options. This is what we're talking about for people 54 and below.

Guess what, the biggest threat to Medicare is the status quo. Medicare goes bankrupt in 9 years. And so, is this exactly like the Federal employee health plan? No, it is not. It is the same kind of plan because what we say is in the future, people who are wealthy don't need as much of a subsidy. People who are sick need more, people who are low-income need more, and they get complete out-of-pocket coverage. More for the sick, more for the poor, less for the wealthy, and a solvent Medicare system.

But more importantly, the people choose. Medicare beneficiaries choose. What's the President's plan? What's the Democrats' plan? Appoint 15 people to do the choosing. It is a different philosophy. Should we have 15 unelected bureaucrats run Medicare, ration Medicare, or should we allow 40 million to 50 million seniors make the decision?

Let's talk about taxes. Look at all of these budgets we've been looking at today. By the way, our budget doesn't even cut taxes. I wish I could say it does. Revenues still rise, about $12 trillion under this budget. We just don't want to go up and up and up.

The budget we have here is a $2 trillion tax increase; the plan we had before, the Progressive plan, a $16 trillion tax increase; the Congressional Black Caucus budget, a $6 trillion tax increase.

This budget cuts defense $619 billion; the Progressive budget, $1.2 trillion; the CBC budget cuts defense $469 billion.

The CBC budget increases spending on domestic spending $4.1 trillion. The Progressive Caucus increases domestic

spending $11.4 trillion. The Democratic budget increases, relative to the mark, $4.6 trillion.

So we've got it. We know where they are. More spending. More spending on everything, but cut and gut defense, and raise taxes a lot.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), the distinguished majority whip.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished chairman of the House Republican Conference, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner).

I yield myself the remainder of my time.

First of all, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank our staffs, the Democratic staff and the Republican staff, for all of their hard work in getting us to this moment.

I want to ask my colleagues a question. I want to ask the American people a question. I remember one of the worst moments I had in Congress was the financial crisis of 2008. It seems like it was yesterday. We had the Treasury Secretary and we had the Federal Reserve chairman coming here talking about crisis and talking about bank collapses. And what came out of that was really ugly legislation that we passed on a bipartisan basis but no one enjoyed. That crisis caught us by surprise. It was unpredictable. We didn't see it coming.

Let me ask you this. What if your President and your Member of Congress saw it coming? What if they knew why it was happening, when it was going to happen, and more importantly, they knew what to do to stop it and they had time to stop it, but they didn't? Because of politics? What would you think of that person?

Mr. Chairman, that is where we are right now.

This is the most predictable economic crisis we've ever had in the history of this country. Yet we have a President who is unwilling to lead. We have too many politicians worried about the next election and not worried about the next generation. Every politician in this town knows we have a debt crisis. They know that we are in danger.

We cannot avoid this choice. To govern is to choose. We are making a choice even if we don't act. And that's the wrong choice. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. Will we be remembered as the Congress that did nothing as the Nation sped toward a preventable debt crisis and irreversible decline? Or will we instead be remembered as a Congress that did the hard work of preventing that crisis, the one that chose this Path to Prosperity? This Path to Prosperity charts a different course. It gets us off this wrong track.

It achieves four objectives:

Number one, grow the economy and get people back to work.

Number two, fulfill the mission of health and retirement security. We don't want to ration Medicare. We don't want to see Medicare go bankrupt. We want to save Medicare.

Number three, repair the social safety net. Get it ready for the 21st century. We don't want a welfare system that encourages people to stay on welfare. We want them to get back on their feet and into flourishing, self-sufficient lives. So let's reform welfare for people who need it, and let's end corporate welfare for people who don't need it.

Number four, let's do the work of lifting this crushing burden of debt from our children.

This is what we achieve. We have a choice of two futures, but we have to make the right choice. We must not leave this Nation in decline. We must not be the first generation of this country to leave the next generation worse off. Decline is antithetical to the American idea. America is a Nation conceived in liberty, dedicated to equality and defined by limitless opportunity. Equal opportunity, upward mobility, prosperity; this is what America is all about.

In all the chapters of human history, there has never been anything quite like America. This budget keeps America exceptional. It preserves its promise for the next generation. Colleagues, this is our defining moment. We must choose this Path to Prosperity.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I simply want to thank all of our hardworking staff in our office and on the House Budget Committee, who put in long hours, dedicated years of expertise to making this budget possible, to making this budget passable--to making this moment happen.

I want to thank Budjon Burks, Eric Davis, Vanessa Day, Marsha Douglas, Tim Flynn, Nicole Foltz, Jose Guillen, Jim Herz, Matt Hoffmann, Charlotte Ivancic, Pat Knudsen, Jane Lee, Dick Magee, Ted McCann, Andy Morton, Courtney Reinhard, Paul Restuccia, Jon Romito, Austin Smythe--our staff director--Jenna Spealman, Stephen Spruiell, Conor Sweeney, Dennis Teti, Dana Wade. I call him ``John Z,'' but it's John Zakrajsek. That's an inside joke. Brad Butler, Jonathan Golster, Spencer Pepper, Alex Stoddard.

I also want to thank from our personal office:

Smythe Anderson, Laurie Krmpotich, Joyce Meyer, Sarah Peer, Mark Positano, Kevin Seifert, Martin Skold, Andy Speth--my chief of staff-- Allison Steil; our interns: Brad Kirschbaum, Jane McEarney, David Pelsue, Greg Spevacek, and John Watts.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank all of the hardworking staff for making this possible.

Mr. 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. 34.

I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, earlier today we passed a continuing resolution that will ultimately save billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Today we are converting and switching this debate to now saving trillions of dollars.

Mr. Chairman, let me just begin by saying this: The spending spree is over. We cannot keep spending money we don't have.

The American people deserve the truth. They deserve an honest, fact- based conversation about this budget. We have got to get on to the days of no more budget gimmicks, timing shifts, accounting tricks. And we've got to get on to fixing our country's fiscal problems while we still can and while they're still within our control.

Mr. Chairman, specifically what our budget does is it cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the President's budget. It brings the government's spending as a share of our economy back down to where it historically has been, contrary to where the President is taking it.

Mr. Chairman, we do not have a revenue problem in Washington. The problem here today is not that people don't

pay enough taxes; the problem is Washington borrows and spends too much money.

This shows you where Washington is headed, where the President's budget goes, the path we are on.

Mr. Chairman, I am 41 years old. My wife and I have three beautiful kids who are 6, 7, and 9 years old. By the time our children are my age, the government will be twice the size it is today. When they're my age, double the government, double the taxes just to keep this current government afloat.

What we are really trying to do, Mr. Chairman, at the end of the day is fulfill the legacy that we have been given by our parents and by our predecessors in Congress. We're going to have a vigorous debate about how to do this. We're going to have a vigorous debate of our priorities and processes, and it's going to be emotional.

At the end of the day, this is what we are trying to do: We know, according to every fiscal expert out there, that we are giving the next generation a mountain of debt. So we have a choice of two futures, Mr. Chairman. Which future do you want your children to have? One, where the debt gets so large, it crushes the economy and it gives them a diminished future, a stagnant economy; or, two, this budget, using CBO numbers, that literally not only gets us on the way to balancing the budget but pays off our debt, gets our debt manageable, preempts and prevents a debt crisis, and fixes this so we can preserve this great legacy of giving the next generation a higher standard of living.

Now, Mr. Chairman, we had a speech yesterday from the President--not a plan, so to speak, but a speech. And unfortunately, I think the speech, which was a framework with no details, was really not about solutions but about partisanship.

I'm concerned, Mr. Chairman, that leaders here in town are more concerned about the next election than the next generation. I hope that that's not the case. I hope that leaders in this town change their tune so we can fix this problem, but it's going to require them to change their tune. We don't need good politicians; we don't need clever politics.

We need real leadership and real solutions to fix this country's problem because, Mr. Chairman, if we don't make some tough decisions today, our children are going to have to face much, much tougher decisions tomorrow.

I want to talk about one particular program, and I will yield myself 2 additional minutes to do that.

Medicare. Medicare is one of the most important programs we have; it's one of the most successful programs we have. Medicare is in trouble. Medicare is going broke. CBO tells us that in 9 years it has exhausted its trust fund. We need to save Medicare. This budget doesn't change anything for anybody on Medicare now and within 10 years of retiring, and it saves the system for the next generation.

Contrary to what the President proposed yesterday, he wants to delegate more authority to 15 people on a bureaucracy that was created in his new health care law to do price controlling and rationing of Medicare for current seniors. He wants these 15 people--without a consent of Congress, just to do it directly--to impose more price controls and more limitations on providers, which will end up cutting services to current seniors.

We repeal this agency. We don't think Congress should be delegating this kind of power and authority to unelected people to make unilateral decisions on senior health care. So we preserve, protect, and save Medicare for current seniors and those 10 years away from retiring, and then I'll get into the details about how we save it for future generations.

Mr. Chairman, at the end of the day, this budget is about choices. We do four things. We want to grow the economy so we create jobs and have a climate for job creation with tax reform. We want to save the mission and preserve the mission of health and retirement security. We do that. We want to preserve our social safety net and make it more sustainable, more reliable, more adaptive, and more conducive to the 21st century and geared not toward keeping people on welfare, but getting people back on their feet and into jobs and careers to have flourishing lives. At the end of the day, Mr. Chairman, what it's really about is giving our children a debt-free Nation.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds simply to say the gentleman is talking about Medicare. If he had read that CBO letter a little later, he would see it says that Medicare is on such an unsustainable path that there's no way it can sustain itself where it is.

So we're making comparisons to fiscal myths. We're making comparisons to futures that aren't going to exist. The greatest threat to Medicare is the status quo and those who cling to it.

I would also simply say the President yesterday said he wants this unelected board of bureaucrats to cut a trillion dollars out of Medicare. We don't want to see that happen.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers).

Mr. Chairman, I will just simply say we choose to reduce spending. And we don't reduce revenue; we reform the tax system.

With that, I would like to yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee and the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert).

I yield myself 10 seconds to simply say, yeah, less spending, less government, less debt; more jobs, more prosperity.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Appropriations and Budget Committees, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to a senior member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Stutzman).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds simply to say the only part of this budget that mentions oil is that we want to drill for it in our own country so we can actually lower gas prices and get ourselves off foreign oil.

The second point I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, is this budget saves Medicare as we know it. The President is proposing to ration Medicare as we know it.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to simply say, if the gentlelady had taken the time to read the CBO report, it's not a voucher program. In a voucher program, the money goes to the people, and then they go to the market. It's a premium support program.

What does this look like?

It looks just like the plan that you and I have as Members of Congress and that all Federal employees have. It works like the prescription drug benefit, which has come in 40 percent below cost. More to the point, it saves Medicare. It applies to people 54 and below, and it occurs in 2022. Guess what happens 2 years before that under the status quo? Medicare goes bankrupt.

We want to prevent Medicare from going bankrupt. We want a system that's sustainable. We want a system that's solvent and that people can rely upon: guaranteed coverage options just like we have in Congress. That's what we are proposing.

More to the point, what we are opposing is delegating to 15 people the ability and the power to ration over $1 trillion of Medicare against current seniors. We repeal that. The President proposes that. That's the big difference between us.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Gardner).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Let me say a couple of things. Let's look at current law that was passed here not too long ago, the President's health care law. We've all done town hall meetings where people have said: Why do you keep raiding the Social Security trust fund? Stop the raid of Social Security. We agree; that was wrong. We shouldn't have done it, and now we're out of surplus.

Well, guess what, the current health care law raids Medicare. The current President's health care law takes $682 billion out of Medicare to spend on the ObamaCare entitlement. We're ending the raid of Medicare. We're making sure that those savings go to making Medicare solvent. It only gets it to 2021.

More to the point, Mr. Chairman, we believe that seniors should be in charge. We believe that the best way to make Medicare better is to give seniors more choices. Give them the ability to make choices and have providers compete against each other for their business.

Here's the difference: The President wants 15 people to make the choices in Medicare. We say let 40 million seniors have choice, have power, and have those providers compete against each other for their business so they're in charge of their Medicare.

The President's law, the law today, has him appoint 15 people to ration Medicare, and Congress can't even do a thing about it. Their decisions go right into law. That's the future of Medicare under the current law. The President said, let's throw another trillion on top. So here's what happens: When the President is coming up with a need for more savings, what does he do, he calls up his Medicare rationing board and says, go find another $480 billion.

That is not the future we want for Medicare. There's a difference between us. We don't want to have government ration health care. We want people to be in charge of their own health care.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock), a member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to simply say that it is well known that our budget doesn't touch Medicare, change it for people in or near retirement, 55 years old or above. But under the President's plan, if the 15-person board says your doctor can't give you the care he wants to, or your hospital can't do it, then they can't. That's the government doing this, unelected bureaucrats, to current seniors; and we oppose that.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from the distinguished State of Wisconsin (Mr. Ribble).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz), a member of the Budget Committee.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Flores).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the senior Member from Indiana (Mr. Pence).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to simply say there is a new definition, and I want to explain it. Here is what a tax cut now means. If you're not in favor of the forthcoming tax increases, you're cutting taxes. That's the new math around here. What we don't do is we don't sign up for all these new tax increases that are being proposed by the President in his budget that are coming in the future. And so by not supporting new taxes, we're all of a sudden for tax cuts.

No, I will not yield.

What we are saying is keep the revenues where they are and fix the Tax Code, clear out the loopholes and the deductions so we can lower the rates to create jobs and economic growth.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford).

Will the gentleman yield?

First of all, we think we should go after corporate welfare. Let's stop subsidizing wealthy individuals and corporations with taxpayer dollars.

Like the fiscal commission, we believe that it's better for economic growth to broaden the tax base and lower the tax rate.

If I can continue on the gentleman's time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget and Ways and Means Committees, the gentlelady from Tennessee (Mrs. Black).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to a member of the Ways and Means Committee and former member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Nunes).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Young).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Rokita.

I yield myself 1 minute to respond to the warm, even-handed comments of my friend from Massachusetts.

Do you know what's really cruel, Mr. Chairman? It's if we give our children a lower living standard.

Do you know what's really cruel? It's if we give our children a debt- ridden Nation. It's if we give our children a debt that they can't afford.

Do you know what's really cruel? It's if we don't save Medicare. It's if we don't keep the promises to our current seniors, like we do in this budget, so that all of these programs they've organized their lives around, which are going bankrupt, are preserved. Medicare goes bankrupt in 9 years. We're preserving it for current seniors.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Guinta).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

I have heard a lot of debate today about how we're slashing taxes, slashing revenues for the rich and for everybody else, and bad oil companies and things like that. Let me just show you a little chart.

Under our budget, revenues rise. Revenues go up over $12 trillion. So revenues still increase. Even keeping the Tax Code where we are today, revenues increase.

Now, the President's plan says he wants to raise them another $1.5 trillion. The gentleman from Maryland's plan wants to raise them another $1.7 trillion. But let's not kid ourselves: Revenues, even under our plan, continue to increase.

Now, we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. The green line is the revenue line. The red line is the spending line. Revenues are stable, increasing; spending is on a tear, Mr. Chairman. Spending is growing at an unsustainable rate. We can't keep spending money we don't have. If we keep doing this, we're going to have a debt crisis. People are going to get hurt. Interest rates will go up. We will have to cut indiscriminately across the board at the time it happens. We want to avoid that.

I yield myself 1 more minute, Mr. Chairman.

Let's talk about the Bush tax cuts, or what happened. Let's talk about the distribution of the tax burden. In 2001, the top 1 percent of earners paid 34 percent of the tax burden. Now they pay 38 percent; a higher tax burden. The top 5 percent in 2001 paid 53 percent of the taxes. Today, the top 5 percent pay 59 percent of the taxes. So on and so forth.

We don't have a revenue problem, a tax problem; we have a spending problem. But here's the real problem. If we don't get our situation under control, we really go in the hole. In 2009, the Government Accountability Office is telling us our fiscal gap, the unfunded promises we are making to current Americans, was $62.9 trillion.

I yield myself 1 more minute to explain, Mr. Chairman.

That means we would have to take $62.9 trillion, set it aside, invest it at Treasury rates, just so government can keep the promises that it is now making to everybody in America. In 2009, we owed more than we were worth as total households in America. Last year, 2010, that fiscal gap grew to $76.4 trillion. Now, $99.4 trillion.

We are digging our hole more than $10 trillion a year by kicking the can down the road. Every year we fail to fix this problem, we are submitting our children to a worse future, a diminished country. So the sooner we get our act together, the sooner we fix this problem, the better off we're going to be. If we keep ignoring this, if we keep spending on the path we are on, this fiscal gap, the pile of empty promises that politicians from both parties have been making to Americans gets that much higher.

We have about $100 trillion of empty promises Washington is making to Americans. It is time we tell people the truth. It is time we get government to live within its means, and it is time we get Washington to honor its promises, fix these programs, get spending under control, and give our children a debt-free Nation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston), a

senior member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a distinguished member of the Rules and Budget Committees, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

Unshared prosperity, spending money on tax cuts. Mr. Chairman, the presumption behind that is that all the money out there made in America is the government's, and then the government decides who they spend it back to.

We do have different philosophies. The money that people make is their money. And then the question is: How much of it does the government take?

The money made in America by individuals, by businesses, is their money. It's not the government's money. So we don't spend money on tax cuts.

By the way, Mr. Chairman, we're not even cutting taxes in this bill; we're just not raising them. So the new definition of cutting taxes apparently is: If you're against raising taxes, you're cutting them.

I don't even know where to start with this, but I'm going to start by yielding 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Huelskamp), a member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Lankford.

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

Will the gentleman yield?

That is because GDP growth grows at a faster pace than government. So it is not as if government goes away. Government keeps spending; government keeps defense and education. It's just that the economy outgrows the size of government, and we're on a virtuous path to more prosperity, more opportunity.

Mr. Chairman, I will give myself a minute to simply say again just to clear up for the record, if you're a person who is 55 years of age or older, there's no change in Medicare for you. The Medicare you're on or that you're organizing your life and getting ready to prepare for when you retire will be there as it is forever for your life under our proposal.

Contrary to the status quo. Medicare goes bankrupt in 9 years. Status quo, the President has a new board called the Independent Payment Advisory Board; 15 people he appoints. They ration Medicare. They put price controls in Medicare. They decide what Medicare can do or what it can't do. Congress is out of the loop. Unelected bureaucrats by the President, his people, they do it. And the President just yesterday said, You know what? Go cut more. Go get more savings. That's the status quo.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

I yield myself 2 minutes, Madam Chair.

Now, let's take a look at what our drivers of the debt are: Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare. The health care entitlements are the biggest drivers. The black line here shows our revenues. These three programs alone take up all Federal revenues. You throw interest on top, which you have to pay interest, by 2035 they consume every single penny of every Federal tax everybody pays.

Now, why are we proposing what we're proposing on Medicare? Because we have experience that this kind of thing works. Giving people more choices, having more competition works. Prescription drugs. That's a program, very successful, very popular. When that program was passed, it was projected to cost $634 billion over the budget window. It ended up costing $373 billion. It came in 41 percent below budget. Premiums are lower than were anticipated. Name me one other government program that actually came in 41 percent below cost projections. There isn't one. Why did this one do that? Choice, competition. The senior is in charge.

We are not interested, Madam Chair, in giving control over Medicare to 15 unelected people to decide where, when, how, and under what circumstances they get their Medicare. We protect Medicare for current seniors. We deny the 15 people on the board the ability to ration their care. And we want 40 million seniors to have the choices. We want them to be in control of their Medicare.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

Because what we have learned is that giving them more control, the senior, the beneficiary, the patient, not the government--competition works. We've tried so many different plans at rationing care. They don't work. One person does work to reduce prices: The consumer. That is why we are saving Medicare.

Madam Chair, I will just simply say we do actually put $10 billion back into Medicare Advantage to make sure the program stays alive.

I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Huelskamp).

Madam Chair, I yield myself 30 seconds.

I would simply say we have new data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on national health care expenditures. In 2009, the last year we have data available, Medicare costs grew by 7.9 percent. Private health insurance plans costs grew by 1.3 percent.

I will not yield to the gentleman.

With that, Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Duffy).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall).

Madam Chair, the House is not in order.

Madam Chair, I yield myself the remainder of the time.

First, let me say with respect to the Medicare guarantee, we keep hearing that. As you know, because we've said it over and over again, in our budget--by the way, go to budget.house.gov if you want to read the plan. I encourage people to please do that.

With the new Medicare plan with people 54 and below, it's a Medicare guarantee. The plan you will be given to select from, just like a system that works like the one we have, like the prescription drug benefit plan, they are guaranteed plans. You are guaranteed to get them if you want them, and your subsidy is guaranteed.

Now, we simply say, wealthy people shouldn't get as much of a subsidy as everyone else. Lower income people should get a bigger subsidy. And as people get sicker, they, too, should get a bigger subsidy to protect their premiums.

And I would simply say the greatest danger, enemy and threat to Medicare is the status quo. Medicare goes insolvent in 9 years.

But let me look at this from a different perspective. We've had a lot of debt before in our country. When you buy a house or a car or get a business loan, you get debt. What matters is how big is your debt relative to your ability to pay it. What also matters is: Who are you borrowing it from? Are you borrowing it from your local community bank? Are you borrowing it from your brother-in-law? Fine.

Where are we borrowing our money from? We used to lend it to ourselves. Americans would buy T bills and lend it to ourselves. In 1970, 5 percent was held by foreigners, 95 percent by Americans. In 1990, 19 percent of our debt was held by foreigners. Today, 47 percent of our debt is held by other countries. Number one is China. We are borrowing 42 cents of every dollar today, and half of that from other countries, the number one being China.

Look at where we're headed. We have a crushing burden of debt. The debt goes to double the size of the economy, then triple the size of the economy, to eight times the size of the economy. The CBO tells us the economy crashes in 2037. Their computers can't figure out how the American economy can grow past the year 2037 because of the debt burdens.

We can't keep borrowing money from other countries to cash flow our government. We are giving them our sovereignty. We are losing control of our own destiny. We are giving our children a debt prison.

Why is this happening? Because politicians from both political parties have been making promises and promises that are empty. We need to get government to live within its means. We can't keep spending money we don't have.

By the way, you don't fix this by raising taxes and raising taxes and raising taxes. You fix this by cutting spending--novel idea. I know it is in Washington.

So we're going to start. We're going to start by cutting $6.2 trillion in spending. We're going to start by putting the right policies in place to grow the economy. We're going to start by keeping the promise to people who have retired so that their Medicare and Social Security is there for them. We're going to start by saving these programs for future generations so they're not empty promises. We're going to start by preserving our social safety net and making it more adaptive, resilient and sustainable for the 21st century.

We want to repair the social safety net so it works. And we want to gear it not toward keeping people on welfare, but getting them back on their feet into lives of self-sufficiency so they, too, can flourish and reach the American Dream. We're going to start by passing this budget so that we can give our children a debt-free nation, so we can maintain the legacy of America, which every generation prior to ours upheld, which has given the next generation a more prosperous America, a better chance, a better chance at securing the American Dream.

If we don't do this, if we don't fix this, if we don't make the tough choices now to get this under control, we will be the first generation to sever that legacy. And, Madam Chair, that's a disgrace. It is within our control. We see this coming. We know what's happening. We know why it's happening. And if we don't fix this before it gets out of control, shame on us.