Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, today, my colleagues and I will vote on the Federal Duck Stamp Act of 2014. This bill would raise the price of Federal Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamps (more commonly known as ``Duck Stamps''), for the first time in 23 years, from $15 to $25. I am a proud supporter of this legislation and ask my colleagues to vote in favor.

Ever since Congress created the Duck Stamp program in 1934, hunters have bought duck stamps to help pay for the protection of wildlife habitats. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses the money generated from these sales to acquire new land or preserve existing wildlife refuges for water fowl. Duck Stamps also serve as an entrance pass for any national wildlife refuge that charges admission, so they are in effect a user fee for hunters and bird watchers.

Today, because of rising land prices and inflation in general, the value of the Duck Stamp has fallen by 40 percent, depriving conservation efforts of crucial funds. As an avid hunter, I understand the importance of investing in our wildlife habitats. We need to pass these traditions on to the next generation, so they can learn the importance of being good stewards of the land.

Since the federal government already owns nearly one third of our country's land, this bill prohibits new land acquisition and requires the funds generated from the fee increase to be used solely for acquiring easements for migratory birds. But since the funds collected from Duck Stamp sales are technically classified as revenues, increasing the fees to allow for higher spending on protecting migratory-bird habitats does not comply with the House's ``Cut as You Go'' rule (Rule XXI, Clause 10).

In the past, we've made exceptions for spending increases that are offset with revenue increases for selected programs when there is a close connection between the revenues and the spending. For example, budget resolutions often include reserve funds that effectively waive the ``Cut as You Go'' rule for deficit-neutral legislation designed to achieve a specific purpose.

Because the funds generated from this legislation will be user fees, not taxes, and this bill reduces the deficit, I support granting a waiver of the ``Cut as You Go'' rule for consideration of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I submit this statement to honor the distinguished life and career of Congressman Philip M. Crane. I was fortunate enough to serve with Phil not only in the House but also on the Ways and Means Committee. He was in his third decade of public service when I was just starting out, and so I considered Phil a role model. While in Congress, Phil shaped several trade agreements as chairman of the Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee. He also helped to found the Republican Study Committee, of which I am a proud member. Outside of Congress, Phil was a loving husband and father, an accomplished scholar, and a proud veteran.

Phil was an exceptional leader, and his legacy will serve as an inspiration for conservatives and all public servants for generations to come.

Mr. Speaker, this continuing resolution (H.J. Res. 124) ensures that there will be no government shutdown and that the men and women of America's armed forces and diplomatic service will have the resources they need in Afghanistan and beyond to protect the nation from the dangers of terrorism. This resolution continues funding on a temporary basis at fiscal year 2014 levels, but it does not provide the final, full-year spending levels for the government. For war-related spending, the resolution provides for an interim rate of spending that is over $26 billion more than the President's June 26, 2014 amended request for these purposes for fiscal year 2015. At this stage, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the precise needs for these activities.

The Budget Committee has jurisdiction over the use of the statutory authority that permits for spending in excess of the discretionary caps for funding designated for Overseas

Contingency Operations/Global War on Terrorism. On a bipartisan basis, the Budget Committee has expressed concern that the OCO/GWOT budget has been misused by both this Administration and the previous Administration. In addition, Congress has generally gone along with using these funds for purposes outside of OCO/GWOT requirements. The Committee highlighted this concern in the report accompanying the FY 2015 budget resolution.

While I support this interim funding measure and want to ensure our armed forces have the resources they need for these purposes, together with the Committee's ranking Democratic member Mr. Van Hollen, I will work to ensure that the final full-year appropriation for these purposes funds only those requirements that are closely related to the incremental, non-enduring costs of our overseas engagement in Afghanistan and the broader Middle East.

Mr. Speaker, earlier this year, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) ignored the clear Congressional intent of the Bipartisan Budget Act (P.L. 113-67) (BBA) and began collecting aviation security fees beyond the round-trip limitation that has existed since the Aviation Security Act of 2001. TSA had every opportunity to work with Congress to adjust the fee collection structure, but they unfortunately chose to ignore both the intent of the BBA and the concerns of individual members.

H.R. 5462 re-institutes the round-trip cap through statute, ensuring that passengers will not be made to pay a security fee in excess of what is authorized by Congress. Because the Congressional Budget Office has updated its baseline projection to incorporate TSA's incorrect implementation of the BBA, H.R. 5462 has a cost. However, passage of the bill will return security fee receipts to the level originally estimated by the CBO upon passage of the BBA.

I thank my colleague, Mr. Hudson, for introducing this bill and I fully support its passage.

Mr. Speaker, today, I missed rollcall vote 496. Had I been present, I would have cast the following vote: rollcall 496--On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass--``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, today, I voted in favor of H.R. 5230 because it strengthens our security on the southern border and relieves this humanitarian crisis. This legislation fixes the 2008 law to ensure that a speedy process returns these children safely and swiftly to their homes. It also provides the resources necessary for states and the National Guard to end the immediate problems on the border.

Additionally, I voted in favor of H.R. 5272 because the Constitution demanded it. This administration cannot simply pick and choose which laws they would like to enforce and which they would like to ignore. My position is clear that I believe we have a broken immigration system and I support reforms that secure our borders, fix our legal immigration system, and address those here unlawfully. However, these reforms should be done through Congress, not executive orders that stretch the authority granted by the Constitution. Additionally, the President's Executive Order attempts to treat a symptom, but not the root of the problem, and it has undoubtedly contributed to the current humanitarian crisis along our southern border. We need to pass laws to fix our immigration system if we want to solve this problem once and for all.

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Transportation reports that the Highway Trust Fund will be unable to fully fund critical, ongoing highway programs as soon as August. This crisis stems from a fundamental mismatch between trust fund revenues and highway program spending that predates enactment of the last surface transportation reauthorization that Congress enacted. Since 2008, Congress has bailed out the Highway Trust Fund with more than $54 billion in transfers.

H.R. 5021 provides the necessary funds to keep the federal highway and transit programs running while Congress develops legislation to set these programs on a sound financial footing for the long term. I look forward to working with my colleagues to address the systematic factors that have been driving the Highway Trust Fund's bankruptcy.

Importantly, this bill follows a House budget rule that requires general fund transfers to the trust fund to be fully offset. It should not become a recurring practice for taxpayers to bail out the highway and transit programs because Congress and the President are unable to make the changes necessary to avoid future trust fund insolvency.

My primary concern is with using pension smoothing as an offset. Based on CBO scoring, the bill produces ten-year savings through changing pension law, but these changes will likely be more than offset by greater federal obligations in the future. Ultimately, allowing additional smoothing now increases future liabilities for the taxpayer guarantee of private-sector pensions. In addition, we are increasingly using 10 years of savings to offset one year of costs as this bill does. It is progress to offset these costs, but we need to be reducing spending and deficits and when we increase spending, we should be offsetting the cost in as short a timeframe as possible.

Again, I look forward to working with my colleagues on legislation that will set the Highway Trust Fund on a sustainable path going forward, so that we can avoid the kind of stop-gap legislation we are considering today.

Mr. Speaker, the Veteran Access to Care Act of 2014 is critical to ensuring that our nation's veterans have timely access to quality health care. Recent reports from the VA's internal audits have revealed that thousands of veterans are still waiting for their first medical appointments at VA medical centers after waiting for at least 90 days. This is much longer than the agency's wait-time policy of 14 days or less. And it is simply unacceptable.

Further, the VA inspector general has confirmed that VA medical centers were deliberately hiding treatment delays and waiting times to make it seem that they were meeting the agency's wait-time goals. The Veteran Access to Care Act would address the wait-time issue by allowing veterans to receive private-sector health care if they have waited longer than the Veterans Health Administration's wait-time targets or if they reside more than 40 miles from the nearest VA medical facility or community-based outpatient clinic. The Access to Care Act gives the secretary authority to enter into contracts with non-Department medical facilities to provide health care to veterans and, if the secretary is unable to provide timely health-care access using contracted care, the act provides authority for the secretary to reimburse any non-Department medical facility for health care provided to a veteran.

Funding for implementing this act will come from funds that have already been appropriated, or will in the future be appropriated, to the Veterans Health Administration for medical services in the normal course of the discretionary appropriations process. This bill provides no new budget authority to the Department of Veterans Affairs and does not violate the budget enforcement regime.

Mr. Speaker, the principles in the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 (FCRA, Title V of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974) provide a long-established structure for the budgetary treatment of federal credit programs. Unlike cash accounting, FCRA prescribes accounting principles that consider costs over the life of a loan or loan guarantee rather than just the cash flows in any given year. Unless there is a clear statutory exemption, the federal government's credit programs, e.g. the Federal Housing Administration's single-family mortgage program and the Department of Education's student loan programs, are budgeted for using FCRA methodology.

The Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 2014 (Subtitle C of Title V) is a new federal credit program within the scope of FCRA. This new federal credit program and the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act on which it is modeled are both subject by statute to FCRA.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

At this time, Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Williams), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Mulvaney).

Mr. Chairman, at this time I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price), the vice chairman of the House Budget Committee.

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

I yield myself 1 minute, Mr. Chairman.

We have had a good three days of debate here. I plan on saying more in a few moments, but I find it really interesting, I don't see much of a defense of the budget that the gentleman is offering, and more of the continually what I would call discredited attacks against ours. Our budget increases spending on average by 3.5 percent over the next 10 years instead of 5.2 percent.

We are proposing to spend $43 trillion over the next 10 years instead of the $48 trillion. This is draconian, awful, evil, terrible, hurting people.

We have seen this movie so many times over and over again. All the other side is offering is just keep doing more of the same; the same economics that we have had for the same 5 years, just keep doing more of that.

If taxing, borrowing, and spending was working, we would know by now. It is not.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 additional seconds.

That is why we need a different direction. That is why we owe the country an alternative; one that actually grows the economy, one that balances the budget and pays off the debt, one that secures retirement not with empty promises but real reforms, one that goes after waste and cronyism, one that respects people and does not offer

more and more and more and more control in Washington.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

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

First off, let me start off by saying to my friend from Maryland: I am glad we are having this debate, and this is the last time the two of us are doing this, and it has been a pleasure.

I also want to thank the staff. All of our staffs have put so much hard work into this. I want to thank our staff, led by our great staff director, Austin Smythe, for all that he has done. I want to thank the people over at the CBO who work really long hours producing all of these estimates so that we can write these budgets.

Mr. Chairman, I submit for the Record these names to show our thanks.

House Budget Committee Majority Staff

Austin Smythe

Andy Morton

Tim Flynn

Conor Sweeney

Vanessa Day

William Allison

Brian Bolduc

Dennis Teti

Paul Restuccia

Nicole Foltz

Jon Romito

Mary Popadiuk

Jon Burks

Jim Herz

Matt Hoffmann

Ted McCann

Stephanie Parks

Justin Bogie

Shane Skelton

Gene Emmans

Kara McKee

Jenna Spealman

Donald Schneider

Alex Stoddard

Jose Guillen

Richard ``Dick'' Magee

Eric Davis

Interns: Boyd Garriott, Gabriel Krimm, and Alyssa Wootton

Personal Staff (Representative Paul Ryan, Wisconsin, 1st District)

Cameron Clark

Chad Herbert

Casey Higgins

Susie Liston

Joyce Meyer

Teresa Mora

Sarah Peer

Lauren Schroeder

Kevin Seifert

Andy Speth

Allison Steil

Tricia Stoneking

Robert Swift

Danyell Tremmel

Megan Wagner

Tory Wickiser

Interns: Harrison Balistreri, Sarah Holtz, Gretchen Wade,

and Brittney Weiland

Mr. Chairman, the differences between our budgets and our approaches could not be more clear. Let me take them one by one.

We have had a number of substitutes on the floor. There is one consistent theme from the substitutes offered by our friends on the other side of the aisle. While we are offering a budget that balances the budget and pays off the debt, they are offering a budget that never, ever balances.

They are starting with a $1.8 trillion tax increase. That is on top of the $1.7 trillion tax increase that has already occurred. They go as high as offering in the Progressive Caucus budget a $6.6 trillion tax increase.

They are offering not only a spending on autopilot going out of control today, they want to raise it higher, $791 billion in this budget to as much as $3.3 trillion in more spending. They are offering a budget to add trillions to the debt.

Now, when they say they want to raise taxes, and that is what their proposal is, again, they like to say it is just on the rich: Anybody listening, don't worry, it is not on you, it is on just these few rich people.

Here is the problem. They have a funny way of defining the rich. They have a funny way of defining it as small business. Most of our jobs come from small businesses. Those are the people who are going to get hit with this tax increase. That is where our jobs come from.

Second, we have seen this movie before, and we know what it looks like. They have already raised taxes $1.7 trillion. Look at the taxes on ObamaCare. They were supposed to be taxes on the rich. It taxes everybody. It doesn't matter how much you make. You are going to get hit with a tax: a mandate tax, a sell-your-house tax, taxes, taxes, taxes.

Are they raising all these taxes so they can pay off the debt? No--to fuel more spending.

Here is what we are proposing. Here is what the gentleman doesn't want to say. We are saying have revenue-neutral tax reform, meaning take the amount of revenues we bring into the government today, keep that same revenue, but clean up this awful Tax Code. Plug the loopholes, cancel loopholes so that we can lower tax rates for families and businesses across the board to create more jobs, more economic growth. We have already gotten the studies that tell us doing this helps a lot.

We are taxing American businesses at much higher tax rates than our foreign competitors are taxing theirs, and they are winning and we are losing. So we are saying, fundamental comprehensive tax reform, stop picking winners and losers in Washington, lower tax rates.

Second, this House Democrat budget increases spending by $740 billion above what would happen if we did nothing. That is $5.9 trillion more than our budget. They used to call this stimulus. I remember just a few short years ago all these ideas were called stimulating and stimulus. Remember, Mr. Chairman, we have done this. And guess what? Stimulus didn't work.

So now they call it investment. If you disinvest, that means you are not spending enough. An investment, just remember every time you hear the word investment, it means: tax, borrow, spend in Washington. Take money from hardworking taxpayers, borrow from the next generation, and spend more money in Washington. That means take money from businesses, take money from small businesses, take money from people creating jobs, borrow more money from China, leverage it against the next generation, spend more in Washington.

We will spend $3.5 trillion this year. Spending is slated to go above about 5.2 percent on average. We are basically saying let's get this under control; 3.5 percent is enough.

What they will also say is look at what we are doing on Medicare, all these awful things that we are doing on Medicare. We are saving it for the current generation by preserving it as is, and then we are making sure that it is there for the next generation.

Here is the dirty little secret. Look at what they have already done to Medicare. It was ObamaCare that ended Medicare as we know it, it was ObamaCare that raided $700 billion from Medicare to spend on ObamaCare, it was ObamaCare that set up this new rationing board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to put price controls on Medicare, which will lead to denied care for seniors.

It is the House Democrats' budget that is complicit with the Medicare trust fund going bankrupt in 2026. Our budget strengthens Medicare, saves it for this generation, and puts reforms in place so that the next generation can count on it without having 15 bureaucrats running the program.

Look at what they are proposing on national security. They track right along with the President's budget. They are proposing to cut compensation for our men and women in uniform, to hollow out our force, to cut training and readiness and structure, not to lower the deficit, but to fuel more domestic spending. So we will have an Army lower than anything we have seen before World War II, we will have a Navy smaller than what we haven't seen since before World War I, we will have an Air Force smaller than we have ever had before, not for deficit reduction, but for more domestic spending. We reject that approach.

Finally, their budget adds $4.3 trillion to our national debt. That is despite this massive tax increase. Their budget never balances, ever.

Under their plan, in 2024, the deficit will be $637 billion. At the end of the day it is just not credible.

We trust the American people to have more control over their lives. We reject this budget. Let's balance the budget, grow the economy, create jobs, and pay off our debt, and pass the House Republican budget.

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

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

I yield myself the balance of the time.

Let me first start off by saying, Mr. Chairman, you have presided over this budget for many years. You have set a great example for the rest of us. This is your last year serving, and I want to thank you for what you have done for this institution. Thank you for setting a great example.

Mr. Chairman, what this debate comes down to is a question of trust. We have offered a budget because we trust the American people. Unlike the Senate Democrats who, once again, have punted, have chosen not even to offer a budget this year, we trust the people to make an honest assessment. We trust them to make the right choice for their future.

Now, to their credit, the House Democrats have offered budgets as well. The problem is they put their trust in Washington. Every time you hear this word ``investment,'' just know what that means: take from hard-working taxpayers, borrow more money from our next generation, from other countries, and spend it in Washington.

Time and again, they are proposing to put government in the driver's seat. They have already engineered a takeover of our entire health care sector. They are overregulating our energy sector. They are depriving us of jobs. They won't even give us the Keystone pipeline.

They are proposing yet new taxes, another $1.8 trillion increase. They are proposing more cronyism. They are proposing more control for Washington, less control of our communities, less control over our businesses, less control over our lives, less control over our futures. In my respectful opinion, it is a vision that is both paternalistic, arrogant, and downright condescending.

You know, Big Government, in theory, it sounds compelling. In practice, it is totally different. Remember, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Remember, if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. Remember, if government just takes over this sector, it will lower your costs.

Big Government in practice is so different than in the theory. The results have nothing to do with the rhetoric.

We, on the other hand, trust the people. We are offering a balanced budget that pays down the debt. We are offering patient-centered solutions, so patients are the nucleus of the health care system, not the government.

We are offering a plan to save Medicare now and for future generations. We are offering a stronger safety net with State flexibility to help meet people's needs and to help people get from welfare to work, to make the most of their lives. We are offering a progrowth Tax Code. We are offering more energy jobs.

You can boil the differences down to one question: Who knows better, the people or Washington? We have made our choice with this budget. I trust the American people to make theirs.

Mr. Chairman, let's call the votes.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Well, here we are, Mr. Chairman, resuming the debate we left off yesterday. Let me try and give a summary of what this is all about.

This is all about getting our fiscal house in order. This is all about prioritizing hardworking taxpayer dollars. This is all about doing in our generation what we need to do to make sure that the next generation has a secure future and a debt-free future. So that is why we are bringing a budget to the floor, that is why we are making those difficult decisions, and that is why we are advocating for these important reforms.

In much of the 20th century, a lot of programs were created, and a lot of laudable goals were established. But now in the 21st century, I think we have learned a thing or two about how we can better accomplish and achieve some of these goals such as health and retirement security, because the way these programs were designed nearly a generation ago, they are now going into bankruptcy in this generation.

If we allow that to happen, then we will pull out from underneath those who depend on these programs for their health and retirement security, we will renege on that social contract. More to the point, we are going to do damage to our economy if we keep this deficit and debt going on its current course.

We asked the Congressional Budget Office to take a look at the kind of deficit and debt reduction that we are proposing and tell us over the long period, over the course of this budget, what does that do for America and for our economy? And they tell us that getting your economic and fiscal house in order, reducing the deficit and balancing the budget so that you can begin paying off the debt is good for economic growth. In fact, it will increase economic output by 1.8 percentage points. That is actually a lot.

What does that mean to every person in America? About $1,100 in more take-home pay and in higher income because we did our jobs here. But, more importantly, what it means for the next generation is, instead of sending our bills to them to work hard, to pay their taxes to pay off our bills and then they have to start working for themselves, we are going to give them a better future. Because we know right now--the CBO tells us as much--they are going to inherit a diminished future. That is point number one.

Point number two is that we have got to stop spending money we don't have. We will hear all of these arguments about the draconian cuts and the slashing and all of this. These are the same arguments we have heard time and again. And when those arguments have prevailed, they have brought us to where we are today: extraordinarily high deficits, deficits going back to $1 trillion by the end of this budget period, and a debt that is about to take off. If we don't get this under control, then we will not have the kind of economy that the people of this country deserve.

We don't want Washington to stand in the way of people's success. We want Washington to play its rightful supporting role so that people can become successful. We believe in a system of natural rights and equality of opportunity so people can make the most of their lives. We don't believe in a system where government thinks that they must take this commanding role within the middle of people's lives that ends up bankrupting this country, diminishing the future, and lowering economic growth and prosperity. There is a big difference in approaches. We want to tackle these challenges.

What I also want to say is that we have an important obligation to secure this country and protect our national defense. America, like it or not, is the superpower nation in the world and a duty that falls upon us to take that responsibility seriously. With that responsibility also comes the ability to chart our own course in the world, to help preserve the peace, and to help pave the way for prosperity so that we can have economic opportunity and so that we can advance our views and our values and the protection of individual and human rights and democracy.

These things are good for America. A strong America and a strong military helps make for a peaceful America and a prosperous America.

So we need to take the needed reforms to make sure that these critical retirement programs are there, not only intact for people in and near retirement, but there for those of us who are younger when we hope to retire. We need to get our spending under control so we can balance our budget and pay off our debt. We need to enact pro-growth economic reform like tax reform and economic development to create jobs today.

I yield myself an additional 15 seconds.

At the end of the day, instead of growing government spending at 5.2 percent, which is the trend, we are proposing to grow it at 3.5 percent over the next 10 years. Hardly draconian.

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

Wow, that is a doozy, I have got to tell you. That is a doozy if that kind of people get elected.

Look, we just think we should balance the budget, have government live within its means, and pay off our debt. If those kinds of people get elected, great.

With that, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), our distinguished majority whip.

I yield myself 30 seconds to say, boy, I wonder what tax bill they are talking about, because it is not the one that is within the Republican budget. The Ways and Means Committee writes tax laws. We put out the outlines of tax reform that say there is a trillion dollars a year of tax expenditures, of loopholes that can be closed to give us a fairer, simpler Tax Code, that lowers taxes for everybody, all families and businesses, not whatever it is they are saying.

I yield myself an extra 30 seconds.

What we are saying is, keep the award where it is, the maximum award, and fully funded for the decade. That is slashing it?

That is as opposed to the President who is saying let's grow it and then have some cliff and show no way or means of paying for it. The President and his budget is making a promise in Pell grants that he shows no way of keeping. We think we should make a promise and keep it; that is why we fully fund the current award at Pell.

And, oh, by the way, we also are cognizant of the fact that a lot of studies show us we are raising tuition. We are contributing to tuition inflation. And we need to get to the bottom of that before we keeping throwing more money at a system that is raising tuition.

Mr. Chair, with that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Wenstrup).

Mr. Chair, just in order to balance the time, I think we will let the gentleman from Maryland yield to another speaker so we can catch up.

Mr. Chairman, yesterday, I was Dracula; now I am conducting a parade of horribles and firing heat-seeking missiles at the American people. I am interested to see what comes next.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, when we call for ``revenue neutral tax reform,'' that means tax reform that keeps raising the same amount of revenue we raise today, do it through a better Tax Code so we are not picking winners and losers, so we can grow the economy and create jobs.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Bucshon).

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

Mr. Chairman, apparently, a strong budget means we need to borrow more from the Chinese to fund our government.

With that, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished Wisconsinite, Mr. Duffy, who does know the difference between real cheese and Cheez Whiz.

At this time, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Black), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee and the Ways and Means Committee.

I believe the gentleman is supposed to make his remarks to the chairman.

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

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

Let me try and translate for the viewer what is happening here.

Every time you hear the word ``invest,'' that means take from hardworking taxpayers and spend in Washington; and then when that is not enough, ``invest'' means borrow--nearly half of which is from other countries--from the next generation and spend in Washington.

Just so you know, when they keep saying invest, invest, invest, or you are not investing enough, disinvest, it means tax, borrow, and spend here in Washington, as if we know better how people should spend their money.

The analysis we hear about jobs lost and how this isn't going to work and it is going to cost all these jobs is the same analysis that said the stimulus was going to be a boon. It is the same analysis they said that if we just borrow and spend $780 billion in Washington on shovel- ready jobs, unemployment will never reach 10 percent and we will create millions of new jobs. It didn't work.

It all comes down to this. Rather than prioritize our spending, rather than holding the Federal Government accountable and more transparent to make sure that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely and prudently, rather than balancing the budget and paying off debts so the next generation has a debt-free inheritance, rather than taking on the bloated Tax Code that is mired with special interest giveaways and tax breaks and loopholes, rather than opening up this incredible store of oil and gas that could give us a huge renaissance of more jobs and lower gas and home heating prices and a better foreign policy, rather than preserving our military and giving our troops what they need, rather than growing our economy and creating what is estimated by the CBO to give each person an average of $1,100 more in take-home pay because of that faster economic growth, rather than doing any of that, just do more of the same. Stick with the status quo.

That is what this rhetoric is. It is a straw man argument. It is basically an argument that says let's affix certain views to our opponents so that we can defeat these awful views that we say they have and win the debate by default so that we can stick with the status quo and keep doing more of the same.

Mr. Chairman, here is where we are headed. This debt, this red line is the status quo. This is where America is going. It is not a Republican or a Democrat thing. It is a math thing.

What we are saying with this budget is, the status quo isn't working. We can't do more of the same because we are headed in the wrong direction. Everybody in this country knows this.

This is our plan. It is actually a plan. Pay off the debt, grow jobs, and challenge the status quo. And that is why I urge adoption of this budget.

I thank the gentleman. And I also want to thank the CBC for offering a budget. I think that is what is important that is happening here, people are coming to the floor of Congress offering their ideas, offering their solutions.

One of the things that they are so clearly concerned about, that they have their method of dealing with in the budget is, what do you do about poverty. This is something that we are also deeply concerned about.

A year ago we decided to look at our strategies from the Federal Government's perspective on fighting poverty because, after all, we are in the 50th year, the 50th anniversary of the so-called War on Poverty.

We wanted to say, is there a good accounting of all those Federal poverty programs that we can look at to see if they are working well, if they need updating, because, after all, they were put in place largely in the mid- to late part of the 20th century.

No such accounting occurred. So we spent the last year looking through all these programs, looking at all the audits and the Government Accountability Office reports and the inspector general reports and outside academics' opinions of these things. We took it all together, and we realized that the Federal Government has nearly 100 programs aimed at fighting poverty, spending about $800 billion a year doing so.

And look at the results. We have the highest poverty rate in a generation. Deep poverty is the highest, on record. Forty-six million people are living in poverty.

So we are asking ourselves, does one more program from the Department of Health and Human Services, is that going to do the trick all of a sudden?

It is not working. So our concern is that we have moved from a war on eradicating poverty to simply treating the symptoms of poverty to make it more tolerable, to manage poverty.

We are measuring our success--and this is how this debate always goes--based upon how much money we throw at programs, based on inputs, not based on outcomes.

How many people are we truly getting out of poverty?

As we look at these programs, the best thing we should do is go and listen to people who are fighting poverty; go listen to people who have successfully fought poverty.

I got up real early Monday morning in Martindale-Brightwood--it is a low-income neighborhood in Indianapolis, Indiana--to learn from people who are successfully fighting poverty, who are really doing amazing things, seeing potential and great lives realizing their potential.

We can learn a lot by getting out of this town, by finding out what works, and getting behind them and helping make sure what works continues.

But if we suffocate this debate with more one-size-fits-all, with more Washington knows best, with one more program, you know, the 93rd one is going to be the charm, then we are not going to get at the root cause of the problem.

The goal here is to get at the root cause of poverty to break the cycle of poverty, so I think there is a lot we all need to learn about this.

Hopefully, what we are accomplishing here, in our budget, is letting people who are closer to the problem have a little more flexibility, a little more discretion, so that they can customize and tailor solutions to meet the unique and particular needs of the people in their communities who are actually striving and fighting poverty.

One more point. When we stack all these programs on top of each other, we have done something inadvertently in this government, and that is, we have built barriers toward self-sufficiency. We have made it harder for a rational person to leave benefits and go into work because they lose more when they do that.

We have got tax rates, single moms making less than $40,000 a year with kids that are, like, 80 percent, meaning, you go to work, you lose more in benefits than you gain going to work. We have got to do something about that. That should not be a Republican, Democrat thing. That is just plain old economics.

So I think we need to rethink our approach, and not measure based on inputs, not measure based on how much money we can throw at programs, but measure based on what is working, who is doing a good job, how can we support them, how can we learn and listen from them.

Oh, and why don't we start measuring success based on outcomes?

That is what we are trying to achieve.

We have got a long ways to go, but I hope that that is the kind of conversation we can get to.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to thank Mr. Woodall for all of his hard work on this issue, as well as Mr. Gohmert, who was here a moment ago, for raising this issue, for keeping focus and attention on it, and for bringing this much-needed reform through the House Budget Committee and to the House floor.

This bill basically fixes a real quirk in our budget process. Under the current law, the Congressional Budget Office assumes every discretionary spending account gets an increase every year to keep up with inflation.

What does that mean? This means that this increase is built into the baseline, and the baseline is our starting point of spending. It is our starting point of budgeting. So every year, Congress moves the line forward. It assumes that there is always going to be an increase in every one of these programs, regardless of the facts on the ground. There is no consideration to whether a program is working or not or even whether it is still necessary.

Under this bill, the baseline would just show the previous year's funding level. That is basically what we are saying. If we are spending X amount of dollars today, when we write next year's budget, we will start with X, and then we will make a decision here in Congress: Should it be more or less or the same?

That is not how it works today. We spend X today, then there is an automatic increase, and then we decide how to budget after that automatic increase.

We should write the Federal budget just like families write their own budgets. They don't get an automatic increase. They don't get to decide like that.

We have got record deficits. We have got an unprecedented debt. Our job here in Congress is to make decisions. It is to set priorities. It is to look at the hardworking taxpayers that are working so hard to pay their taxes, to raise their families, and tell them we are going to watch their money more closely than just assuming automatically each and every year we can just take more from them and then decide how to spend more on top of that. It is no way to run a budget. It is no way to run a government budget or a family budget or a business budget.

So that is all we are saying. This, I think, is an inflated baseline which is a smoke-and-mirror move. What we are saying is take away the smoke and the mirrors, start from scratch, and then make informed decisions from there. That is why I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia for all of his hard work on this. That is why I encourage all Members on both sides of the aisle to support this much-needed reform.

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).

May I inquire how much time remains?

Having the right to close, we have no more speakers on this side.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, budgeting is about choosing. Budgeting is about setting priorities. In this particular case, it is about setting a path for the country.

We have got serious fiscal challenges unlike any we have ever had before; and when we look at some of these fiscal challenges, it is very clear that the sooner we get on top of these problems, the sooner we deal with these problems, the better off everybody is going to be.

Here, in a nutshell, is our big fiscal issue. It is not a Democrat or Republican thing. It is not a partisan thing. It is really sort of a demographic and math thing.

We are going from roughly 40 million seniors to about 80 million seniors, retirees. The baby boomers are retiring, 10,000 people a day, at this pace, for 10 years. The programs that they rely on, like Medicare--really important programs--grow 6 to 8 percent a year.

So when you have a pay-as-you-go system where current workers pay current taxes under their current paychecks to pay for current retirees--as I

am paying my payroll taxes for my mom's Medicare and Social Security benefits, and when I am retired, my kids will do the same for me--and you have an 89 percent increase in the retirement population but about a 17 percent increase in the taxpaying population, therein lies your challenge.

So these programs are growing so much faster than our ability to pay. They are growing faster than wages, economy, and revenues, to the point where these programs that we rely on that are so special and necessary--I have seen Social Security and Medicare do important things in my own family and my own life--these things are going bankrupt. The sooner we fix it, the better off we are all going to be.

The other problem is, if we don't fix this, if we don't even show the world or the country that we intend to fix this, our economy really suffers, because the economy, businesses, banks, credit unions, creditors, small businesses, and large businesses don't know what the future is going to look like.

So all these things we need to do to get people to take risks and hire people and invest and start a new business, we are slowing that down. That is why the CBO says the economy is slowing down. It is hard to get people out of poverty if we don't have good jobs for them to get out of poverty with.

If you look at this chart, we are going into unchartered territory. We have had big debt before. Our debt was as big as our economy in World War II, but for the years we fought World War II, then it went back down.

Because of this problem I described--not a Republican or Democrat problem, but just America's problem--our debt has grown more than twice the size of our economy. You can't have a prosperous society with that kind of debt. It has never been done before.

And so what we are saying is let's get ahead of this problem. Let's phase in these reforms so that we can make good on our promise to our seniors who have already retired and so that all those people nearing retirement--people in their later fifties thinking and planning for their retirement--let's make good for them. But let's acknowledge that those of us in the X generation and lower--those younger--these programs will not be there for us when we retire. We need to fix this.

And by the way, we need pro-growth solutions: reform the Tax Code, balance the budget, have an energy renaissance in America, and streamline regulations so businesses know how to plan so that we can create jobs and economic growth. This budget does all of that. That is why I urge its adoption, and that is why I look forward to continuing this debate tomorrow.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett) for yielding, and I also want to thank him for his hard work on this issue and for bringing this to our attention.

Look, it is really simple, Mr. Speaker. When Washington makes or guarantees a loan, it is putting taxpayers at risk. Our budget rules don't account for all of that risk.

We understate the cost of Federal credit programs by about $50 billion a year. That is what the current accounting rules do. Current accounting rules make it look like the government is making all this money from all these loans when, in reality, we are consistently overstating their profitability.

Let me give you one example. Our current rules led to the projections that the FHA--those loans made between 1992 and 2012 would save us $45 billion. It sounded like a great deal, a $45 billion boon to the Federal Government.

In reality, those loans cost us $15 billion of hard-working taxpayer dollars. That is a swing of $60 billion. It is not about imposing costs. This bill is about recognizing the actual costs of what this government does. That is really what this is all about.

CBO has reviewed this time and again. The gentleman from New Jersey just mentioned this, and they have very much concluded, like the private sector, that budgeting Federal credit programs should use fair value accounting as the most accurate method for these programs.

Washington needs to be up front with taxpayers about the true cost of its decisions because the taxpayers themselves are the ones who are on the hook, but that is what the Garrett bill would do.

We can't also forget that the Office of Management and Budget--which is a more political office under the service of the President--they are ignoring the cost of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, OMB shows them as saving money when they are huge liabilities.

Since 2008, Fannie and Freddie have been wards of the State. They are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Federal Government, and in 2013, the GSEs accounted for 60 percent of first lien mortgage originations. Taxpayers are exposed to over $5 trillion of outstanding liabilities. OMB keeps it off budget.

Despite the fact that, if they ever go under, if anything happens again, like it did recently, guess who gets stuck with the tab--the taxpayers. We cannot look at our budget through rose-colored glasses. We have to be as clear-eyed as possible. We need transparency. We need real accounting. We owe it to our taxpayers.

So this bill would require the government to use fair value accounting. It would require OMB to be more honest about Fannie and Freddie's true costs, and it would build on the best practices in the private sector, so that we, in Congress, can make better-informed decisions about the hard-working taxpayers and what we are committing for them on their behalf.

That is all this is. It doesn't impose a cost on anybody. It simply recognizes the actual costs that are occurring.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to thank the vice chair of the Budget Committee for bringing this bill forward and for his hard work on this issue.

Mr. Chairman, this bill is really pretty simple. It will help Members understand how legislation affects the economy. Under current law, the CBO doesn't have to provide that kind of big picture analysis. It usually assumes the economy will stay the same no matter how much in government taxes is spent. Think about that. We all know that that is not true. People respond to incentives. Federal policy changes the economy, and under this administration, the economy has consistently failed to meet expectations.

This is the chart that the CBO has shown over the years where they have consistently lowered their economic outlook. This has had a huge effect on our budget, and it has made balancing the budget that much harder. Traditionally, our economy has grown at about 3 percent a year, but over the past 4 years, it has grown only by 2 percent a year. It has grown less than half the average rate of other recoveries since World War II. The labor force participation rate has fallen to 63 percent. That is close to the lowest level in over 35 years. There are 10.5 million Americans who are now unemployed, and 7.2 million Americans are working part time for economic reasons. Those who are working have seen meager growth in their wages. The typical household income for families has actually declined. In fact, it is at the lowest level since 1995.

This weak recovery isn't something that just happened to us. It is not just by accident. It is clear that now that we are 5 years into this that the President's policies are weighing down the

economy and are hurting the budget outlook.

The Congressional Budget Office now expects us to take in much less revenue, and that makes it much harder to balance the budget because of this poor economy. Since just last year, the baseline deficit has grown by $1.2 trillion. The top line shows you last year's estimate, and the bottom red line shows you this year's estimate. Just from last year's estimate of where the economy was heading to this year's estimate of where the economy is heading by the Congressional Budget Office, it tells us there will be $1.2 trillion in more deficits because of these failed economic policies.

We want to stop the failure. We want to get this economy growing. The CBO knows that if you actually have a better policy that actually grows the economy, you will help the budget outlook, and you will help get people back to work. You will help increase take-home pay. Just as a weak economy can drag us into the red, a good budget can push the economy forward. That is why Members need to know this before they vote on legislation. They need to know what the world might look like under a new law. It is common sense to ask how legislation will affect the economy.

This bill requires the CBO to give Members just that estimate. We are asking the CBO to give the same kind of analysis that we use in our own budget. In an analysis provided by the CBO, they find the deficit reduction like we are proposing will help the economy grow. In 2024, economic output will be 1.8 percent higher per person than it otherwise would be. That is about $1,100 per person. That is a pretty crucial piece of information. So we are adding to the toolkit. We are not taking anything away.

To the criticism I am hearing from others that, gosh, you are not doing this on every piece of legislation, you need to do this for the appropriations process, do you have any idea how many thousands of estimates come from the Appropriations Committee? If you actually gummed up the works like that, you would bring this place and the estimating agencies to a screeching halt. That is why there is an important threshold that is for significant pieces of legislation, legislation that is a quarter a point of the economy or higher, so that we can be well informed on big pieces of fiscal policy and so that we don't gum up the works and bring this agency and this institution to a screeching halt.

We think this hits the fine balance between the two. We think it is important that Members of Congress have a sense of how their votes will be affecting the economy. That is only common sense, and I urge the adoption of this bill.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia for actually bringing this to our attention.

I thank the vice chairman for his time.

Looking at the amendment, it makes sense. It looks like the right thing to do. I think it is important that we always reassess these models to make sure that we are getting it right. People call this dynamic scoring. I like to call it reality-based scoring, and we always want to have a better measurement of reality. So I think the gentleman's amendment makes sense, and we would accept it.