Floor Statements

I thank the chairwoman, and I thank the chairman of the committee, Mr. Kline.

I rise in reluctant opposition to this bill, but in strong support of the committee and the work that they're doing.

We got caught up in politics again today. It makes me so angry. I'm so angry I could spit. I'm trying to bring my blood pressure down over here as a freshman, remember, because I came here for results. I am the keynote speaker tonight for the Georgia College Republicans' statewide convention, and I'm going to go down there and proudly tell them that I voted ``no'' on this bill today that is pandering to their interests, not because I don't like young people in education, but because I love young people in education.

Every time we come to this floor and talk about how proud we are that we're paying for a piece of legislation, every oil industry tax you want to raise and every millionaire tax you rant to raise, those could be paying down the deficit that we're borrowing from these young people that you purport to support here today. With every new piece of ObamaCare that we want to abolish and that should be abolished, we could put that money towards reducing the over $1 trillion a year we're borrowing and asking our young people to pay back.

But let me tell you, as a conservative Republican, I am not embarrassed of what we do to serve our young people. Congratulations on our subsidies for our young people. We've now driven our student loan debt higher than the credit card debt in this country. Congratulations. Congratulations that we now have a 3.4 percent interest rate so that the one out of two young people who comes out of college and can't find a job can default on those loans at a lower rate instead of at a higher rate. Congratulations. What about focusing on the jobs? What about focusing on our children's futures? What about focusing on the better tomorrow that we owe to these young people?

There is a choice of two futures here. The committee, as everyone in this House knows, is working on a permanent solution. We subsidize student loans today with a Federal Government guarantee for below- market interest rates; 6.8, that's a below-market interest rate. We subsidize student loans today with an above-the-line deduction on the 1040. Everybody can take that today, already today; and here we are in the midst of the largest economic crisis in our Nation's history, saying, once again, let's spend the money instead of putting the money towards these children's futures.

There is no free lunch in this town. Every single penny that we spend we're spending from them. You're not subsidizing these people. You're asking them to pay more with interest in their futures. In graduating from college, one out of two kids can't find a job. Student loans are higher than credit card loans for the first time in American history. Are we headed in the right direction, or are we headed in the wrong direction?

I say focus on what this Committee on Education and the Workforce is doing. Look at what they are doing for a permanent fix to provide certainty. This is another short-term fix. I know my colleagues on the left and on the right are trying their best to do what they believe in their hearts is going to serve our young people, but short-term fixes are not the answer. There is a better answer, and it's coming from the committee later on this year. I hope my colleagues will oppose this bill today and will support that bill coming forward.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, my amendment is a simple amendment. What we're doing here in this bill today, to the great credit of the chairman and the ranking member, is instituting a voluntary system by which our private companies and utilities can cooperate in the name of securing America's cyberspace. But what happens so often is, when the Federal Government creates a so-called ``voluntary'' standard, suddenly those folks who choose not to play on that playing field are subject to new liabilities because they rejected that voluntary standard.

Well, if it's going to be a truly voluntary standard, we have to ensure that those who reject it are not held to any new liabilities. I believe that was the intent of the committee as they crafted this legislation, but my amendment makes that clear to say that no new liabilities arise for any company that chooses not to participate in this new truly voluntary cybersecurity cooperative regime.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

With that, I want to thank the ranking member and the chairman for their tremendous openness throughout this entire process. Briefing after briefing, phone call after phone call, they both made themselves available to Members on both sides of the aisle so that we could get our questions answered in what is sometimes a difficult area to understand and digest. I thank them both for their leadership, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank you for the time and being down here with me. I will set up my charts tonight because I can't commit it all to memory. I'm glad to be here at the end of the leadership hour. We've talked about China, we've talked about U.S. energy, and we've talked about the big issues that are on the floor of this House and that are here in Washington, D.C.

I want to say to folks, I come from a conservative part of the world. I come from the Deep South. I come from the suburbs of Atlanta, Gwinnett County, Forsyth County, Walton County and Barrow County. But I brought with me tonight quotes from President Barrack Obama because, as I have said in town hall meeting after town hall meeting, I disagree with about 80 percent of what the President does, but I believe in about 80 percent of what he says. I think if we can come together on some of those principles that he is enunciating, we might be able to make some real progress.

This is from the President's 2011 inaugural address. He says this:

At stake right now is not who wins the next election. At

stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this

country or somewhere else.

That is absolutely true. Folks come down to the floor of this House every day. They say what they're doing, they're doing for job creation. They say what they're doing, they're doing for economic growth. But we have a substantial disagreement about what that means.

I happen to believe that one of the things that encourages job creation and economic growth is fiscal responsibility. We need fiscal responsibility in our families, we need it in our businesses, and we need it in our government.

The President said this, Madam Speaker, his State of the Union address in 2010. He said:

Families across the country are tightening their belts and

making tough decisions; the Federal Government should do the

same.

State of the Union address, 2010, ``the Federal Government should do the same.''

It wasn't just in 2010. I'm not cherry-picking comments. Here we are in the President's State of the Union address in 2011, Madam Speaker:

Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means.

They deserve a government that does the same.

He said it in 2010. He said it in 2011. In fact, go back to the beginning of his Presidency. Here we are in 2009, the same State of the Union address:

Given these realities, everyone in this Chamber, Democrats

and Republicans, will have to sacrifice some worthy

priorities for which there are no dollars, and that includes

me.

Madam Speaker, he was right there in front of where you sit tonight. He said:

Given these realities, everyone in this Chamber must

sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no

dollars, and that includes me.

The President of the United States.

But what's the reality, Madam Speaker? We can put the words back up. We can put the words up from 2009, from 2010, from 2011, but what's the reality? The reality, sadly, is this chart, Madam Speaker. You can't see it from where you are, but it's a chart from The Wall Street Journal, entitled, ``The Debt Boom.'' It charts the public debt of the United States from the year 2000 to the year 2012.

What we see, Madam Speaker, is that as a percent of GDP, the debt was entirely too high during the Bush years. Don't get me wrong. There is not a party in this town that is blameless in this debate. For Pete's sake, we were having economic boon times and our debt was running 35 percent of GDP. Thirty-five percent of all the economy of the United States of America was being borrowed in debt. But look what

happens. Look what happens. President Obama is sworn in in January of 2009. You see a debt boom, where we rise from 35 percent of GDP as our debt level up to 80 percent of GDP as our debt level.

Now, again, I can put the words back up: ``Time for sacrifice.'' ``Families are tightening their belts, we must do the same.'' ``Everyone must sacrifice priorities, including me,'' the President of the United States. I can put the words back up. The reality, Madam Speaker, is that the President has continued to promote spending with reckless abandon.

And it's not just in the debt.

Madam Speaker, this chart is a chart produced by the Budget Committee on which I have the privilege of serving. What it charts is the debt of the United States. We see it on the white dotted line here. And it charts the proposed plan of President Barack Obama.

The President, to his credit, introduced a budget in January--the law requires him to do it and he did it. In fact, he has every year that he's been in office. The law requires the Senate to produce a budget every year. They ignore that law and have again this year for the third time in a row. But the President produced his budget.

I can, again, go back to the words where he talks about sacrifice, where he talks about tightening his belt, where he talks about what American families are doing and says America deserves a government that does the same, but look at this chart. The white dotted line represents the current debt path of America. The red line represents the President's proposal from February of this year. If you look closely, Madam Speaker, what you can see is that under the President's proposal of February of this year, enacting the President's proposal raises the deficit of the United States year after year after year after year-- 2012, '13, '14, '15, '16, '17, '18, '19, and '20--more than doing nothing.

Madam Speaker, you ask: How can that be true? The President's proposal includes $2 trillion in new taxes on American families. That's true. That's true. The President has made no secret of his desire to work our way through our current economic crisis by taxing the American people. I don't believe that's the right way to go, but he has introduced that as a plan. And, yes, his budget raises taxes by $2 trillion, but he spends so much more that even with a $2 trillion tax increase, Madam Speaker, we don't see any improvement in our debt in 2013 or '14 or '15 or '16 or '17 or '18 or '19 or '20 or '21.

Now, I've blown up, Madam Speaker, just so folks can see it, way out there in 2022, you finally begin to see a better debt trajectory from the President's budget than if we had done something. Nine years from now, America would have a slightly lower deficit under the President's plan than if we did nothing and just left all of our systems on autopilot. That doesn't jibe with what we heard.

Can I go back to the beginning, Madam Speaker?

At stake is not who wins the election; at stake is new

jobs, new jobs that come through fiscal responsibility.

Go back to his State of the Union address:

Families across the country are tightening their belts and

making tough decisions. The Federal Government should do the

same.

Madam Speaker, there's not one tough decision made when you tax the American people by $2 trillion but you spend even more.

I believed the President. I believed the President when he said:

Given these realities, everyone in this Chamber,

Republicans and Democrats, will have to sacrifice some worthy

priorities for which there are no dollars.

He was right when he said that. That was an applause line, Madam Speaker. Folks got to their feet here in the House Chamber. He's right, that sacrifice is necessary. His budget includes none of it.

The good news, though, Madam Speaker, is we're not limited to the President's ideas in this town. We have a freshman class here in Washington, D.C., Madam Speaker, of which you are a critical part, that says we can do better; in fact, we must do better; in fact, we cannot take ``no'' for an answer.

Let me show you what I have here, Madam Speaker. It's a chart of discretionary appropriations. Now, discretionary appropriations, for folks who are in the freshman class who haven't followed that back in their offices, that's the part that we have to affirmatively act on every year.

About two-thirds of the Federal budget is on autopilot. If we closed the doors of Congress tomorrow, that money would continue to flow out the door, but not so with one-third of the Federal budget. We call that discretionary spending. You and I, Madam Speaker, we have responsibility to do oversight on that every year.

Look what we see here. FY 2010--that's the first year I've charted-- we spent about $1.3 trillion in this discretionary spending. That was 2010. You and I were not yet here, Madam Speaker. You and I showed up while we were still working on the FY 2011 budget. You will see we spent less in this Congress--and I don't just mean we proposed spending less. I don't just mean we talked about spending less. I don't mean that we got together as Republicans and said this is our idea, but we're not going to be able to get the Democrats to go along with it. I mean, as a body in this House, as a Congress on Capitol Hill, with the cooperation of the President's signature, we actually passed into law a budget for discretionary spending that went down in 2011 from 2010 levels.

And guess what? We didn't stop there, Madam Speaker. As you know, we passed another set of appropriations bills that took spending down even further. From 2011 levels, we went down further in 2012. And guess what? This freshman class, we're not done yet. This House leadership, they're not done yet. For 2013, we are on track to reduce spending--I don't mean reduce rates of growth. I don't mean reduce projected increases. I mean reduce the actual dollars going out the door for a third year in a row. The third year in a row. It's unprecedented. It hadn't happened since World War II. It's happened because the American people said we have to do better. It happened because the American people said we can't just talk about it; we have to do it.

But I've got some bad news, Madam Speaker. We're going to keep working on this discretionary spending side of the ledger. We're going to keep trying to drive those numbers down. But that's not where the real spending is. As I said a few minutes ago, that's only one-third of the budget. Two-thirds of the budget is on autopilot.

I have it up here, Madam Speaker. In yellow, you see what they call mandatory spending. That's the autopilot money. Again, you could close the White House tomorrow, you could close the Congress tomorrow, this money still flows out the door. If we're going to stop it, we have to act affirmatively to stop it.

This little piece of the pie up here is the defense part. You would think that national security is one of the biggest things we spend money on around here. Madam Speaker, it's down to less than 20 percent of the money that goes out the door in Washington, D.C. goes towards national security. This 17 percent here is everything else, everything else that's in that discretionary budget. The 63 percent, 64 percent, so says the Congressional Budget Office, this is the mandatory spending that's on autopilot.

I have it displayed here in a slightly different way. The red bar represents our discretionary spending. And you can see that discretionary spending, as a percentage of the budget, has been in decline each and every year since 1962. Now, those aren't actual dollars going down, that's just a share of what we do in Washington, D.C. It's been this Congress that's brought the actual dollars down, as I said, for the first time since World War II.

But over time we've had a shift in this country. Discretionary spending has declined as a percentage of what we do, and this out-of- control mandatory spending, this autopilot spending is increasing. What are we going to do about that?

There's not enough time tonight, Madam Speaker, to get into the details. But I encourage all of our colleagues, Madam Speaker, and I hope you will help me to encourage them, to keep an eye out on what's coming down the road, because what's coming down the road in this body is a process called reconciliation. And I put to you that we haven't had a real reconciliation process in this House. In 1997, Republicans in the House and Senate, and a

Democrat in the White House, came together to pass the biggest spending reduction bill that we'd had in our lifetime prior to this point.

We can't balance the budget on the discretionary spending side of the ledger alone. As you know, Madam Speaker, if we zeroed out everything-- and I mean everything. I don't mean cut by 5 percent, I don't mean cut by 10 percent, I mean zeroed out everything except Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the national debt, those mandatory spending programs that I'm talking about, those autopilot programs, if we zeroed out everything else, the budget still wouldn't be balanced. That's how far out of whack we are. And that's how big those categories are.

We're going to do something that hasn't been done since 1997 and that is, go through reconciliation, where we ask the committees of this House, we go back to our communities and ask in town hall meetings, what can we do on that mandatory spending side of the ledger to tighten our belts, to do better to provide more bang for their buck to the American taxpayers.

Those bills are going to start coming to the floor in the month of May, for the first time since 1997, in a serious way. Now, it's going to be a small process at first. We're talking about just the amount of money to cover some of our necessary defense spending needs. But we're going to start to talk about priorities here. And when I say talk about, I mean legislate on.

Madam Speaker, the talking has already been done. ``Every day families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same.'' President Barack Obama, 2011.

``Families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The Federal Government should do the same.'' President Obama 2010.

At stake right now is not who wins the election. At stake is whether new jobs and industry take root in this country or not. Madam Speaker, we are bankrupting this country. We are bankrupting this country. We have doubled, doubled the annual spending deficits that we've seen in this country. We've seen the public debt of this Nation increase by 50 percent in the last 3\1/2\ years. And that was with the efforts of the most conservative U.S. House of Representatives we've seen in our lifetime. That was with the efforts of this U.S. House of Representatives that has cut spending, not 1 year in a row, not 2 years in a row, but 3 years in a row.

Madam Speaker, the good ship United States of America is in troubled waters. The President is saying all the right things. I come to the floor here tonight, Madam Speaker, to ask you to encourage him to do the right things. Join this U.S. House of Representatives, join these 100 new Democrat and freshman Members in this body as we try to do something that hasn't been done since 1997, and that's take programs off of autopilot and make sure that every dollar leaving this institution is doing the very best that it can for the hardworking American taxpayers that have entrusted us to spend it.

Madam Speaker, I thank you for being here and yielding me this time this evening.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I appreciate my friend from New York for yielding.

You are absolutely right. I have some Fair Tax passion. I believe that there is a better way to create a United States Tax Code, and I believe the Fair Tax is that. H.R. 25, for folks who haven't read it. But the truth is I came down here tonight because I knew that we were going to have that debate of ideas that you're talking about. I mean, whether it's your leadership on this Special Order, whether it's the enthusiasm my friend from Wisconsin brings to the floor, we're talking about the challenges that we face using a different language than we've used in this body before. This is a floor that has been taken over by freshmen here tonight. This is an institution that's been taken over by new ideas. I don't mean just new freshman ideas; I mean new ideas from all aspects of this institution.

I hear my friend from Wisconsin talking, and he comes from a competitive district. There is all this talk about these rabid freshmen, crazy Republicans. The people of Wisconsin, they can choose anybody they want. They don't have to choose Republican. They can choose a Democrat. They can choose an independent. They can choose anybody they want, and they choose him.

His message is not: Look what I am going to go to Washington and get for you. His message is: We don't need a subsidy here because we've got the hardest-working workforce in the world. His message is not: How can I give you an unfair advantage over your neighbors? His message is: How can we make the American economy the most competitive economy in the world, because if we do that, the American worker will succeed because we work harder, better, and longer than anybody else on the planet. That is a different take on what happens in Washington, D.C., and it's a different take on what happens in the Tax Code.

I know my friend from New York sits on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, as does my friend from Tennessee, and you have to have a Ways and Means Committee. For folks who don't sit on that committee, they're the ones who write all the Tax Code. The Tax Code is a complicated thing to do.

What this Ways and Means Committee is doing--and it's important to be said because this is an election year, and a lot of crazy things happen in an election year. There are crazy things like people supporting a Buffett rule to solve deficit problems, a rule that if it had been in place this year and collected that same amount of revenue for the next 250 years, it still would not have balanced the budget from last year. That's right.

This great savior of all that's good that ails us in this country, President Obama's Buffett rule, had it been in place this year, and not just this year but the next 250 years, it had raised that revenue, it still would not have balanced the budget from last year, just the budget gap from last year. We have all this nonsense in a political year.

But what we're getting out of the Ways and Means Committee--and I know my two friends from the Ways and Means Committee wouldn't brag on themselves, so I'm going to brag on you for you. We have had more serious hearings about fundamental tax reform in this Ways and Means Committee over the last 16 months than we've had in the last decade. This is a committee that, by virtue of simplifying the American Tax Code, is going to undo the work of the Ways and Means Committee for decades and decades and decades in the past. They're doing it not to exploit the power of their position; they're doing it to help grow the American economy.

As an alternative to the Buffett rule, I have brought down a chart to demonstrate what happens in today's Tax Code. My friends on the Ways and Means Committee know it all too well. But in today's Tax Code, the folks who have the money benefit from all the loopholes and exceptions and exemptions and carve-out. Of course they do. It makes sense. I will tell you, the folks who have the money are the ones who are paying the taxes, so it certainly makes sense that they are the ones benefiting from the carve-outs.

We have a choice of two futures here. We can either implement the President's Buffett rule, which again, by simple mathematics, will have absolutely no effect either on growing the economy or paying down the deficit, or we can simplify today's Tax Code to make it flatter and fairer.

That's what my friends on the Ways and Means Committee have been working on, Chairman Dave Camp and the rest of the committee, in ways that I have never seen before, with a sincerity that I have never seen before. You're absolutely right, and I appreciate my friend from New York for saying it.

They've said, Bring all comers. Bring all comers. We're not the smartest people in the room. If the idea comes from Lawrenceville, Georgia, bring it. If it comes from Seneca, New York, bring it. If it comes from Chattanooga, Tennessee, bring it. We want all the ideas, and we'll just let the chips fall where they may. That's what's different in this town.

I say to my colleague, what is different in this town with this Republican class is we don't have to rig the game to get to the outcome. We just bring the debates to the floor. Bring the facts to the floor. Let the facts speak for themselves. And then guess what. Have a vote. If it's a good idea, it wins, and if it's a bad idea, it loses. We see both of those happen on this floor

every day, and the Ways and Means Committee is leading in this tax process.

This would have been a great year for the Ways and Means Committee-- putting my political hat on for a moment--a great year for you all to play some sort of game with the Tax Code. I have seen it happen in Congresses past.

Oh, this is going to be good for reelection. We're going to go do X, Y, or Z. It's not going to happen. It's not going to be real. But we're going to play the game. The folks on this committee this year, the freshmen in the body this year, would rather lose in November, having tried each and every day to do the right thing, than win in November, having played the game the way it's been played for so many years.

So serious is the effort in the Ways and Means Committee that it was included in the House-passed budget this year--flatter, fairer rates, eliminating exemptions, loopholes, carve-outs--all of those things that the American people look at and lose faith in this body. You've stood up to them all. You've stood up to them all in the Ways and Means Committee. We've stood up to them in the Budget Committee to say, No more. There's a better way. And we're going to share with the American people.

I appreciate my colleague for taking on the time tonight. And I ask him to commit this chart to memory. I say to all my other colleagues who might be watching back in their offices that on budget.house.gov, you'll find myriad charts to talk about all the things that my friend from Wisconsin discussed and my friend from Kansas discussed and my friend from Florida discussed. It will lay them out in easy-to-see and visualized ways.

But if we want to get a handle on what's happening in America with the discrepancies--call it fairness, call it economic growth, you name your ill--a flatter and fairer tax code is the beginning of that solution, it's not the end. But the Tax Code was not designed to implement social policy. It was designed to collect revenue so that we can run the national defense of this country. And if we get back there, the American economy and the American taxpayer is going to be the beneficiary.

I thank my friend for his leadership tonight.

Mr. Graves, I appreciate you taking this time tonight.

Folks ask me, What goes on in the evenings there on Capitol Hill? When you finish the votes for the day, what goes on next?

I say, Well, folks are all back in their offices, working, just like small business folks across the country. Just because the customers leave doesn't mean the doors close.

Folks are still working, and this is that time when we get to come down and really fully debate some of these ideas that folks have been watching all day today. We've been talking about transportation policy. We've been talking about Mark Twain a little bit. We've been talking about the rules, the process; but we haven't gotten to talk about small businesses.

When we talk about economic growth in this country--you're from the great State of Georgia, as I am, and we've got some fantastic big companies there. UPS is there, doing fantastic things. They're the folks dressed in brown. Delta Airlines is there, carrying more passengers than anybody else in the country. We've got Coca-Cola there, a brand name that's known the world around. There's Home Depot, the Big Orange, which everybody understands. But that is not where the jobs come from. The jobs come from those small business men and -women who risk everything--everything--to believe that by the sweat of their brows and the power of their ideas they can make their tomorrows better than today.

That letter that you got from your constituent, Mr. Graves, is exactly the kind of letter that I get from folks every single day who say, Rob, I don't mind paying the taxes. I understand part of the social contract is that the government has to run, but it doesn't have to be this painful. We can do it in a better way, in H.R. 25, the Fair Tax, of which you are a proud cosponsor, a huge leader on that bill. It is the single most popularly cosponsored piece of fundamental tax reform legislation in either the U.S. House or the U.S. Senate because voters are demanding it one Member of Congress at a time.

That is what is so amazing about small business folks. You never have a small business person come to your office and say, Rob, what I want is a leg up on everybody else. I want an unfair playing field so I can beat all my competition.

That's not who our small business owners are. Our small business owners are people who say, Rob, give me a level playing field, and I will out-compete anybody in any nation around the globe because nobody works harder and has more powerful ideas than does the American worker. Well, that's what the Fair Tax is all about. It says, let's create a level playing field.

My friend is not a freshman as I am. He got here 6 months earlier in a special election that he had to work incredibly hard for; but those of us who are newer to this institution, as you and I are, know there are some folks here who like using the Tax Code to pick winners and losers. I mean, it's an easy thing to do. I look around this body. I can find some examples. I see fluorescent lights here in the Chamber. I could put a huge tax on fluorescent lights so we would never have any more fluorescent lights. I could put a huge tax on plaid shirts so we never have any more plaid shirts. That is what happens with the Tax Code.

The Fair Tax says no. It says we're going to have a single tax rate on everything the consumer buys. You're going to be taxed on everything once--but only once--because those small business men and women who write those letters to your office and to mine say, Rob, I spend more time trying to figure out tax decisions than I do figuring out business decisions. So, when these are the men and women who employ so many of our friends and neighbors, when these are the men and women who create the job growth in this country, we have to have them focus on business decisions, not on tax decisions; and the Fair Tax does that.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 597 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my colleague from New York (Ms. Slaughter), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

Mr. Speaker, it's budget day. It's budget day, and we get to begin that in the Rules Committee.

Now, I have the great pleasure in this body, as a freshman, of serving on both the Rules Committee and the Budget Committee, so you can imagine the sincerity with which I bring my enthusiasm to the floor today.

Coming here as a freshman who believes in an open process, who believes that we ought to have the opportunity to bring all ideas before the American people and let the 435 Members of the people's House express their opinion, I'm proud to tell you that the rule that is before us today allows for not one budget to be debated, not two budgets to be debated, not three, not four, not five, and not six, Mr. Speaker; but the rule that we bring today allows for seven different visions of the United States budget to be brought before this institution and debated. That is every single budget that was introduced, offered yesterday, Mr. Speaker, in front of the Rules Committee.

Candidly, had more Members submitted budgets, had we had 11, had we had 12, we would have made those in order, too, because this debate that we will have over these next 2 days, Mr. Speaker, is a debate about the vision that we have in this body for this country. I am so proud of the vision that was voted, reported out of the Budget Committee, and that will be made in order by this rule.

The options we'll have before us, Mr. Speaker, as made in order by this rule, include the President's budget. You may remember last year, Mr. Speaker, the President submitted his budget to Congress and not a single Member of the House offered that budget on the floor. It was offered in the Senate. It didn't get any votes. It was defeated 97 0, but it was offered there. This year, we're going to be able to look at the President's budget and debate that here on the floor of the House for the first time in my term.

We're going to have a budget offered by the Congressional Black Caucus today that lays out a vision for America, that talks about taxation, that talks about revenues and spending and where we should prioritize. We have a bipartisan budget that's been introduced, Mr. Speaker, that will come before the floor of this House, again, to be debated in its entirety. We have the Progressive Caucus budget that's coming. We have the Republican Study Committee budget that is coming. And, Mr. Speaker, we have the Democratic Caucus substitute that is coming, all to compete with, in this grand arena of ideas, the budget that we reported out of the Budget Committee.

I see my colleague from Wisconsin, with whom I have the great pleasure of serving on the Budget Committee. We went through amendment after amendment after amendment--some 30 amendments offered and considered, debated, some with bipartisan support, some with bipartisan opposition--to create this one budget that will be the foundation for the budget debate, Mr. Speaker, if this rule is enacted.

I don't know how we could have done it any better in the Rules Committee. I hope that's what we'll hear from my friend from New York.

Again, every single budget that was offered--and that was the invitation put out by the Speaker, just to be clear. The openness and the invitation was, Mr. Speaker: Come one, come all. If you have a competing vision, send it to the Rules Committee. We'll make it in order on the floor so that we can have the kind of open debate that's going to make America proud.

This is the beginning of that, right here, Mr. Speaker, right now.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to say that I think the gentlelady from New York is right on target. I mean, these budgets are moral documents. They talk about our priorities as a people.

I tell folks back home, Mr. Speaker, and we don't have any young people on the floor with us today, but for all those young folks who are entrepreneurs, Mr. Speaker, who want to go out, and they don't want to work for the Man, they want to go out and hang out their own shingle, run their own business; you know, if they lost, at their small business, beginning on the day Jesus Christ was born, $1 million a day, and they lost $1 million a day at that small business every single day from the day Jesus was born, 7 days a week, through today, Mr. Speaker, they would have to continue to lose $1 million a day every day, 7 days a week for another 700 years to lose their first trillion dollars. Their first trillion.

And the budgets that have been passed by this House and by the United States Senate and signed by Presidents of both parties have saddled our young people today in America with more than $15 trillion--not $1 trillion, Mr. Speaker--$15 trillion and climbing, soon to be 16.

So when we talk about the morality of our budgets, we've got to talk about the morality of continuing to run budgets that are unbalanced. We've got to talk about the morality of continuing to pay for our priorities today with IOUs from our children in the future. We've got to talk about the prosperity that we experience today that we're trading away the prosperity of the future to have.

Health care, Mr. Speaker. It's going on right across the street. The longest line in Washington, D.C., today is right out there at the Supreme Court, folks who want to get in and find out what's going to happen.

Well, the budget that makes up the foundation of this debate that we'll have assumes the President's health care bill is going to go away. It assumes the Supreme Court Justices will accurately conclude that this mandate is unconstitutional, that the whole house of cards unfolds beyond that, and we'll start again.

And you know what's interesting?

Again, I'm so proud to be a member of this Budget Committee that I do think is doing it better than we have done it in the past under both parties. You know, had the President's health care bill come to the floor of this House five pages at the time, 10 pages at the time, 20 pages at the time, I would wager that this House would have passed the majority of it. In fact, I would wager that the American people would have approved and been enthusiastic about the majority of it.

But what has happened in this House too often, Mr. Speaker, is that we take those policies that we can all agree on, and for some reason unbeknownst to me, we decide that it would be bad if we all agreed on good policy, and so we begin to stuff things in there that we know are going to create controversy.

We just manufacture an argument that we don't have to have, and that's what happened to the President's health care bill. There was this nugget of the individual mandate, that theft of freedom, a new definition about what it means to be an American. We knew that the body wouldn't support that so we began to add on sweetener after sweetener after sweetener. We could have just voted on those sweeteners.

This rule doesn't put up with that, Mr. Speaker. This rule says we're not going to try to buy anybody's vote on the floor, we're not going to try to hide the ball in these budgets. Every single Member of Congress who has a vision of America, who has a vision of the morality that my colleague from New York discussed, who has a vision of what we could be as a people if only we had the political will to implement it right here. Each and every Member of Congress was invited to put that vision forward.

There are at least two visions that we'll have today, Mr. Speaker, and tomorrow that I plan to support, visions that I think outline that correct vision of how we can retain America's economic prosperity, how we can continue to be a leader in the free world.

But I support bringing to the floor those budgets that I do not believe in because just because those folks in north metro Atlanta, Mr. Speaker, just because those folks in the Seventh District of Georgia that I represent don't approve of every budget doesn't mean that those budgets don't deserve a vote, and that is a fundamental difference between the leadership that this Speaker has brought to this Institution and the leadership that we have had from both parties in years past.

What we've said is every single idea is worthy of consideration--win or lose. Win or lose, bring those ideas to the floor for debate, and let's see where the votes fall.

Mr. Speaker, again, as a member of both the Budget Committee and the Rules Committee, I am strongly supportive of the underlying budget bill but particularly proud of this rule that makes every other budget option in order as well.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I appreciate the comments of my colleague from California, and I know her concern for America's seniors is heartfelt, and it's one that I share as well; and I hope that she will support this rule that allows for a series of votes on many different Medicare solutions. Some solutions are better than others; but even if she opposes the underlying budget, I do hope we'll have her support on the rule, because we do lay out the opportunity for folks to choose among seven different visions for solving the Medicare challenge.

I don't have the charts with me down here on the floor. I know my colleagues on the Budget Committee will bring them during the main debate; but I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, and I can picture the charts in my mind, if you charted Medicare spending going out from 2020 to 2050, that two-generation horizon heading out there, and you charted the President's commitment to spend dollars on Medicare, and you charted the Budget Committee's commitment to spend dollars on Medicare, you'd find that the dollar value commitment is about dollar-for-dollar going out over that 30-year window.

So the question then, Mr. Speaker, is not about how much money is this Congress committing, the question is to what priorities is this Congress committing that money.

Now, the President's budget, which we'll have an opportunity to debate and vote here on the floor of the House, turns those Medicare financing decisions, those decisions about how to save money in the system, over to what we've all come to know as IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, to make recommendations and suggestions about how to clamp down on costs.

Now, generally, that means clamping down on reimbursements to doctors.

What the Budget Committee budget does, Mr. Speaker, is give those dollars to individuals so the individuals can enter the marketplace-- not a free-for-all marketplace--but a regulated and guaranteed marketplace where policies are guaranteed to these seniors so that individuals can then control those dollars and make their own choices about health care decisions.

So just to be clear, we're not arguing about dollars and cents in Medicare. The President's vision and the Budget Committee's vision is virtually identical.

What we are talking about, though, is who controls those dollars. Are they controlled by a one-size-fits-all 1965 Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan, soon to be revised by the IPAB board, or are they controlled by my mother and my father and your mother and your father and our neighbors, our aunts and uncles, individuals, Americans who will make those health care decisions for themselves.

Again, for me that choice is clear. Individual freedom will always be my choice over government control.

But getting back to the actual rule, Mr. Speaker, that's what's so wonderful about the way this Rules Committee has operated and this resolution that we have before us today. You're not restricted to just voting on my vision of solutions for this country. We're offering six other visions as well. In fact, we're offering every single vision that has come out of this U.S. House of Representatives so that we can have a free, open, and honest debate and let the American people know what their true choices for freedom are.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would like to say to my friend from Connecticut, because I can see her passion--again, I know it comes from the heart--your mother will be in no way affected by the budget that we're voting on today, and I would like to make that clear if anybody else is concerned about their mothers. For folks who are aged 55 or older, there is not one word in the Republican budget plan that changes the commitment that we've made to folks over the past three or four decades. That commitment since 1965 remains as solid today and tomorrow under the Budget Committee budget as it has ever been.

The alternative, Mr. Speaker, is to take our 98-year-old mothers and turn them over to IPAB. Now, again, there are choices here. The Republican budget, which has become the House Budget Committee budget, allows everyone in the current Medicare system and those 55 years of age or older to experience no changes whatsoever to that program guaranteed from 1965. Because the dollars still have to be regulated and because we still have to protect this program from bankruptcy, which is a program important to so many of us, the alternative is to turn it over to this government board and to let them cut costs where they can.

Let me tell you a story, Mr. Speaker, if I can just take a moment of personal privilege.

I was talking with a physician from back home in Gwinnett County, my hometown. He is a neurologist, Mr. Speaker. He has been practicing neurology for 17 years, and he is the youngest neurologist in the county. This is one of the largest counties in

the State of Georgia, which is one of the largest States in the Nation, and we haven't had one new neurologist coming into our area in 17 years. This doc says he's thinking about getting out. He has got an uncle who is a primary care physician in south Georgia, a primary care physician who is the only one to accept Medicaid, Mr. Speaker, in a five-county radius.

Folks say that there is this guarantee of health care. Let me tell you, if you can't find a doctor who will take you, your insurance card isn't worth much.

What we have to do, Mr. Speaker, is to restore the promise of America's health care system. What is it about the American health care system that's driving our doctors into retirement? Is it that we're not clamping down enough and that if only we had the IPAB board clamp down even more that it's going to increase access to care? I tell you that it's not, Mr. Speaker.

There are lots of different ways to prepare budgets, and I didn't know what to expect when I got on the Budget Committee, Mr. Speaker. I'll be honest. It could easily degenerate into a political exercise. I've seen it happen. It could become all about the right talking points and about all the right focus group conversations and have nothing to do with how we should actually lead this country forward--but not so on the Chairman Paul Ryan Budget Committee. In meeting after meeting, in conversation after conversation, in argument after argument, this Budget Committee chairman said there is one way to do a budget, and that is to do a budget with honest numbers and honest priorities that lay out in plain vision, for all to see, our vision of America's future--and he did it. He did it. He did it with the help of a very competent Budget Committee.

Again, as I look to my friend from Wisconsin with whom I share the bottom dais there on the Budget Committee, he did it with lots of input and lots of conversation; but he did it in a way so that no one would say they're just gaming the numbers, so that no one would say this is all about politics, and so that everyone who comes to the floor of this House can vote for this House Budget Committee reported budget with the pride of knowing it was put together with integrity about a vision for a better future. Again, we are going to have six other competing visions, Mr. Speaker. I can only hope that those numbers, those charts, those graphs were put together with the same care and integrity that Chairman Ryan used in the Budget Committee.

For folks who are trying to make up their minds about where they're going to cast their votes today, again I urge the strong support of this open rule that allows for the complete debate over all of these alternatives; but I also encourage my colleagues to give a look at that work product that we created on the House Budget Committee, a work product that I believe, Mr. Speaker, is crafted in a way that can make every Member of this body proud.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume to say to my colleague from Wisconsin that her words are always among some of the most powerful that we have on the Budget Committee, and I don't believe I've ever heard her speak from a place that was not of conviction. I want to say I appreciate those words, and you have my support on the Rules Committee. If we can get that bill reported out of Judiciary, I would love to see that in the Rules Committee and would love to see us report that to the House floor for that same kind of free and open debate that we are having today on the Budget Committee, and I appreciate the words that you shared.

I must say, though, Mr. Speaker, I have a tough time connecting the Violence Against Women Act with these budgets. I will disagree with my colleague from Wisconsin and will encourage folks to support the previous question so that we can have this budget debate. Should we have the debate that my colleague is discussing? I believe we absolutely should. Again, I know the committees of jurisdiction are working on that, and my hope is that they will report that and send that to the Rules Committee.

But today, Mr. Speaker, we have an opportunity. It's not an unprecedented opportunity, but it's one of the rarest of opportunities that we have here in the House, which is to have a debate on the floor that includes every single idea that any of our 435 Members have offered as a vision of how to govern this land, of how to set our fiscal priorities, of this morality that is deciding how to spend taxpayer dollars. We must seize that opportunity today. It's one that comes but once a year, Mr. Speaker; an opportunity but once a year to set these priorities. And again, the Rules Committee has provided time not just today but tomorrow as well to make sure we can thoroughly flesh out each and every one of these ideas and make sure that no one's voice on the floor of this House is silenced.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I will continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

I appreciate the comments of my friend from New York. We serve together on the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker, and we grapple with tough issues on the Rules Committee every single time we meet. There's no easy day on the Rules Committee. Every bill is a challenge because of the different ideas that folks have to make it better. But what I've learned in that time, Mr. Speaker, is that I'm not the smartest guy in the room, I'm not the smartest guy in this Congress, and I'm not the smartest guy in my district.

There's a reason we have regular order here in the U.S. House of Representatives, so that even a good idea we can make better.

I have some folks come to me in my district and they say, Rob, why is it that you put that hospital funding that we need in the transportation bill? Those things don't have anything to do with one another. Why do you combine those two things? If it's a good idea to pass the transportation bill, let's pass the transportation bill; and if it's a good idea to pass the hospital bill, let's pass the hospital bill. But why do you put these disconnected things together? Why do you try to fund a new military procurement program in the environmental and National Park funding? Why do you stick those things together, Rob? They don't have anything to do with one another.

I actually campaigned on that issue, Mr. Speaker, because I think they're right. I think that the American people deserve an up-or-down vote on one issue at a time. I think my colleague from New York, my colleague from Connecticut, my colleague from the District of Columbia, and my colleague from Wisconsin make extremely compelling cases for why we should see the Violence Against Women Act come through regular order.

But my understanding is--and I would be happy to be corrected if I'm mistaken--my understanding is the bill was just introduced yesterday, that it hasn't had an opportunity to go through those committees where folks know so much more about these issues than we do in the Rules Committee or in the Budget Committee; that it has not had an opportunity to be amended and improved, to have the opportunity for those Members for whom this is a heartfelt and compelling issue to put in their two cents to make it even better.

I think it should have that opportunity, Mr. Speaker. I encourage folks to vote ``yes'' on the previous question so that we can move forward to debate these budgets today, and then I urge my colleagues-- let me say it, Mr. Speaker, because I know folks are watching this on the screens back in their rooms--the bill number of the Violence Against Women Act is H.R. 4271, Mr. Speaker. There's no question-- because this is a House where folks believe in regular order--that the more cosponsors a bill accumulates and the faster it accumulates them, the more likely it is to end up on this floor in haste, rapidly, immediately in order to have a hearing.

I would encourage my colleagues to go and look at that bill again just dropped yesterday, but certainly something that I know this House and the Judiciary Committee and others are going to want to consider.

The opportunity we have today, though, Mr. Speaker, with this rule, is to define our national vision. I don't mean our vision for just the Nation, our land, Mr. Speaker. I mean a vision for us as a people. Who are we as a people, Mr. Speaker?

I heard one of the Presidential candidates speak the other day and he said, This year we don't need politicians that we can believe in; we need politicians who believe in us.

I thought that was pretty profound. I don't need somebody I can believe in. I need somebody who believes in me. That's true, Mr. Speaker.

We lay out all of these different competing budget visions here, the summaries of which I hold in my hand. My question to my colleagues is: Which of these visions do you believe believes in you? Which of these visions lays out that future of America that is best for you and your family, that is best for your constituents and their families, that is best for your State, that is best for our Nation?

The visions are starkly different, Mr. Speaker. Again, the base bill is the bill that we reported out of the Budget Committee. That is the base text. These are substitutes for that.

For example, we have a bipartisan substitute--Republican and Democratic Members of the House--that raises taxes by $2 trillion more. To be perfectly accurate, it's $1.8 trillion more than the Republican budget that the committee passed. It spends $3.1 trillion more. It focuses on different priorities. The debt increases by about $1.4 trillion. That's the cost of those priorities. Again, some priorities may be worth that cost. We'll have that debate on the floor.

The ranking member on the Budget Committee, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Maryland, his budget substitute also raises taxes by $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years more than the House Budget Committee budget does and spends $4.7 trillion more than the House Budget Committee budget does and thus adds $2.9 trillion more to the backs of our children.

As I said, Mr. Speaker, about $15.5 trillion today, soon to be $16 trillion, that we've borrowed and spent, that

we've impoverished our children with so that we can live today at the standard of living that we have, Mr. Speaker. The gentleman from Maryland's substitute increases that by $3 trillion more than does the House Budget Committee report.

Do the priorities that he spends on merit that kind of increase? Do the priorities that he focuses on merit that kind of debt increase? Perhaps they do. We're going to have that debate on the floor of the House, Mr. Speaker.

The Congressional Black Caucus substitute raises taxes by $6 trillion over 10 years, more than the House budget bill does, and it spends $5.3 trillion more, which means the Congressional Black Caucus substitute actually reduces the national debt more than the House Budget Committee does. Now, it does so by raising taxes $6 trillion, and it only reduces the debt by under $1 trillion, but that's one of those priorities that folks have had the courage to lay out here on the floor of the House that we're going to make in order.

My colleague from New York, the chairman from California, this Budget Committee of men and women, Mr. Speaker, has made every single option available.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus, Mr. Speaker, their proposal is to raise taxes by $6.8 trillion more than the Republican Budget Committee budget, the budget that was passed out of the entire Budget Committee. It increases spending by about $6.6 trillion, one of the highest spending of the bunch, again, focusing on priorities that all 435 Members of this House deserve an opportunity to hear and an opportunity to consider.

We have an opportunity in this House, Mr. Speaker, to do great things. We have an opportunity in this House to stand up for the priorities that are the priorities of our constituents back home. And we don't have to vote on 100 different ideas in one bill, Mr. Speaker. In the 15 months I've been here, Mr. Speaker, all but about five of the bills have been short enough for me to read; I don't have to staff it out, and I don't have to have a team of speed readers out there working through it. All but about five have been short enough for me to read.

That's a source of great pride for me on the Rules Committee, because I've told folks back home and folks believe it back home that we ought to have time to carefully deliberate each and every thing. Folks are tired of 1,500-page bills. Folks are tired of 2,500-page bills. Folks are tired of the defense bill being merged with the transportation bill which is merged with the health care bill which is merged with the national parks bill which also funds the White House. That's crazy, and it doesn't have to be that way. There's not one rule of this House that requires that nonsense to go on. In fact, the opposite is true. The rules of the House were actually created to prevent that from going on, and we have to work really hard to pervert the process in a way that makes that possible.

This Speaker has made an effort unlike any I've ever seen to try to have one idea at a time down here on the floor of the House, one idea at a time so that the American people's voice can be heard. If we bring a bill to the floor, Mr. Speaker, that supports dogcatchers on the one hand and hospital funding on the other and somebody votes ``no,'' what are they voting ``no'' on? Are they voting ``no'' on the dogcatchers or are they voting ``no'' on the hospital? You can't tell. And that's what happens. Have you seen that?

Have you ever wondered why it is, Mr. Speaker, that in our appropriations process the food stamp language and the agricultural subsidy language is in the same appropriations bill? I always wondered. I started thinking about it as I watched the votes going on the board, and what I figured out is that we don't have enough farmers in this country for everybody to vote to increase farm spending, and we don't have enough folks with high food stamp populations in their district to support having high food stamp spending, but when you combine those two groups together, guess what? You get 51 percent of this House and you can make things happen.

Well, I guess I support the ingenuity of folks who find ways to cobble a multitude of ideas together and find 51 percent, but I ask my colleagues, is that really what our constituents sent us here to do? Is cobbling together multiple ideas and just trying to game the system enough to find your 51 percent, Mr. Speaker, is that really what our Framers intended? Or, alternatively, should we commit ourselves to not just having an open process, Mr. Speaker, but an open process on a single idea?

Do you know what I found on the Rules Committee? And it was a surprise to me--and if you haven't had a chance to serve on the Rules Committee, it might not be intuitive to you--but when you bring a small bill to the Rules Committee, when you focus on one single idea, when you find one priority that you want to make the law of the land and you send that to the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker, then the amendment process is only open to amendments that are germane to that underlying idea. If you bring a bill about hospital funding to the Rules Committee, well, then, the only germane amendments that will be considered are amendments that have to do with hospital funding.

So the shorter we make these bills and the more single-minded we make these bills, the more open we can have the process here on the House floor. Mr. Speaker, this freshman class is full of a bunch of CEOs from the private sector, folks who ran for Congress because they're worried about the direction of this country, and they said, Dadgumit, I've got to step up; I've got to run, and I've got to be a part of the solution. And they get here thinking that they were going to be able to do it all overnight. It turns out there are 435 of us, and we all have the same voting card. It's harder. Nobody is king of the world in here. It's one man, one woman, one vote, and there are 435 of us. You've got to find that agreement.

Well, it turns out there really is a lot of agreement, not just agreement on the Republican side of the aisle, not just agreement on the Democratic side of the aisle, but agreement across this whole House when we open up the process and allow the House to work its will.

Mr. Speaker, that is what we have here today. We have a rule that opens up the process, that flings open the doors of democracy and lets every single idea be considered.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage an affirmative vote on the rule.

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

I thank my chairman for yielding.

As a freshman, I have the privilege of serving on the Budget Committee. And in years past, the Budget Committee has been all about producing a political document, a document that may make for great sound bites, may make for great television, but doesn't make for great governance. As my friend from Arizona said earlier, the challenge, the $15.5 trillion in debt that has been placed on the backs of every child, every man and woman, every family in this country, has been the path that both parties have chosen.

My friend from Maryland, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, says there is no disagreement that we have to get the debt under control. Yet the President, who, to his credit, has submitted a budget, submitted a budget that raised taxes by $2 trillion on the American people, but so increased spending as well that the debt continued to climb even faster under the President's budget than it does under the broken system we have today.

Take a look at this. You can't see this, Mr. Chairman, but it's the drivers of our debt. If you look here at the blue line, it is Social Security; and Social Security is a situation that we know is facing peril, but it's facing peril in a predictable way that we'll be able to solve and control.

We see here the green line. It's Medicaid and other health saving in this country, and yet it is growing rapidly. We know how we can begin to curb that spending.

Look at this red line. This is Medicare spending growing out of control. We know it. We know it's true. That's the question folks ask me back home. In this budget conversation, they say: Rob, why does it sound like it's a big Medicare discussion?

The reason is because Medicare is the driver. Medicare spending, the spending that is done through a government mandate where individuals don't have control over their own health care, is driving this debt train.

Going back to my pride at being a freshman member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Chairman, this is a headline from MSNBC. And you know MSNBC is not one of the biggest fans of this freshman class, not one of the biggest fans of this Republican Congress. But this is what they said in a headline from March 15: ``In risky election-year move, Republicans offer Medicare alternatives.''

That's right. That is why 100 new freshmen came to this body last year. They didn't come to recycle old ideas. They came to offer solutions.

Yes, I know it's an election year, but dadgummit, Mr. Chairman, an election year ought to bring out the best in this body as folks work even harder to fulfill the hopes and dreams of the American people. That's what Chairman Ryan and this Budget Committee have done.

Could they have punted on this, Mr. Chairman? Could they have said, You know what, this is just too hard. We know it's coming, we know it threatens every senior in this country, but let's just punt until after the election.

We've heard some folks who have adopted exactly that attitude, but not this chairman, not Paul Ryan and the Budget Committee, not this U.S. House of Representatives. It may be risky, but they do it because it's the right thing to do.

And I tell you, Republicans and Democrats alike who were elected in this freshman class in 2010 came to do the right thing for the right reasons, not to follow election-year politics; and I'm just so proud of this chairman for giving us this opportunity.

So what is it that this Budget Committee solution is? Well, what it doesn't do, Mr. Chairman, is change anything for seniors on Medicare today, not one. No changes for today's seniors, whereas the President's proposal makes dramatic changes by empowering this 15-member IPAB board. We preserve and protect Medicare in this budget by providing for seniors--my parents, your parents and your grandparents--providing an opportunity for them to have some say in their health care decisions. We tried that with Medicare Advantage. It's been dramatically successful, and we expand that to give families more choices about their health care decisions. Preserving and protecting the Medicare mandate for future generations, this is the alternative.

Just to be clear, you can't read this, Mr. Chairman, it's the small print, it's all of the small print, that indicates the IPAB board. And it takes a lot of small print to create it because folks were scared to death when this thing was created. There's all sorts of language in this small print, Mr. Speaker, about how rationing will not happen with this board. Why? Because when you put a government board in charge of people's health care, the first thing you think is rationing.

Well, what this board can do is clamp down on what we pay providers. Now, I want you to think about the doctors in your life. I want you to think about those folks.

In your church, in your Sunday school class, at the CVS and at the Walgreen's is where you see those family practice docs. Do you really think those folks are the health care problem in this country? Do you really think that clamping down on more of your neighbors who provide the care to our community is the answer? Because that's the only thing this IPAB board can do: clamp down on those docs, denying care to every senior in this country.

We offer an alternative. It may be a risky election-year move, but it's the right thing to do. And I want to thank the chairman. All the naysayers in this country who said you couldn't, you did. All the folks who said you shouldn't, you did. And you did it because it was the right thing to do. This is a document that can govern our Nation, and it's one that we can be proud of, and I've been proud to be a part of it.

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairman, my amendment is a very straightforward amendment. But before I actually talk about the text of it, I want to speak about the real accomplishment of my friend from Georgia, who is the sponsor of the underlying legislation, H.R. 5.

The Washington Times did an article on this Congress and called it one of the most ineffective Congresses in history because they looked at how many laws we passed. But then they went on, and they looked at how many days of debate we'd had, how many votes we'd had, how many issues that were important to the American people have we been able to expose in this Congress that we have not been able to expose in Congress before Congress before Congress before Congress in the past, and, Madam Chair, that's what we have today.

This bill, introduced by my good friend from Georgia, gives the American people an opportunity to discuss something that is on every single family's mind in this country when it comes to health care, and that is controlling the cost of medical malpractice litigation.

Now, in this body, I'm sure we could disagree about the myriad ways there are to control it, but we can agree, I suspect--man and woman, Democrat and Republican--that it has to be controlled. And I thank my colleague from Georgia for having the courage and the stick-to-itness to bring this bill to the floor after so many years of silence on this issue.

Madam Chair, my amendment simply strikes the findings section of the bill. As you know, findings are nonbinding parts of the legislation that speak to the intent of Congress. And this issue is, again, such a passionate one, not just for the 435 Members of this House, but for the 300 million Americans across this country. I choose to let the legislation speak for itself.

This legislation has been carved out with states' rights provisions in it, to make sure the States have the flexibility that they need. It has been carved out with input from physicians, from attorneys, from families, from providers all across the board.

So my amendment, Madam Chair, would not change the substance of the bill but would simply eliminate the findings section to allow the substance of the bill to speak for itself.

And with that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume to say that, as a freshman in this body, I've had to learn a few things over the last 15 months here serving in this body, and what I have learned is that I haven't been able to get every bill that I want out of this House the exact way I want it when it leaves here. It has been much to my chagrin. I thought I was going to be able to come here and make every bill perfect before it leaves here. But not only can I not make it perfect before it goes, but then I have to deal with that United States Senate, and that has proved to be the most complicated part of this process.

There are absolutely, as the gentleman has listed, folks who have concerns about the underlying nature of this bill. But if not for this Gingrey bill, we wouldn't be able to have this conversation at all. If not for the courage of folks to step out on the ledge and begin this conversation, we wouldn't be able to have it at all.

If we are to advance the cause of litigation reform in this country, if we are to control the inaccessibility of health care that comes from rising costs, then we have to be willing to come to the floor of this House and have the kinds of debates that my friend from Georgia has made possible today. That's true.

I may disagree with some of the ways that we've gotten here--and by striking the findings, we make no conclusions today about why we're here--but we make the certain conclusion today that if we don't begin this process, we will never bring it to conclusion. If we don't have this discussion today, Madam Chair, we will never solve these issues.

I would be happy to yield to the ranking member.

Reclaiming my time, and I thank the ranking member for his question. And that's a good way to conclude, Madam Chair.

The reason is because the language of the bill speaks for itself. The language of the bill speaks for itself. When this bill passes the House today, Madam Chair, we will have the U.S. House of Representatives on record about solutions to the malpractice challenges that face this Nation. But there is no need to be on the record today, Madam Chair, about all of the different ways that we got here. Because I might disagree with my friend from Georgia about how we got here. I would certainly disagree with my friend from Michigan about how we got here.

But what is important is that we begin to take those steps forward. And with the removal of these findings, we are going to be able to let that language stand on its face for this House to have the free and open debate that I'm looking forward to today.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I very much appreciate that. I thank my colleague on the Rules Committee for yielding.

I wanted to come down here and talk about the rule. My colleague from Florida has just made a very impassioned case for why he is likely going to be voting ``no'' on the underlying legislation. If I understood his comments correctly, I'm guessing that it's going to be a ``no'' vote after we have finished 6 hours of debate on this bill--6 hours of debate--which is the kind of debate that a bill of this nature demands. And I'm very proud that the Rules Committee set aside that kind of time. I was fortunate enough to have one of my amendments made in order by the Rules Committee, as was my friend from Florida, but a lot of Members were not.

I wanted to come down here, Madam Speaker, to speak to the authorizers, the chairmen out there who are sending this legislation to the floor. Because what we have in this House is called the CutGo rule, which says if you bring a bill to the floor that's actually going to do some reducing of the Federal deficit, if you're going to be bold enough in this House to send a bill to the floor that's going to reduce the burden that we're placing on our children and grandchildren everyday, then nothing that happens on the floor of the House as we try to amend that bill will be allowed to reduce that savings.

So when a bill comes to the floor, as this bill has, H.R. 5, that has a very high CutGo number in it, we're in a box. It cannot be amended with different ideas because those ideas are either not germane-- germaneness means that it has to be relevant to the underlying legislation--or they can't cut any additional funds. So what we had to do in the Rules Committee yesterday was reject amendment after amendment after amendment that our colleagues offered that we would ordinarily have made in order here on the House floor in what has been the single most open Congress that I have seen in my lifetime. I'm a freshman on the floor of this House, but I've been watching this institution. This is the single most open Congress I've seen in my lifetime, but we were not able to make more amendments in order because they were not germane or they violated CutGo. To the Rules Committee's credit, we did not waive CutGo. We complied with the rules of this House.

But I just say to my friends who are on those authorizing committees, if you want to take advantage of the Rules Committee in this Congress that is providing more opportunity for more debate and more amendment and more discussion than we have seen in decades, you need to be cognizant when you send those bills to the Rules Committee that we are not inclined to waive CutGo--and rightfully so--and we are not inclined to waive the germaneness rules--and rightfully so.

What that means today is we're going to have the narrow discussion, that my friend from Florida has laid out, on the merits of this bill for over 6 hours today. I want to thank my friend on the Rules Committee for his leadership in bringing such an open rule to the floor, in bringing such an expansive rule to the floor and in genuinely providing the kind of opportunity for debate, even though I disagree with my friend from Florida on his underlying assertions, providing the opportunity for debate the likes of which America has not seen in decades.

I appreciate the majority leader giving me the time to come down here today, because I've got IPAB on my mind, Mr. Speaker. I say that like everybody knows what that is because we talk about it here in this Chamber all day long. IPAB, a word that was not even in the lexicon of America until the President passed his health care bill.

What is IPAB? I happened to bring down with me today, Mr. Speaker, the front page of the President's health care bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as he describes it. This was the 900-page law that was passed that completely restructured a sixth of the American economy.

The question then is, when we're talking about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and we're talking about how we change the individual health care decisions that every American gets to make, what do we get for it? What's the value added there? Because I think, Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day, when folks are talking about what motivates them, it really is affordable care. That's why we named the bill this way, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. We want patients to be protected, to be able to make their own health care choices. We want care to be made available to folks at prices that American families can afford. There are 900 pages in that health care bill, Mr. Speaker.

Now, IPAB, how would we describe it? We would call IPAB the hammer in the health care bill, because there are

lots of ways to save money, Mr. Speaker. You can save money by introducing competition into a system.

I'm from Atlanta, Mr. Speaker. I've got a soft spot in my heart for the Coca-Cola Company. But how many Coca-Cola machines do you pass on the street where the Coke is selling for $3 a can while the Pepsi right beside it is selling for $1.50? How many? Have you ever seen that happen? The answer is ``no'' because competition completely moves those machines out of the marketplace. If the Pepsi is a dollar, the Coke's going to be a dollar, too. If the Pepsi is $2, the Coke is going to be $2. Competition controls those prices.

What controls prices in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? Because we've heard time and time again, Mr. Speaker, on the floor of this House that the Patient Protection Act restricts my choices as a consumer. We've heard time and time again on the floor of this House, Mr. Speaker, that the Patient Protection Act restricts doctors and the services that they provide. We've heard time and time again, Mr. Speaker, that the Patient Protection Act restricts the choices that insurance companies can provide. So, if it's all of these restrictions on competition, how in the world does the Patient Protection Act save the money that needs to be saved to make health care affordable?

The answer is this: It's in section 3403. Again, I don't encourage folks at home to read this bill, Mr. Speaker, unless they've got time on their hands. There's lots of good summaries out there. It's over 900 pages long, and it's signed into law. I don't think folks are going to be able to read this back in their offices, Mr. Speaker.

This is about 46 pages that I've put up here just on one in case we needed to reference it, but 46 pages of law defining this brand-new thing that we've never had before in America, the Independent Payment Advisory Board.

If you read these 40 pages, Mr. Speaker, what you're going to find is that the Congress that passed the President's health care bill--and it was not this Congress, Mr. Speaker. You were not here in that Congress. I was not here in that Congress. It did not pass the Congress under normal rules and procedures. It passed in a manipulated reconciliation process designed intentionally to thwart the will of the House and of the Senate. But in that bill, they said Congress can't control these costs; and, candidly, I'm glad. I don't want Congress controlling my health care costs.

So what did they do? They went to an independent commission. The President is going to appoint this commission, Mr. Speaker. The President will appoint members to sit on this independent Medicare advisory board, and what they will do is decide where Medicare should save money.

Now, my mom and dad just went on Medicare, Mr. Speaker. I sit down with them. I look at their statement of charges that they get back when they go to the doctor's office. It's not always easy to understand, but we go through it together. It occurs to me that if Medicare is going to save money, there is only one way Medicare can do that. If we don't allow competition in the system, if we don't allow patient choice in the system, if we don't allow provider choice in the system, there is only one way that Medicare can save a dime; that is by restricting services. Now, that comes in lots of different ways, and I want to make sure I'm absolutely candid, Mr. Speaker, and accurate, because this is the panel.

Do you remember the death panel discussions? Do you remember that becoming a part of the lexicon in America, the death panels that Congress was going to create? This is that. I mean, this is where that idea came from, because what we have here is a board that makes decisions, recommendations about how to change Medicare spending.

Well, if we're not going to provide competition, if we're not going to allow doctors more decisions, if we're not going to allow other providers more decisions, then the only way to change the financing structure of Medicare is to restrict either the services that Medicare provides or the amount of money that is being paid to providers.

Now, I want to give my friends who passed this bill the benefit of the doubt, Mr. Speaker. I don't believe there is a single Member of this body who would stand here in the well and say that their decision about how to save the Medicare program is to restrict the services that Medicare beneficiaries can access, not one. I don't think one Member, Republican or Democrat, will come to the well of this House and say that their proposal for saving Medicare is to find seniors in need of health care and tell them ``no.'' Not one. But, Mr. Speaker, what's the effect, then, of the Independent Payment Advisory Board?

Let's look at what folks have said.

This is George Miller, one of my colleagues here on the floor of the House, a Democrat from California. We're taking up, tomorrow, a bill that will repeal this Independent Payment Advisory Board, this Medicare board. We're going to repeal it tomorrow, I believe, here on the floor of the House. When talking about that, my colleague from California said this:

IPAB is a critical measure for lowering health care costs.

He's absolutely right. I'm not picking on him at all. I'm endorsing what he has to say. That's what these 40 pages of law, Mr. Speaker, do. They are all designed to cut costs. But we've talked about it. If we're not going to introduce competition, if we're not going to introduce choices, if we're not going to introduce options, how are we going to cut costs? We all agree, Republicans and Democrats alike, that the IPAB board is a critical measure for lowering health care costs.

Peter Orszag, the OMB Director, the first one that President Obama used, said this about health care costs in Medicare:

The core problem is that health care costs are concentrated

among expensive treatments for chronic diseases and for end-

of-life care.

Mr. Speaker, let me reflect on that a minute. I've just shown you the 40 pages of law in the President's health care bill that are the cost- saving mechanism that the President has proposed and that has been passed into law. The OMB Director, the Office of Management and Budget Director, for the Obama administration said this:

The core problem is that health care costs are concentrated

among expensive treatments for chronic diseases and for end-

of-life care.

Mr. Speaker, what choices, then, does that give us? If we agree that IPAB is a critical measure for lowering health care costs and if we agree that health care costs are primarily concentrated with expensive treatments for chronic diseases and end-of-life care, how exactly is this unelected board going to lower those costs?

It's an honest question. If that's what has to happen for Medicare to be saved, exactly how is this board going to do that? Every American on Medicare and every American approaching Medicare needs to have that on their mind. What is it that IPAB, this unelected board, is going to do to save costs? We all--Republicans and Democrats alike--agree that the only purpose of IPAB is to control costs. We agree--Republicans and Democrats alike--that the money in Medicare is concentrated among expensive treatments for chronic diseases and end-of-life care. So if IPAB is going to control costs and the costs are here, what choice do we have but to deny individuals expensive treatments for chronic diseases and end-of-life care? What else is there?

To me, that's common sense, that this is where the President's proposal is going. I do not endorse this proposal. I was not here in this Congress, Mr. Speaker, when this proposal passed. Had I been here, I would have voted an enthusiastic ``no.''

Nevertheless, it is the law of the land as we sit here today, and our seniors are at risk. How many times have we heard supporters of the President's health care bill say, No, IPAB is not a Medicare rationing board. In fact, if you want to dig deep into these 40 pages, you'll find that said over and over again. Folks continually say, this is not a Medicare rationing board. But we know where the costs are, and the question is how do we control them.

What my friends who support the President's health care bill say is, no, we're not going to deny care to Medicare beneficiaries; we're just going to clamp down on payments to doctors. That's what they say: We're just going to change the payment schedules for doctors.

I've got news for you, Mr. Speaker. That's been the Medicare plan for decade, upon decade, upon decade, upon decade; and this is what you get. This is from a CNNMoney article from January 6 of this year titled ``Doctors Going Broke.'' It recounts the many changes that have happened in the Medicare system as we continue to do nothing about choices, nothing about options, nothing about getting the consumer involved in health care decisions, but continuing to use the same old broken tools to solve the Medicare issue. It says this:

In 2005, Medicare revised the reimbursement guidelines for

cancer drugs, which effectively made reimbursements for many

expensive cancer drugs fall to less than the actual cost of

the drugs.

You can tell me you don't want a Medicare rationing board, Mr. Speaker. I don't want a Medicare rationing board either. But if what we're going to have is a board that is going to cut the costs of Medicare and they're going to do that by cutting reimbursements to providers and what we already see is that we're cutting reimbursements to providers to the point that those reimbursements fall below the cost of the service, what do you think is going to happen to Medicare beneficiaries when they go to seek services? I'll tell you.

The President's health care bill, Mr. Speaker, primarily solved the challenge of the uninsured by dumping them onto State Medicaid policies. I don't think that is a particularly creative solution, but it is certainly an option.

My uncle is a primary care doc down in central Georgia. There used to be a bunch of docs who would see Medicare patients in that part of the world. Today he's the only one who will see Medicaid. He is the only one. In five counties, Mr. Speaker, he is the only doc that will see Medicaid patients. Don't tell me that our goal here in Congress is to help patients find care if we're going to lower reimbursement rates to a place where no doctor will accept them. I don't care that you have an insurance policy if you can't find a doctor who will take it. It does not matter that the government says you're guaranteed health care if you can't find a doctor who will provide it.

Mr. Speaker, that's not news to anyone who has had a job in the private sector; that's not news to anyone who has had to write paychecks from their business; and it's not news to anyone who has been a consumer.

I'm a coupon clipper, Mr. Speaker. I cut them out of the Sunday paper. I go into the store, I've got a big old coupon, I think I'm going to get a good deal, and the store doesn't carry the product. What is that coupon worth to me if I can't find the product, Mr. Speaker? Not a thing. That's what we're doing when we clamp down on costs. Don't you dare believe that we can continue to cut docs year after year after year after year and that your family and my family, who are on Medicare, are going to be able to find care. They cannot.

From that same article, Mr. Speaker, ``Doctors Going Broke.'' Again, January 6, 2012, from CNN Money Magazine. Dr. William Pentz said:

Recent steep 35 percent to 40 percent cuts in Medicare

reimbursements for key cardiovascular services, such as

stress tests and echocardiograms, have taken a substantial

toll on revenue.

He also says:

These cuts have destabilized private cardiology practices.

A third of our patients are on Medicare.

So these Medicare cuts are by far the biggest factor. Then, Mr. Speaker, he says private insurers follow Medicare rates. Those reimbursements are going down as well. You know, he is right about that. When the Federal Government pays two-thirds of all the health care costs in this country, Mr. Speaker, and the Federal Government decides it can get away with paying less, guess what? Everybody else wants to get away with paying less too. That is a good capitalist system. I don't fault folks for that. What I fault folks for is standing on the floor of this House and promising the American people a program that they pay into all of their life so it will be available for them in their time of need and then cutting rates to a place where you cannot find a doctor who will serve you. Mr. Speaker, the hypocrisy of saying that we're going to care about people in their time of need and putting the people out of business who provide for them in that time of need is deafening.

I go again to that same article of January 6, 2012, ``Doctors Going Broke.'' The same doctor, William Pentz, a cardiologist there in Philadelphia:

If this continues, I might seriously consider leaving

medicine. I can't keep working this way.

He goes on to talk about how the law of the land is going to provide even further cuts. He said:

If that continues, it will put us under.

My dad is going in for heart surgery in about 30 days, Mr. Speaker. We shopped long and hard to find a doctor that we would trust to do that surgery, just as every American family does.

Who are folks going to trust, Mr. Speaker? Who are folks going to find if we put the people who provide the care out of business?

IPAB, Mr. Speaker, these 40 pages from the President's health care bill, the only 40 pages that are designed to reduce costs, do not reduce costs through competition, do not reduce costs by providing consumer choices, do not reduce costs by getting consumers involved in their own health care. They reduce costs by either rationing services or by cutting reimbursements to a place where the marketplace rations those services on its own.

Don't believe for a moment, Mr. Speaker, that cutting reimbursements to doctors doesn't equal cutting services. That's really the hypocrisy, Mr. Speaker, for lack of a better word, that I hear on the floor of this House:

Oh, we're going to go out there and we're going to save all this money. How are you going to do it?

We're going to go out there and cut those reimbursements to docs.

All right. It sounds like you're liable to end up rationing services.

Oh, no. IPAB, that's not going to ration any services. No, no, no. They don't have the authority to cut out services. That's not what they do.

Well, what are they going to do?

Well, they're going to cut the reimbursement rates.

Well, what's going to happen?

Well, docs will just keep providing those services.

We saw it here.

Money magazine tells you, when you are only reimbursing folks at the cost of the service or less, they're going to quit providing. According to factcheck.org--those folks who go around and look at all the claims politicians make and try to figure out which ones are real and which ones are full of hot air--this is what they said: ``31 percent of primary physicians restricted Medicare patients in their practices.'' You know what that means. That means that 31 percent of all the doctors in the land who provide primary care services, those most-needed services, said they do not take every Medicare patient that comes knocking on their door. They can't. They restrict how many Medicare patients they'll take into their practice.

We've already seen that we're putting docs out of business. We're forcing docs into retirement. Who is going to provide the care, Mr. Speaker? Who is going to provide the care if we force the people who do it today out of business tomorrow?

Back to factcheck.org: ``62 percent of family practitioners would stop accepting Medicare patients if reimbursement rate cuts follow current law.'' Hear that, Mr. Speaker. Hear that. Let me say it again: If reimbursement rates follow the current law. I'm not talking about if some new draconian procedure gets put in place. I'm not talking about if some crazy future Congress comes in here and tries to further socialize health care. No, no. If the current law of the land, as passed before you and I came to Congress, Mr. Speaker, if the current law of the land continues, 62 percent of family practitioners would stop accepting Medicare patients.

What is IPAB going to do? It's going to control costs. How's it going to do it? It's going to do it by cutting reimbursements to providers. What happens when you cut reimbursements to providers? Sixty-two percent of all of America's family practitioners will stop accepting Medicare patients.

Mr. Speaker, what we do here has consequences. This isn't some think

tank downtown that has the freedom to just pontificate, to make recommendations, to wonder how things could have been. This is a body where every single thing that we do has the potential to affect-- positively or negatively--the lives of every single citizen of the land.

There are no free lunches in America, Mr. Speaker. There is no something for nothing. You can control costs through competition. You can control costs through getting consumers involved in their own health care. You can control costs by providing folks with more choices. You cannot control costs responsibly by putting providers out of business and rationing care through the long lines that are then going to result.

We are going to deal with this bill tomorrow, in fact, and I would be happy to yield to my friend from the Rules Committee to help make that happen.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that.

I was very lucky when my friend from Florida came to file that rule because that's another example that what we're doing down here isn't just howling at the Moon. It isn't just blowing hot air.

What I'm talking about here on the floor right now is repealing this Independent Payment Advisory Board to stop this cycle of destruction that has already been put into place. And no sooner do we come down here to do it than my colleague from the Rules Committee comes down to file this rule, Mr. Speaker, so that we can do this bill not 2 years from today, not after the next election, not 6 months from now, kicking the can down the road, but so that we can bring this bill to the floor tomorrow to address the concerns that we're talking about today. That's why you and I came to Congress, Mr. Speaker. That's why this whole freshman class came to Congress.

You know, I've only been here now about, what, 14, 15 months, Mr. Speaker. And what I have found is that each and every day, my colleagues in this freshman class do not evaluate their success by how many favorable newspaper articles are written about them. They don't evaluate their success by how many times they've seen their face on TV. And they certainly don't evaluate their success based on what the mass media writes about them in this town. They evaluate their success based on whether or not the promises they made to folks before they got elected are the priorities that they've set for themselves now that they have been elected. And each and every day, I see people making that a reality. Republicans and Democrats alike, Mr. Speaker, in this freshman class came to this Congress for a different purpose, with a different mission, with a different vision. And I see them implementing it every day. It makes me proud.

Speaking of being proud, Mr. Speaker, you know, folks back home say, Rob, how come we don't see you on FOX News preaching the good conservative news? I tell them, Mr. Speaker, that anybody who is watching FOX News already knows the good conservative news. They don't need to hear it from me. The folks who need to hear from me are the folks who are watching MSNBC. That is who needs to hear my message. And I happened to bring some MSNBC knowledge down here with me today.

This is a headline recently from the Web page, Mr. Speaker. This is what it said: ``In risky election year move, Republicans offer Medicare alternatives.'' Ooh. It kind of sounds ominous, doesn't it, Mr. Speaker? Ominous. ``In risky election year move, Republicans offer Medicare alternatives.'' Why? Why? For the reason I just talked about, Mr. Speaker, where we have this freshman class, where we have these senior Members of Congress who didn't come here to pontificate, who didn't come here to grandstand, who came here to make a difference.

I don't care that it's an election year. In fact, if anything, Mr. Speaker, in an election year, we ought to do more of the right things. We ought to spend even more time each and every day getting it right. ``Risky election year move'' is what folks say. I tell you, Mr. Speaker, I would be disappointed if we did anything else. Medicare is in crisis. This IPAB board is further destabilizing the Medicare program. You are doggone right it may be a risky move, but we did it anyway because it's the right thing to do.

I sit on the Budget Committee. That is actually what they are talking about. This is a March 15 article. And they're talking about the plan that we in the Budget Committee are going to hold a markup on tomorrow, which does what? All of these things I've been talking about, Mr. Speaker: bringing choices to consumers, bringing competition to the Medicare system, investing consumers in Medicare outcomes. It does all of those things, Mr. Speaker, that we believe can control costs using the power of the marketplace, using the power of the American people, using the power of the American family, and not just by rationing care, as this IPAB board does.

This is the headline. I'm going to read it again, Mr. Speaker, just because I like it so much: ``In risky election year move, Republicans offer Medicare alternatives.'' They go on to say this: ``Running a political risk during an election year, Republicans continue to offer proposals to cut future Medicare outlays.'' Medicare outlays, that's this dramatic rise we see in Medicare spending, Mr. Speaker. It's not a rise associated with quality of care. It's not a rise that's associated with whether or not people get the services they need. It's a rise that's associated with an out-of-control Federal health care program that has absolutely no consumer involvement at all, absolutely no competition at all, absolutely no free market involvement at all. And it's going broke.

We have a proposal to fix it. What is our proposal? Well, I didn't just bring our proposal, Mr. Speaker. But I brought our proposal, and I want to compare it to the President's approach. There are two things we need to talk about when we talk about changes to Medicare, Mr. Speaker, and you know this better than most. There are changes to the Medicare program that save it for future generations, and then there are changes to the Medicare program that destabilize today's seniors. A big difference in those two things.

I'm in my forties, Mr. Speaker. My Uncle Sam has to come to me today and say, Rob, I know you've been paying your Medicare taxes in every single paycheck since you were 16 and I know we promised you that Medicare was going to be there for you like it was there for your grandparents and your parents; but Rob, we've got bad news. It turns out we overpromised and we're underdelivering and we've got to renegotiate our Medicare contract with you.

We do.

That is the bad, bad news for your generation, Mr. Speaker, for my generation, and for everybody younger. The government--surprise, surprise--has overpromised and underdelivered. And the time to tell me that is now, not when I'm 65 and I can't make any more choices about my life, but today while I can still make accommodations.

So I've divided this chart, Mr. Speaker, up into two categories--what are our proposals for current seniors and what are our proposals for future seniors--and I've done the same thing for the President's plan, because it is important that we do keep our promises here. It's no senior's fault in this country that they're dependent on Medicare. They paid into it their entire life for the part A through the Medicare taxes. They were promised it would be there for them in their time of need.

They didn't ask for it. They didn't solicit it. The money was taken from them and now they deserve those benefits.

So here's what we do. The program that's coming out of the House Budget Committee, the program similar to what was passed on the floor of the House last year and it's coming before the House next week, Mr. Speaker, has absolutely no changes--no changes, Mr. Speaker--for today's seniors. If you're on Medicare today, no changes, no disruptions in our plan, Mr. Speaker. That service, it's already begun for you and it is going to continue uninterrupted for as long as you need to utilize the program. But the program is going bankrupt, Mr. Speaker, and so we're making some changes that will preserve and protect it for this current generation of seniors. If we do nothing, bankruptcy looms on the horizon. And if current seniors want it, we'll allow them to get what I'll call personalized Medicare like what Members of Congress have.

Mr. Speaker, folks often think--in fact, my mom sends me that email about once a week that says, Rob, I can't believe you're getting all that free health care in Congress. You know that's nonsense, Mr. Speaker. We have exactly the same health care plan in Congress that every Federal employee across the country has. And that plan is this: You open up a book that has about 30 plans to choose from and you choose the one that works best for you. Imagine that.

Imagine that our seniors today have had a lifetime of health care choices, and the day they turn 65, Mr. Speaker, they surrender their freedom as an American and they are forced into a health care system that they cannot opt out of--cannot opt out of. Oh, you're in it. You can opt out of Medicare part D, you can opt out of Medicare part B, but you cannot opt out of Medicare part A. You are in it.

And if you want a doctor that won't take you--he'll take other Medicare patients but he won't take you--the Federal law of the land prohibits you, Mr. Speaker, from paying cash out of your pocket to see your doctor. That's the law of the land where? Russia? China? It's the law of the land in America.

You turn 65, you enter the Big Government health care program, suddenly your freedoms begin to be eroded. We say no. We say let's make Medicare have the choices that we as Members of Congress have, and let's make those available to current seniors.

So to recap, Mr. Speaker, no changes or disruptions in our plan. We preserve and protect the program for current seniors for the 30-year life of the program and we personalize Medicare to make it more like what we have in Congress so that we can give those folks choices.

What does the President do for current seniors? He empowers 15 unelected bureaucrats to cut Medicare in ways that will most certainly deny seniors care. Do I need to go back to the 40 pages, Mr. Speaker, of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, section 3403, the advisory board, IPAB? This is what it does. It's the 15 unelected bureaucrats that have the power to cut Medicare in ways that, as we have discussed, will most certainly deny care.

If your plan is to cut reimbursements to doctors, fair enough. I think it's shortsighted; I think it's destructive. But if that is your plan, embrace that plan, I say to folks who support the President's health care bill. Embrace it and defend it. But be honest with the American people who most certainly know that if you cut those reimbursement rates to a level that doctors cannot see patients, they will not see patients.

And here's one that doesn't get talked about much, Mr. Speaker. The President's plan raids the Medicare program and removes $682 billion. This is a program that's already going bankrupt. This is a program that already needs substantial reform to protect it and preserve it for another generation.

The President's health care bill, which isn't something that might happen, it's something that's already the law of the land, takes $682 billion that was intended for Medicare beneficiaries and cuts it out-- ``saves it'' is the term of art they use around here, Mr. Speaker, as you well know--cuts it and saves it. What do they save it for? So they can bring it over here and spend it on the President's new health care plan for the rest of America; the nonseniors.

The program is already in trouble. Current law under the President's health care plan removes $682 billion designated for Medicare beneficiaries, takes it out, moves it to the rest of the population, again, exacerbating the challenge.

Future seniors, what are we going to do? Well, our plan, Mr. Speaker, coming out of the Budget Committee, coming here to the floor as passed by the House last year, is personalized Medicare not just for current seniors but for future seniors, Mr. Speaker. For folks like you and me and our generation, when we get to Medicare age, we would have choices. All Americans would have choices to choose the plan that works best for them.

Do you need a plan that covers prescription drugs? Choose that. Do you need a plan that is flexible so you can summer in Florida and winter in New Jersey? Though I suspect, Mr. Speaker, they'd probably be summering in New Jersey and wintering in Florida; but if they travel like that, maybe they need that plan. Maybe they still have young kids in the house and so need a plan that speaks to youngsters as well.

Folks could choose the plan, Mr. Speaker. Personalized health care, just like what we have here in Congress. Our plan, Mr. Speaker, means that wealthy families will get less and sick and low-income families will get more.

Mr. Speaker, we talk about shared sacrifice around here all the time, and I am not in favor of raising taxes on the American people. The American people can't afford it. The economy can't survive it. But what we can do is start giving away less from Washington, D.C.

And so what we say for future seniors--folks in my generation, your generation, Mr. Speaker--is that your support from the Medicare program is going to be less than low-income families. If you've done well in your life and you can afford to help with the cost of your Medicare, we're going to ask you to do that. We're going to means-test these things.

We're still going to be there for you; the Medicare program is still going to be there for you. The promises we made to you are still going to be kept. But in the renegotiation, we're going to confess what America already knows, which is that this program is going bankrupt and cannot be sustained, and that in order to sustain it, we're going to ask folks who can't afford it to pay more and recognize that folks who can't afford it will pay less. That's our program for the future to save and strengthen Medicare.

What does the President propose? And this is so important, Mr. Speaker. Can I go back to what my good friends at MSNBC said? This is how they described this plan that I'm just describing to you: In a risky election year move, Republicans offer Medicare alternatives.

The President, for future seniors, offers no serious plan to save Medicare. If I had the President's budget down here with me, Mr. Speaker, it would be about 12 inches tall. And it's a serious budget. I don't fault him for submitting the budget. I'm glad he did. It lays out his priorities and his strategy for saving America. But there's not one Medicare reform proposal in those 12 inches of budget. Not one. Not one.

Why?

Because traditional politicians, Mr. Speaker, think it's risky in an election year to propose things that shake up the status quo. Mr. Speaker, it ought to be risky in an election year to maintain the status quo when you know a program depended on by millions upon millions upon millions of seniors is going bankrupt today.

Not tomorrow, not 10 years from now. It's happening today. It's under way today. The time to stop it and save it is today. And I don't care if folks think it's scary to propose it; that's what we came here to do.

What happened, Mr. Speaker? What happened to folks that caused them to believe the reason they came to Congress is to get reelected? What happened? You didn't come here to get reelected. I didn't come here to get reelected. We came here to make a difference for families back home, we came here to draw a line in the sand

for saving America, and we came here to get the American Dream of a successful economy and freedom back on track. It ought to be risky to sit here and do nothing, Mr. Speaker. That ought to be the risky thing.

What has happened to this country that the risky thing for those who call themselves public servants is to do something instead of nothing? Because that's what the President proposes in his 10-year budget plan: nothing, nothing that does one thing, that takes one baby step forward toward saving Medicare. In the Budget Committee, we are proposing serious alternatives. Are they going to be frightening to folks in my generation? I don't think so, Mr. Speaker. You and I have a long time until retirement. Despite all our gray hair, we've got a couple of decades left before we get there; and we've got time to prepare, and we will, and America will. But it is our responsibility to offer those alternatives. The President offers nothing, and Medicare goes bankrupt.

This chart says it all, Mr. Speaker. There is a path to prosperity for America that we are proposing here in this House, and there is the President's approach, and they could not be more different.

Our approach tells the American people the truth. There are a lot of political pundits out there that believe telling people the truth is a risky thing to do in an election year. Mr. Speaker, I tell you it's our solemn obligation. I tell you the oath we took requires us to tell folks the truth. I tell you the responsibility that our voters back home have entrusted us with requires us to be bold.

And if the consequence for trying to save the Medicare program--not just for this generation of seniors, but for a generation to come--if the consequence of that is that I frighten voters back home and I get defeated, so be it. So be it. No one sent us here to get reelected year after year. They sent us here to do the work that they asked us to do. They sent us here to follow through on the promises that we made during the last campaign. They sent us here to offer serious solutions to what we all know, Democrats and Republicans alike, are serious problems threatening the future of our Republic. And none is more serious when it comes to a social safety net here in this country than the giant fiscal crisis looming in Medicare.

I'll leave you with this, Mr. Speaker. We have the law of the land that's already on the books. It's in the President's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, that bill that raids Medicare in order to fund his other social priorities, that bill that hastens the demise of Medicare rather than preventing it. And in that they find 15 unelected bureaucrats that they say will not ration services; they'll just cut reimbursements for docs. And we have testimony after testimony after testimony after testimony that says, go ahead, if you think you need to cut docs, cut docs; but just know those docs will not be there for you when you need them to be because they can't--because they can't.

Do you really believe it, Mr. Speaker? Does anybody in America really believe it? Find your primary care doctor that lives down the street from you. You know him or her. They're in your Sunday school class and they coach your kids' soccer team. You know who they are. Do you really believe that they're the ones that are driving the Medicare program into bankruptcy? Do you really believe it? Or does the Washington establishment just use our docs, the healers in our community, those folks who are there for us when we need them the most? Does the Washington establishment just use those folks as the scapegoats for what is a much more serious, much more systemic underlying problem with the way that we finance federally funded health care systems in this country?

Competition has served this country well, Mr. Speaker. Individual responsibility has served this country well. Entrepreneurship and innovation have served this country well. And we have a choice now to embrace those functions that are so indicative of who we are as Americans and where we've come from, and use those tools to set Medicare on a new and sustainable course; or we can go back to business as usual, more pages of Federal regulation, more blaming other people for the problems we've created, more unelected boards of bureaucrats who make health care decisions for us instead of letting us make those decisions within our family.

The choice for me is clear. Mr. Speaker, you know these aren't things that we're just down here to talk about. You know these aren't just ideas that are being brainstormed. We have a real opportunity to make this change not 2 years from now, not after the next election, not 6 months from now, but tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll bring a rule to the floor of this House to allow for a consideration of a measure that will repeal IPAB once and for all. IPAB, this word that was not in our lexicon 2 years ago but now threatens to control the health care decisions of every senior in America.

With a successful vote tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, we can make that a thing of the past.

And with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 16 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, March 21, 2012, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Madam Speaker, I very much appreciate the time and your staying with me late on a Thursday afternoon to do this. Is it Thursday afternoon, Madam Speaker, or Friday afternoon? It's Thursday afternoon. I'm losing track of my days because I'm on the Budget Committee, Madam Speaker, I'm on the Budget Committee, and this is budget season, and we are going nonstop meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting to try to find that budget that not only guarantees that our safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security will be there for generations to come, but that also guarantees that America will be here for generations to come. Because if you've looked at the deficits that we're running, if you've looked at the economic circumstances that we're in, if you've looked at the $15 trillion--now $16 trillion--that we've passed on to our children and our grandchildren, you know that our economic future is at risk.

We talk so much, Madam Speaker, about the things that divide us in Washington. I sometimes think that's unfortunate. There's really a lot that unites us. And I brought with me today some quotes from President Obama in the State of the Union speeches that he's given right here between where you and I stand today, Madam Speaker, when he has come to the Joint Session of Congress to deliver.

This is what he said in 2010. The President said:

We should start where most new jobs do, in small

businesses, companies that begin when an entrepreneur takes a

chance on a dream or a worker decides it's time that she

became her own boss. Through sheer grit and determination,

these companies have weathered the recession and they are

ready to grow.

Wow. Who is that talking, Madam Speaker? Is that a Republican? Is that a Democrat? That's an American. That's an American talking about the American Dream of being your own boss and growing a business, employing your neighbors and growing the American economy. The President understood that when he gave his State of the Union speech in 2010.

In 2011, Madam Speaker, the President returned right here to this very same room, and he said this:

At stake right now is not who wins the next election. At

stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this

country or somewhere else.

He was exactly right. He's exactly right about the grit that it takes for entrepreneurs to grow jobs in this country, and he is right that the question is not who wins the next election; the question is how do we ensure that new jobs and new industries take place in America instead of somewhere else around the globe.

Again, in 2011, Madam Speaker, the President said this in the State of the Union speech:

We measure progress by the success of our people, by the

jobs they can find and the quality of life those jobs offer;

by the prospects of a small business owner who dreams of

turning a good idea into a thriving enterprise, and by the

opportunities for a better life that we pass on to our

children.

Madam Speaker, we see so much in the newspaper about what divides us in this country. These are words that unite us, words that Republicans, Democrats--Americans from north and south, east and west--can all get behind. They don't stop in 2011.

Here he is in 2012, just 2 months ago, Madam Speaker, right here in this Chamber:

To reduce barriers to growth and investment, I've ordered a

review of government regulations. When we find rules that are

unnecessary, that put an unnecessary burden on business, we

will fix them.

He said that two months ago, right here in this Chamber.

Madam Speaker, you know, as I know, that business in this country is under assault. And when business in this country is under assault, American families in this country are under assault, entrepreneurship in this country is under assault, the very basis of the American Dream, of being able to put in a hard day's work for a hard day's wage, to be able to change your station in life by the power of your ideas and the sweat of your brow, is at risk. And why?

I have here, Madam Speaker, a chart that shows the regulatory burden in this Nation. What it actually charts is those regulations that come out of Washington, D.C., where implementation costs alone are $100 million a year--the implementation costs alone. Not what it burdens businesses with in terms of lost revenues, not the number of jobs that it kills, not how many jobs it pushes overseas to China, to India and elsewhere instead of keeping those jobs in America, but just what it costs out of someone's wallet to actually implement that regulation, and this is what we see.

In 1995, of course, there was a Republican Congress with Newt Gingrich leading as Speaker and a Democratic President with Bill Clinton. You see this kind of level line at about 80 regulations a year--80 regulations a year. It goes along and along, through the Clinton administration, through the Bush administration. And then we get to 2006, when America decided they could tell no difference between Republicans and Democrats, and they threw the Republicans out of control of the Congress--as well they should have, as well they should have--but what happened--elections have consequences--when they threw Republicans out of the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives, the number of regulations began to skyrocket. Even with President Bush in the White House, this Congress is where that legislation begins, the number of regulations on small business begins to skyrocket. Then we get to 2008, when President Obama is sworn in to the White House, when Democrats rule both the House and the Senate, and you see regulations and the burden they cause rise right to the top.

Madam Speaker, the decisions we make in this Chamber have consequences. It's not nothing to tell a small business that there's a new rule or regulation that that small business has to comply with because it takes money and it takes time to comply with those regulations. They need to be important, and we need to take a look at it. The President says all the right things. I just couldn't agree with him more.

To reduce barriers to growth and investment, I've ordered a

review of government regulations. When we find rules that are

an unnecessary burden on business, we will fix them.

The speech says all the right things, Madam Speaker. But the evidence suggests that we are on a regulatory spending spree the likes of which this country has never seen. And if you think for a minute we cannot destroy the entrepreneurial spirit in this country, you're mistaken.

Do you know that entrepreneurial activity, Madam Speaker, is at a historic low in America today? I'm not talking about the number of businesses that succeed. I'm talking about the number of Americans who dare to try.

Economic good times come, and economic bad times come. The economy will always ebb and flow. But when Americans are afraid to try, when the regulatory burden is such that Americans do not dare to try, we are threatening the future of this Nation and the economic success of our children and our grandchildren.

They published an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, Madam Speaker. It was written by one of the four founders of Home Depot. Now, Madam Speaker, as you know, I'm a freshman Congressman from the great State of Georgia, birthplace of Home Depot. I hope folks have an opportunity to go and shop there. I hope you've had an opportunity to take your kids over and do some of the morning craft projects that they do there at the Home Depot and wear the orange apron.

But this is what that founder said:

If we got together today--the four of them who got together to found Home Depot--if we got together today with our same idea, our same intellect, our same capital, if we gathered together today, we could not make Home Depot succeed. Why? Because the regulatory burden in America is too great to allow for business growth.

Madam Speaker, these challenges that we face are not global challenges about which we have no control. They are domestic challenges about which we have complete control. We choose, Madam Speaker, which regulations we pass and which ones we say no to. I'm proud to say, Madam Speaker, since this new Congress was sworn in, we have not implemented one more regulation on this line. We are trying to turn back. We had the JOBS Act this week to turn back the clock on that regulatory burden to allow folks with energy and creativity to begin to grow jobs again, but it's a team sport.

Let me take you back to the rhetoric, Madam Speaker. You know, rhetoric has a pejorative term to it. I shouldn't say rhetoric, Madam Speaker. Let me take you back to the State of the Union speech that the President gave right here in this Chamber. Again, I listened to those State of the Union speeches. And I confess, I may be a rock-solid conservative Republican from the Deep South, but those speeches move me from time to time. They move me because I agree with the words that the President says. I just disagree with the actions that he does.

Here we go, 2009. State of the Union speech again, Madam Speaker, right here in this Chamber. The President said this:

Given these realities, everyone in this Chamber, Democrats

and Republicans, will have to sacrifice some worthy

priorities for which there are no dollars, and that includes

me.

He says leadership begins with him, and he's absolutely right. You know, Madam Speaker, we don't have control over the whole government in this Chamber, but we do have control over the budget of this Chamber. The budget that you've allocated to my office, to the Seventh District of Georgia, is lower this year than the budget that the Seventh District of Georgia had in 2008. These things about which we have control, Madam Speaker--we know leadership begins at home, and we are starting with the tough budget cuts right here in the House Chamber.

The President said the same thing in 2009. He said there has to be some sacrifice of worthy priorities for which there are no dollars. And when we have a $16 trillion deficit, Madam Speaker, we know that there are no dollars.

This is 2010--same President, same State of the Union speech right here in this Chamber, and the President says this:

Families across the country are tightening their belts and

making tough decisions. The Federal Government should do the

same.

He's absolutely right. He is absolutely right, Madam Speaker. Families across this country are absolutely making changes, absolutely doing what it takes to balance their budgets. The Federal Government can and must do the same. He said it in 2009. He said it in 2010. Madam Speaker, here we are in 2011, same State of the Union speech, he says this:

Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means.

They deserve a government that does the same.

Madam Speaker, again, he's absolutely right. He was right when he said it in 2009, he was right when he said it in 2010, he was right when he said it in 2011. But, Madam Speaker, he hasn't done anything about it. That's the challenge. It's an election year, and folks like to say all the right things, Madam Speaker. But I didn't come to this Chamber as a freshman to say the right things. I came to this Chamber to do the right things.

What I have here is a chart of the President's budget that he submitted this year. Now, let me first say, Madam Speaker, that as you know, the United States Senate has ignored the laws of the United States of America and has not submitted a budget to this Congress in 1,044 days, and they have said they're not going to do it again this year. Harry Reid said it would be foolish, foolish to do a budget. It just so happens the law requires them to do a budget, but foolish he said. The President, to his credit, did put forward a budget.

I say ``to his credit'' because it's hard. A budget is a moral document. I didn't bring a copy of the President's budget with me today, Madam Speaker, but it's about 12 inches tall. You have to go line by line by line and talk about what's important to you. Is there enough money to go around for everything? No, there's not. So, what's important to you? Where are you going to put your dollars? The President, to his credit, went through that very hard process and sent a budget to Capitol Hill.

What I have here is a visual representation of the budget that he sent, Madam Speaker. As you can see, I have a white dotted line here that represents current law. This white dotted line that runs right through here is the current law. If we do nothing, Madam Speaker, if we do absolutely nothing, this is the trajectory on which American debt will grow--if we do nothing.

The President submitted his budget in February. I've represented the President's budget by this large red line, by this large red triangle. The red line is what the President proposes that the deficit be. I mean, we can go back to his 2011 State of the Union address where he said, ``Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means.

The government must do the same.'' We can go back to 2010 when he said the same thing. We can go back to 2009 when he said the same thing. But in 2012, when he submits his budget, he actually runs the deficit up in 2012, up in 2013, up in 2014, up in 2015--and '16 and '17 and '18 and '19 and '20 and '21.

What I've done, Madam Speaker, is I've blown up a little circle way out there at 2022, this little green space right here. Way out there in 2022 the President's budget begins to reduce the deficit that this country faces from what it is under current law today.

Madam Speaker, that's my frustration. How often is it in this body that we hear folks say all the right things: ``Families sacrifice to live within their means,'' said the President. ``They deserve a government that does the same.'' 2011. 2010: ``Families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The Federal Government must do the same.'' 2009: ``Given these realities, Democrats and Republicans will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars, and that includes me.'' But, Madam Speaker, the evidence reveals exactly the opposite.

What folks may not know--and I encourage you to go and read the President's budget. Again, he did the right thing by submitting it, and I admire him for doing that. It's located at www.omb--Office of Management and Budget--omb.gov. It's got charts and graphs and all the numbers. But what happens in that budget, Madam Speaker, is taxes go up by $2 trillion; $2 trillion taxes go up on the American people.

Now listen, we're in deficit times, we have revenue issues here. We need to have that debate about taxation. But my question to the White House is: How can you raise taxes by $2 trillion on the American people and not reduce America's deficit by one penny for 9 years? The answer is that you raise those taxes by $2 trillion, and then you go and you spend it on other priorities.

The President knows and has said in State of the Union Address after State of the Union Address after State of the Union Address that we have to curb the appetite for spending in Washington. And yet here in the fourth budget, the last budget of his first term--and, candidly, the most serious budget of his administration--he still has not found those items that he is willing to be honest with the American people about and say, we can't afford this, this puts our children and our grandchildren--and, in fact, our entire Republic--at risk.

Now, there's a lot of blame that goes on in this town, Madam Speaker. I don't take any pride in pointing out the challenges of other people's ideas, but I do take pride in pointing out the merit of our own ideas. What I have here, Madam Speaker, is another graphical representation of the tough choices that we in this House, Madam Speaker, with your support and my support and the support of Members on both sides of the aisles, the tough choices that we agreed to make on behalf of America.

What I have here is a chart that shows America's debt as a percentage of GDP, as a percentage of the entire economy. Down here in black, Madam Speaker, is the historic debt. You see down here in the World War II era, the 1940s and coming down in the 1950s, this is the historic debt of America. During the global conflict that was World War II, we ran America's debt up to 100 percent of the size of the entire economy. Why? Because we were fighting a madman overseas and everything depended on us winning.

And so we borrowed to the hilt, Madam Speaker, 100 percent of GDP, to invest in the war effort that saved freedom around the globe.

Well, then we began to pay those debts down, Madam Speaker. Come forward to 2000, 2010. This red line is the current path of America. This red line--if, as the President dodged the tough decisions this year, if the Congress dodges those tough decisions, this red line represents where America is headed.

Here we have at 100, Madam Speaker, that level of debt during the largest conflict this world has ever seen, at which the freedom of the planet hung in the balance. We are headed to that level and higher, Madam Speaker, 100 percent higher, 200 percent higher, 300 percent higher, 400 percent higher, with absolutely no conflict of that size on the horizon. We're just spending it here. Not to fight a national emergency, not to rise to meet an international challenge, but just spending it here.

The green line here, Madam Speaker represents the plan that you and I and this House have passed. You know, it's the only budget that's passed anywhere in the city of Washington, D.C., in the last 3 years?

Only one budget has passed anywhere in the city of Washington, D.C., in 3 years, and it was this one, the one that we did right here, Madam Speaker, that changes the trajectory of America's economic path; that takes us from a path to ruin back to a path of possibility and opportunity, ultimately paying down our Federal debt.

Well, how did we do that?

We did that by making tough decisions. We did that by going into the budget and asking the question, how can we do better?

You know, Madam Speaker, in the great State of Georgia, if you talk to our Department of Transportation, they will tell you that we can build a Georgia road, same mile of pavement, same safety specifications, same everything, we can build a mile of Georgia highway for about 60 percent of the exact same mile of Federal highway?

Why? Because of the regulatory burden that begins in Washington, D.C., and flows downward. Because every agency that touches every dollar this town sends back to the people that it took those dollars from skims just a little bit off the top for administrative costs, just a little bit off the top.

We have to find ways to do better, and we have to find ways, Madam Speaker, to behave differently.

This is one example. How many town hall meetings, have you had, Madam Speaker, where folks have come up to you and said, dag gummit, Madam Speaker, I've paid into Medicare all my life. I need those benefits to be there for me when I retire. I hear that all the time.

Shoot, I've been paying into Medicare all my life. I need those benefits to be there too. I absolutely agree and understand why it is when folks have invested through their taxes, through their paychecks, in a promise that the government committed that would be there for them in their time of need, why it is that Americans believe the government should come through on that.

But there are things about Medicare we don't like to talk about, Madam Speaker. I have here a chart of Medicare revenue, where it is the dollars come in to pay for Medicare. Because if you haven't looked at the numbers recently, Madam Speaker, you know we're spending about 40 percent of every penny in the Federal Government, about 40 percent of every penny in Federal spending goes to Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare and Medicaid, just two programs, consume 40 percent of every dollar that we spend.

In 1964 there was no Medicare and Medicaid; didn't spend a penny in those directions. Now we spend 40 cents out of every dollar, and that number's growing.

Well, what you learn when you get to Congress, Madam Speaker, and you start going through all these committee hearings, is there's a lot that they didn't tell you back home. Medicare part A, that's the hospital program. That's the part for our parents and our grandparents when you go into the hospital. In fact, when we designed the Medicare program in 1965, as Americans, we said folks should not lose everything they have when they have a catastrophic illness and get hospitalized. We should have a support system to protect them in their time of need. And we did. We created Medicare part A. And that's what every working American, whether they started working at 15 or 16 or 17 or 18, they see that FICA line on their check, Madam Speaker, those dollars are coming out of every American's check, no matter how much they earn, all the way to the top of the income spectrum. Every paycheck has about 3\1/2\ percent taken out to fund Medicare.

Now, what happens? That amount that's taken out of all the American paychecks is represented in this light blue line here. It covers about 84 percent of Medicare part A costs, Medicare part A, this hospital insurance

that we're providing. Every penny that we've taken from every American covers about 84 cents of the cost of the program.

But you know, after we created Medicare part A, Madam Speaker, we created Medicare part B. Medicare part B is funded with zero dollars out of your and my paycheck, zero dollars out of any paycheck of anyone in America. Not one penny in Medicare taxes is taken out to fund Medicare part B.

Now, we charge Medicare part B premiums, Madam Speaker. Part B is what pays for your doctor visits and supplies, things like that.

We ask Medicare beneficiaries to write the government a check to cover 25 percent of those part B costs. But the other 75 percent--74 here because there's a little interest that gets picked up in there--74 percent of all of those costs are picked up by the American taxpayer, just out of general revenues.

You wonder where the money goes. Understand, we have told America that you pay into Medicare, and so you shall receive from Medicare. You've paid in all your life so it will be there in your time of need, and so we will ensure that it is there in your time of need. But that's just Medicare part A, about $200 billion.

Medicare part B is exactly the same size, at $200 billion, and we never paid a penny for it, but the government is pushing all those dollars out the door.

Move on to Medicare part D, Madam Speaker. Medicare part D, that largest expansion of entitlement programs in the history of the country since 1967, implemented by a Republican Congress and a Republican President.

Yes, we charge Americans. We ask Americans to pay some beneficiary premiums to get Medicare part D. About 11 percent of all Medicare part D revenue comes from beneficiaries' premiums. Eighty-three percent is picked up by the American taxpayer at large. No one ever paid a penny out of their pocket to deposit in a trust fund for that benefit. It's just a benefit that sprang up out of thin air, Madam Speaker, and 83 percent of it is subsidized by American taxpayers across this country.

Now, I bring up these numbers for two reasons, Madam Speaker. Number one, because folks just don't know. Folks just don't know. You're at home, and you're talking about Medicare. You're looking at your paycheck. You see that you're paying Medicare taxes. You think those taxes are going into the trust fund to fund the Medicare program. Well, they are. They're just going into the trust fund to fund the Medicare part A program. Medicare part B and Medicare part D have absolutely no trust funds at all. They never have. They get funded out of general revenues. We have made promises to people about benefits that they will receive for which they never paid a penny.

Madam Speaker, we have $16 trillion in debt that we're passing on to our children and our grandchildren. The days of being able to promise people something for nothing are long gone. We have to be able to have candid conversations with today's seniors, with tomorrow's seniors--I'm in my forties--with my generation, Madam Speaker, and we have to renegotiate the Medicare contract with folks my age and younger. We have to do it.

America cannot, Madam Speaker, sustain this path of debt. You know, I feel a little disingenuous putting this chart up here, Madam Speaker. This is the one of the current path of debt. The truth is, that if you're running the computer models, they really break down somewhere right about here. They really say that the laws of economics, what we know about the world banking system, what we know about commerce in this country, what they really say is right about here America's going to cease to exist anyway; that the numbers just don't work; that the economy just won't function; that America, as we know it, will be over here.

It's not going to get as bad as I've presented, Madam Speaker, because the Republic, as we know it, will have gone away.

You know, we talk so much about the debt limit on this floor, Madam Speaker, the debt limit, as if it's something that Congress passes. Every American knows a debt limit is not a law on a piece of paper. A debt limit is when you can't find anyone to lend you money anymore. The debt limit comes when the Chinese say, No, America, you're a bad credit risk, we're not going to give you anymore. When the Germans say, No, America, you're a bad credit risk, we're not going to give you anymore.

On the Budget Committee we had that hearing, Madam Speaker, and we brought in economists from the left and economists from the right, and we asked them all, folks, tell us how much longer do we have? When does the real debt limit get here, when the American economy can no longer find anyone willing to lend to them?

And this is what they said. Madam Speaker, the liberal economist that came to talk to us said we think you have 5 years, 5 years before that day comes. The conservative economists said we think you have 2 years before that day comes. So we have a window, Madam Speaker, between 2 and 5 years, when the entire economy is going to begin to come unraveled, when American jobs and businesses are going to be at risk, when our entire experiment as a Republic will be challenged.

The President in his budget this year introduced a $2 trillion tax increase and found a way to save us just a little bit of money 9 years from now. Madam Speaker, we don't have 9 years.

Every day that passes makes the problem harder to solve. Every day that passes removes arrows from our quiver of solutions. Every day that passes threatens the survival of our Republic, and that is why we presented the path to prosperity, Madam Speaker, as a solution.

Madam Speaker, I thank you for providing me the time today to talk a little bit about this budget. I hope folks will go to the Web and learn for themselves the truth of the challenges facing this country.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate you being here with me on a Friday afternoon and for you providing the time.

I tell you, I couldn't have asked for anything better than to have the President's economic message read right before I came down here to the floor, because I have exactly that same thing on my mind.

It is shocking to me--and you will remember, Mr. Speaker, that it was less than a month ago that the entire U.S. House of Representatives was sitting here in this Chamber, that the entire United States Senate was sitting here in this Chamber, the Supreme Court and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and that the President was standing right here, not 5 feet from where I'm standing today--not 5 feet in front of you, Mr. Speaker-- giving his State of the Union speech. What struck me about that speech is that I could have given almost word for word the exact same one.

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the rhetoric in this country, the rhetoric's the same. Very little divides Republicans and Democrats. The President said in the economic address that the clerk just read, ``We need to make choices.'' We need to make choices about who we are and what we're going to do.

I happen to have behind me, Mr. Speaker, the President's budget. I left the plastic on this one. I have another one that I've poured through. And in fact, for folks who are back in their offices, Mr. Speaker, I would recommend instead of cutting through the plastic to go ahead and go to www.omb.gov. That's the President's Office of Management and Budget. The entire Federal budget that he has proposed is there on the Web site for all Americans to see.

It's not a small project to put together, the United States budget, and I applaud the President for taking that step. Of course the United States Senate, Mr. Speaker, 200 yards from where we stand right now, hasn't produced a budget in over 1,000 days. And in fact, the majority leader over there, Harry Reid, said just last week that he's not going to do it again this year. We have time, Mr. Speaker. We have a common set of numbers on which we could base it, and he said, I'm not going to do it. It's not necessary. A reporter said, But it's the law. He said, It's not important; I'm not going to do it. A reporter said, But your Democratic Budget Committee chairman said he's going to mark up a budget in the Budget Committee. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, Well, they can do what they want in the Budget Committee, but I'm not bringing a budget to the Senate floor.

Mr. Speaker, I have got in my breast pocket here the rule book by which this United States of America is supposed to run, the United States Constitution, this document by which all of our decisions are judged. One of the only things this document asks us to do here in the U.S. House of Representatives is to pass a budget each and

every year. The Budget Act of 1974 asked that same thing of the House and of the Senate. Propose that budget. And the President has done that. To his credit, he's proposed a budget.

But he said in his message that was read moments ago, ``We have to make choices.'' And what you will find, Mr. Speaker, if you go through this budget, as I know families are across this country--folks are curious about what the President is proposing--you will find a budget devoid of tough choices. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages in my hand, Mr. Speaker, devoid of tough choices.

The President said in his economic address that you read moments ago, that the clerk read moments ago, Mr. Speaker, this is a make-or-break moment for the middle class. Nonsense. Nonsense. This is a make-or- break moment for America. This is a make-or-break moment for this experiment that we call our Republic. This is a make-or-break moment for all of the values that we share as an independent people.

This is not a make-or-break moment for the middle class; this is a make-or-break moment for every single person who calls America home. And if we are going to preserve our Republic, Mr. Speaker, if we are going to protect the opportunity society for which America has become known, we have to make tough choices.

Mr. Speaker, have you thought about it? Because it's plagued me since I was sworn in last January. I have only been here as a Member of Congress a little over a year. What about the old mantra, ``Send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses longing to be free.'' What about that, Mr. Speaker? ``Your tired, your poor, your huddled masses longing to be free.'' Why aren't the doors of America flung open to every freedom-loving person on this planet? And I know the answer. Because in the days of America when that was the mantra of the land, this was an opportunity society. You came and you succeeded by the power of your ideas and the sweat of your brow. Some folks succeeded, and some folks failed. Failure is a part of all of our lives. If you are not experiencing failure, you are not trying hard enough. If you are pushing yourself to your extremes, you are going to find you will come up short sometimes. You are going to learn from that, and you are going to do better next time.

But, Mr. Speaker, while a safety net is important to America, a safety sponge that sucks you down into it and prevents you from ever escaping and being free is not the principle on which this country was founded. And day after day after day, we let our country go further in that direction.

Let's talk about the economic record that was just discussed in the President's economic address, Mr. Speaker. This is what the President said almost 2 years ago today. In February of 2010 he said this: Jobs will be our number one focus in 2010, and we're going to start where new jobs do, with small businesses. He's absolutely right. More than half of all the jobs that get created in this country get created by small businesses. That's where the entrepreneurship is. That's where the hiring excitement is. That's where the new ideas come from. We love our Home Depots. We love our Deltas. We love our UPS's and our Wal- Marts. But that's not where the job growth comes from. The President is absolutely right. Job growth comes from our small businesses. And 2 years ago almost today, Mr. Speaker, the President knew it. The President knew that if we were going to get this economy back on track, we have to start with the folks who hire. We have to start with the folks who are able to put Americans back to work, our small businesses.

Mr. Speaker, this is a chart that actually came from the General Services Administration, one of the agencies that the President oversees. But it was published in The Wall Street Journal. It was titled ``Rising Regulation.'' Let me show you what we see here. You can't see it, Mr. Speaker, but this chart goes from 1995 to 2011. And what it shows is the number of published final rules that cost American businesses more than $100 million a year. That's what it takes in this country, Mr. Speaker. Before we consider a rule, a really powerful rule, before we consider a rule really detrimental to this country, it has to cost $100 million. I would tell you if it costs $1 million, it's important. I would tell you if it costs $10 million, it's important. But our measuring stick says $100 million.

This is what we see: on average, about 80 such rules a year. Now I'm a small government conservative from the great State of Georgia, Mr. Speaker. I will tell you, 80 major rules like that a year are sapping freedom from individuals, sapping freedom from communities, sapping freedom from States, and that's too many. But that's kind of what we have as an average over the past 15 years.

But look what happens, Mr. Speaker. The day that Nancy Pelosi gets sworn in as the Speaker of the House, the day President Obama gets sworn in as President of the United States, the number of major rules costing the American economy more than $100 million a year skyrockets, skyrockets. And by ``skyrockets,'' Mr. Speaker, I mean doubles from the level that President Clinton was imposing. Understand that. This isn't a Republican/Democrat issue. This is an individual philosophy issue. The individual that's in the White House matters. The individual that's in the Speaker's chair matters. Those individual philosophies translate into policies. We had a Republican Congress, a Democratic President, and we continued at about a historical average in terms of proposing new rules and regulations. But when we elected Nancy Pelosi to the Speaker's House, when we elected President Obama to the White House, we see the number of major regulations skyrocket. And who do you think pays for that, Mr. Speaker? We do, as the American consumer. Everybody in America pays for that when they go to buy goods at the shop. Or they may pay for that when their job leaves America and travels overseas. They may pay for that when the product they used to be able to buy is no longer manufactured because a new rule or regulation has put that product out of business.

My mom said that about 100 watt light bulbs the other day. She had been hoarding them. We are one of those hoarders, I confess. We need those 100 watt light bulbs. We went to the store and couldn't find them. They were put out of business by a regulatory burden. The President knows he needs to start with small businesses to create jobs. That's what he says. But what he does is preside over the most onerous regulatory burden increase that our Nation has seen in decades.

This chart is particularly troubling to me, Mr. Speaker. It's a measurement of the ease of starting a business. The United States used to be fourth. Today we're 13th. OECD countries, folks looking around the world, Where can entrepreneurs succeed? Where can new ideas succeed? Where can economies grow, be changed, be vibrant? The U.S. has fallen from 4 to 13. Let me tell you who's in front of us on the world stage now, Mr. Speaker: Macedonia, Georgia--the country, not my home State--Rwanda, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, Armenia.

These are the countries, based on a static list of economic models of rules and regulations and opportunities for economic success, places where it's easier to succeed in today than in America. That's outrageous, Mr. Speaker. The President knows that if we are going to create jobs in this country, we have got to start where most jobs do, with small businesses. That's what he says. But what he does is preside over a decline of opportunity in this country that puts us now below Macedonia, Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, and Belarus on the world economic stage.

Mr. Speaker, from the Department of Labor we see entrepreneurship in America has reached a 17-year low. Entrepreneurship in America is at a 17-year low. Business startups are at the lowest level since data was first collected in 1994; business startups at the lowest level since the data began to be collected at the Department of Labor in 1994.

Mr. Speaker, this isn't a chart about business success. We all know that starting a business is hard. If you've been out there and you've tried to do it, you've probably had more failures than successes. It's hard to grow a business. This isn't about businesses succeeding. This is about Americans who are willing to try. The number of

Americans willing to try has fallen to a 17-year low. And I ask you, Mr. Speaker, is this a measurement that Americans have changed or is this a measurement that the business climate in America has changed?

We are the same proud, independent, hardworking, family-loving people that we have always been when these numbers were started in 1994. We are those same people as a country, Mr. Speaker. But the environment in which we live, the economic marketplace in which we operate, that's changed. That's changed, Mr. Speaker. Since 1994, you see the regulatory burden on small businesses. As we now move to a 17-year low in economic activity, Mr. Speaker, you see our regulatory burdens are at a historic high. That's not a coincidence. That's causative.

Mr. Speaker, faced with these challenges, the President has presented his budget. And I'll say it again. I said it when I opened, but I want to say it again. I appreciate the President taking on that leadership role. It's a role that the law requires that he take it on, and so he takes it on.

That would distinguish him from the United States Senate, where the law also requires that they take it on but they ignore that responsibility year after year after year after year. And the reason they do, Mr. Speaker--and I don't mind sharing this with folks. Folks know it. Folks back in their offices watching, they know why. Because a budget is a moral document. You can't publish hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages without telling the American people how you feel about the challenges facing our Nation.

As I said in the beginning, this document tells me the President feels powerless to confront any of the problems facing our Nation because not a single tough decision is made in this entire budget. But at least he put that out there for the American people to see; not so with our colleagues on the Senate side.

This is what happened in the President's budget, Mr. Speaker. He claims $4 trillion worth of deficit reduction. And again, I want to give him credit for that. There used to be a time when folks would send budgets to Capitol Hill and brag about how much more money they are spending each year. When the President wants to sell this budget to Capitol Hill, he's bragging about how much less he's spending than previous budgets. He says he's reduced the Federal budget by $4 trillion over the 10-year window. Kudos. Kudos. Except that's not exactly how the numbers shake out.

Mr. Speaker, of the $4 trillion that he claims credit for, $2 trillion has already been passed into law. You'll remember this new freshman class that you and I are a part of, Mr. Speaker, we came in here and we passed the 2011 appropriations bills. We passed the 2012 appropriations bills. We passed the Budget Control Act. We implemented $2 trillion worth of changes to the Federal budget, $2 trillion over a 10-year window, moving us back towards black and away from red.

The President claims credit for those $2 trillion that are already signed into law, that are already being implemented, that are already the practice under which the Federal Government operates. He claims credit for those in this new budget. I understand why he wants to, Mr. Speaker, but I don't think that's being honest with the American people. I think we owe the American people more transparency than that.

So let me say to you, about $2.03 trillion of the $4 trillion he claims: already the law of the land.

Down here, Mr. Speaker, we see another $850 billion in savings that he claims. I am labeling this the war gimmick. And I know ``gimmick'' is a value-laden word. I might have been in a bad mood when I labeled it that way, but I think it's accurate. So $850 billion, Mr. Speaker, the President says he's saving the American people. Why? Because wars that were never going to happen, dollars that had never been requested, troops that had never been deployed are, in fact, not going to be deployed. Hear that. This is $850 billion over the 10-year window, war savings, he claims. Money that was never asked for, never appropriated, never going to be appropriated, and would have had to have been borrowed had we needed it. It's not saved money, Mr. Speaker. It's fictional money that was never out there, and the President claims credit for it. Why? Because he needs it to get to his $4 trillion figure.

Down here we have debt service gimmicks, Mr. Speaker; money that we would have borrowed but we're not going to borrow because of changes made in the budget. Again, just to be clear, so far we've looked at $2 trillion already enacted, $850 billion never requested. We're now claiming debt service savings, savings the President is saying the American people are not going to have to pay on debt service on all of these pots of money that we were never going to have to pay debt service to begin with, Mr. Speaker, because they were never the law of the land. These dollars were never going out the door. We saved these $2 trillion in enacted legislation. We never passed legislation to spend this $850 billion out the door, yet we have another $300 billion in debt savings.

Again, is it good news for the American people that we're not going to have to pay that extra $300 billion in interest? It's good news. Don't let me be the one to tell you it's not good news. It's just good news; it's just good news because of what this House has already done, because of laws we have already passed, because of decisions we have already made. Not one penny of that comes from any new decision made in these hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of pages, Mr. Speaker. Not one penny.

This chart, Mr. Speaker, lays it out. I had to blow up the tip there. You might be able to see just a little bit of green here.

This dotted white line, Mr. Speaker, is the debt of America. The debt, the borrowing that we have all done from our children and grandchildren. You and I were not here in this House when that happened, Mr. Speaker, but we are responsible for it, just like every other American family is responsible for it. We have to pay it back, just like every other American family has to pay it back. Sixteen trillion dollars today, headed over the 10-year budget window that the President has proposed towards $26 trillion.

Now, Mr. Speaker, what I have here is a dotted white line that shows what current law is, current law. I have a red bar, a red graph that shows you what the President is proposing. This is what you'll see.

The President is proposing that our debt increase in 2013, increase in 2014, increase in 2015 and '16 and '17 and '18 and '19 and '20 and '21. And then, Mr. Speaker, you're not going to be able to see it, but way out here--and I've blown it up just so folks can see it back in their offices--you'll see a little bit of green because those tough decisions, those tough decisions made in these hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of pages about how to solve the American debt burden happen--just this much, but happen--in the year 2021. 2021, Mr. Speaker, is when this budget, for the first time, begins to save the American people some bit of debt burden over current law.

We can do better, Mr. Speaker. The President said this is a make-or- break moment for the middle class. This is a make-or-break moment for America. We can do better, and we must.

Mr. Speaker, when I talk about why it is this budget doesn't make any tough choices, you can see it here on this chart. This was actually a chart coming from the Wall Street Journal just a few days ago. It talks about where the money comes from that pays the American bills, the burden here, the moneys that we owe. It talks about where those dollars go. On this side where the dollars come from, you'll see, Mr. Speaker, about half of it comes from individual income taxes, and about a trillion dollars in annual receipts come from Social Security, Medicare, and retirement receipts. We see a little bit down here for corporate income tax, for excise income taxes, and from duties. This is where the money comes from. But look at where the money goes. And this is important, Mr. Speaker, because when we talk about making tough decisions, when we talk about confronting the mountain of debt that's building, when we talk about doing things that will make certain that the lives that our children will lead will be more prosperous than the lives that we have led, we have to go after those issues that matter.

These orange colors here, Mr. Speaker, is what we call discretionary spending. That's spending that we've taken a trillion dollars out of thus far going forward. It's defense spending in this pie piece, nondefense discretionary spending, and then that takes us to this giant red area, Mr. Speaker. This giant red area has three things in it. The big pie piece is Medicare and Medicaid. That's where the money goes. Money in this country that the Federal Government spends goes to pay health care costs--Medicare and Medicaid, $1.5 trillion this year. Social Security, folks have been paying into Social Security all their life, they dad gum have a right to get that money back. The bill we passed today begins to redefine that commitment for the first time, and I'm concerned about that, but $820 trillion going to Social Security.

And then $250 billion--$250 billion--Mr. Speaker, goes to pay interest on the debt. Now, just to put that in perspective, let's go back, Mr. Speaker. We've got defense spending, we've got Medicaid and Medicare spending, we've got Social Security spending, we've got interest on the debt, and in this pie piece, we have everything else-- everything: Our courts, our highways, our environment, our homeland security, our immigration and our parks--everything else.

We spend half as much, Mr. Speaker, half of that amount that goes to everything else, we spend on interest payments alone. Half of the amount that this country spends on everything except Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the national debt, national defense-- everything else we spend half that amount on interest payments alone this year, when interest rates are at their lowest level in a century. Mr. Speaker, what do you think is going to happen when interest rates are no longer at their lowest level in a century? This bar is going to eclipse everything. So what can we do?

I'll tell you what we can do. The money is in Medicare and Medicaid. The money is in Social Security. Mr. Speaker, I'm in my 40s, we must-- we must--come to people in my age bracket and say, no more. You will not get what your parents got. You've got to say that to me. You will not receive what your parents received. You've got to say that to me.

Will there be a safety net? There will. Can we provide certainty to folks that it will be there? We can. But if you talk to anybody in their 40s, Mr. Speaker, they'll tell you that they expect those programs to be long bankrupt anyway. Why? Because they are. So these are the tough decisions that we have to make: What are we going to tell the next generation? How are we going to protect these benefits from the current generation?

And, Mr. Speaker, this budget does none of that. Not a word, not an idea, not a proposal. There is nothing in the President's 2013 budget that even hints at the direction he would propose that America go to confront these financial challenges.

Do you think we can dodge these challenges, Mr. Speaker? Do you think we can just put these things out of our head and pretend they don't exist?

This is what we're looking at, Mr. Speaker. I wish you could see this. What we have here is the debt in this country as a percentage of GDP, as a percentage of our total economy. We look at places like Greece where the debt has grown so large. This was the debt as the percentage of our economy in World War II--in World War II, Mr. Speaker, when things had gotten so tough and we were having to ration rubber, ration steel, ration sugar and ration salt, when the country had come together to fight a common foe around the globe, this was our debt as a percentage of our economy.

Here we are today, Mr. Speaker. We're not rationing rubber. We're not rationing sugar. We're not taking those common steps of sacrifice because we think our economy is about to go over the cliff. But it is. And this red line, Mr. Speaker; if we continue with this blue budget that the President has sent to us that makes no tough choices about our future, this red line is the debt that's coming. This is what the law of the land spends on behalf of your family, and mine, and every other American family, Mr. Speaker--and spends our Nation into oblivion.

The truth is it's never going to get as bad as this chart. The Congressional Budget Office which does the projections, their computer actually breaks down about halfway through that red line and says that there's just no way the economy can continue to function under these circumstances. America will no longer exist.

So the good news is, Mr. Speaker, it's not really going to get to the end of that line. But that's the challenge that confronts us, and that's the challenge that this budget avoids.

But that's not why you and I ran for Congress, Mr. Speaker. We ran for Congress to make a difference. To a man and a woman in this freshman class, Republicans and Democrats alike, Mr. Speaker, I have not met one that came here because they thought it was a nifty looking business card. I haven't met one that came here because they couldn't do anything else and they thought, why not I run for Congress? To a man and a woman, every Republican and Democrat I've met in this freshman class came to this body because they want to save America from certain demise--certain demise. It's not possible demise. It's not maybe kind of demise. It is certain demise.

And so what we did as a body, Mr. Speaker, when the Senate wouldn't act, when the President couldn't act, what we did as a body is pass the prosperity budget, which is this green line which changes the course of America.

Mr. Speaker, there are two ways to change the course of America. You can change the America that we have always had into something different. That's where current law is taking us. Or you can reclaim the America that we have always dreamed of, that our parents, our grandparents, and our great-grandparents passed down to us, sacrificed for. We can reclaim that America by making tough decisions.

Mr. Speaker, we have to make those tough decisions. And with the American people behind us, we will succeed. I thank you for the time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 2 o'clock and 8 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Tuesday, February 21, 2012, at noon.