Paul Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am here to rise in support of H. Con. Res. 96, for the fiscal year 2015. This is the fourth year we have done this--this being bringing a budget to the floor to balance the budget and pay down the national debt. This is exactly what our economy needs today. We ask the Congressional Budget Office to look at this kind of deficit reduction. What would it do? Well, it is very clear that it would promote economic growth. In 2024, economic output would be 1.8 percent higher than it otherwise would be. What does that mean? That means by getting our fiscal house in order, by balancing our budget, paying off our debt, and reducing the deficit, take-home pay for Americans will be $1,100 higher than it otherwise would be if we don't do something like this. That is just part of our budget. We also call for more job creation, economic growth policies like tax reform, and energy development. All of these things would help get our economy back on track. I also understand that there is a lot of confusion about what is going on in our budget. I would like to spend a few moments sort of clarifying and clearing up some of that confusion. First, our budget does repeal ObamaCare. Let me say it again. Our budget does repeal ObamaCare because we think it is going to do great damage to our economy, to our budget, to health care. We don't keep the tax hikes in ObamaCare. Instead, we propose revenue neutral comprehensive tax reform. Our critics like to claim we are keeping it. What we are saying is let's scrap this Tax Code in favor of a better Tax Code, including replacing ObamaCare taxes with pro-growth tax reform to create jobs, increase take-home pay, and get this economy growing. Second, we end the raid on Medicare. The dirty little secret that the other side won't want to talk about is the fact that they turned Medicare into a piggy bank for ObamaCare. They raided $716 billion from Medicare to pay for ObamaCare. We say that those savings from Medicare need to stay with Medicare to make it more solvent, and if some of those savings from Medicare are doing damage to the Medicare provider network, like reducing access to things like Medicare Advantage, then we have a mechanism in here to make sure that we can fix that, just like we did for the SGR, otherwise known as the ``doc fix.'' We think we need to save and strengthen this program, not only so that it is there intact for those in the near retirement, but for future generations who are facing a bankrupt program if we don't do something to reform it. Second, we don't slash the safety net. If anything, we strengthen the safety net. This administration has made all sorts of promises that it has no way of keeping, or it has made all sorts of promises and it is not telling us in any way how they are going to keep these promises. It has promised major expansions in programs like Medicaid and Pell grants. How they plan to pay for it, we have no idea. We refuse to be complicit with the demise of these programs. We spend $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years on Medicaid. Under our budget, program spending will continue to rise by population plus inflation. We grow the program each and every year after fiscal year 2016 onward. We simply slow the growth rate by giving Governors and State legislators more flexibility to customize these programs to meet the unique needs of their populations instead of cramming down their throats some one-size-fits-all Washington-knows-best approach, which has been failing the Medicare population in our health care provider network. This budget spends $600 billion over the next 10 years on food stamps. It is a program that has quadrupled since 2002. We propose to give Governors more flexibility so that they can customize this program to meet the needs of their populations, but not until 2019, until CBO says the economy will have recovered by then. CBO says that the Pell grant is going bankrupt. It is going to face a fiscal shortfall in 2016 and every year thereafter. So instead of making all these Pell promises that the government has no way of keeping, the budget maintains the current Pell award, $5,730, throughout each of the next 10 years and funds it. Our budget all told cuts $5.1 trillion in spending over the next 10 years. We do this by cutting waste, by cutting abuse, by stopping the age-old Washington practice of spending money we just don't have, and by making much needed reforms to government programs. Our critics call this draconian. Look at it this way. On the current path, we are set to spend $48 trillion of hardworking taxpayer dollars or borrow it from the next generation--$48 trillion over the next 10 years. Under this path, we will spend $43 trillion. By contrast, under the current path, Federal Government spending is slated to rise by 5.2 percent on average for the next decade. Under this budget, it will rise by 3.5 percent over the next decade. Hardly draconian. Mr. Chairman, there is nothing compassionate about making promises that the government cannot keep. When that bill comes due, it is going to hurt the vulnerable, the first and the worst, and the voiceless. This is why we need to get spending under control. Let me show you what we are proposing in a nutshell. The red shows you our national debt. Our national debt is on course to hit catastrophic levels. Our national debt is going to hit these catastrophic levels which guarantee that the next generation of Americans inherit a bleak future, a lower standard of living, a burden of debt that they cannot have a high standard of living with. We in our generation have to make tough choices. We have got to face up to this issue. What we are saying here with this budget is, the sooner we get on top of our fiscal problems, the better off everybody is going to be. We are saying, if we get ahead of these problems now, we can phase in reforms, such as Medicare reforms that don't even affect people in or near retirement. The sooner we tackle these fiscal problems, the better off everybody is going to be, the faster the economy grows, and the more we can guarantee that the next generation inherits a debt-free future. We have never given the next generation a diminished future in this country before. That is the great legacy of this Nation, work hard and make tough choices, so that the next generation can be better off. We know, without a shadow of a doubt, that that is not going to be the case. According to the Congressional Budget Office, we know that, in a couple of years, the debt starts taking back off, and we are back to $1 trillion deficits. Our tax revenues are at an alltime high this year. The problem is that spending is outpacing that. The sooner we can get our fiscal house in order, the sooner we can create jobs and get economic growth. The sooner we can bring solvency to our safety net, to our social contract, the more that people can depend on these programs, and the sooner we can bring these reforms to get our spending in line with our revenues, the faster we can pay off this debt. Just like a family, a government that lives beyond its means today necessarily has to live below its means tomorrow. We want to make right by the next generation. We want to grow this economy. We want to create jobs and increase take-home pay, and we want to get people to work. That is what this budget is designed to do, and that is why I am proud to bring this balanced budget to the floor. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I would like to insert into the Record a very specific recitation of the Center for Budget Priorities' claim that the gentlewoman mentioned, and at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Black), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee. Responsible Spending Restraint and Reform--Response to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities In Brief: A smaller increase is not a spending cut. Under this budget, spending will grow, on average, by 3.5 percent a year over the next decade--on the current path, it will grow by 5.2 percent. This budget spends $3.5 trillion on Medicaid over the next ten years. We increase spending every year from fiscal year 2016 onward. This budget spends $600 billion on food stamps over the next decade. And it does not convert SNAP into a block grant until 2019, when the economy will have recovered. This budget maintains the current maximum Pell award ($5,730) throughout each of the next ten years of the budget. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities claims the House Republican budget ``gets 69 percent of its cuts from low- income programs.'' Instead, the House GOP budget grows them at a more sustainable rate. On the current path, the federal government will spend roughly $48 trillion over the next ten years. By contrast, this budget will spend nearly $43 trillion. On the current path, spending will grow, on average, by 5.2 percent a year over the next decade. Under this budget, spending will grow, on average, by 3.5 percent a year. Nearly $43 trillion is enough. Increasing spending by 3.5 percent instead of 5.2 percent is hardly draconian. President Obama and his party have made promises they can't keep--they've promised huge expansions to safety-net programs that ultimately would bankrupt them. Medicaid: This budget repeals Obamacare--including the law's massive expansions of Medicaid, which are unsustainable. Instead, this budget spends $3.5 trillion on Medicaid over the next ten years. We grow the program every year from fiscal year 2016 onward. We simply slow the rate of growth and give states the flexibility to meet the unique needs of their people. SNAP: This budget spends $600 billion on food stamps over the next decade. By capping open-ended federal subsidies and allowing states to develop new, innovative methods, the budget's gradual reforms encourage states to reduce rolls and help recipients find work. The budget also doesn't covert SNAP into a block grant until 2019, when the economy will have fully recovered. The budget also calls for time limits and work requirements like the reforms that helped reduce poverty nationwide in the mid-1990s. Pell Grants: Congressional Democrats and the President have pushed Pell Grant spending to unsustainable rates. The Congressional Budget Office reports the program will face fiscal shortfalls starting in 2016 and continuing through each year of the budget window. We need to reform the program so it can keep its promises. This budget brings Pell spending under control and makes sure aid helps the truly needy, not university administrators. At the same time, this budget maintains the current maximum Pell award ($5,730) throughout each of the next ten years of the budget.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. I want to rest the mind of the distinguished minority whip at ease. Chairman Rogers does support this budget. His comments in 2013 aside, he is a supporter of this budget. This budget balances using CBO numbers. I would also say this. All these complaints about spending cuts or slower increases in spending aside--this budget, by the way, doesn't specify that NIH is going to have all of that--all of these reductions in spending or reductions in the increase in spending will pale in comparison if we have a debt crisis, if we have a bond market incident, if we have an interest rate shock. If we keep kicking the can down the road, the solution then will be so much uglier, so much more draconian, than any of this hyperbolic rhetoric even suggests. With that, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Tennessee, Dr. Roe.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield to the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield myself 2 minutes, Mr. Chairman. The first priority and responsibility of the Federal Government is to secure our Nation and to provide for the common defense of our Nation. The gentleman from Maryland mentioned the President has this proposal for this year that would have violated our bipartisan budget agreement. It is a proposal that holds hostage defense for higher taxes and more domestic spending, but worse than that, we had a hearing in the Budget Committee about 2 years ago. Then-Secretary of Defense Panetta, along with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, came and testified; and they said to our Budget Committee: This is as far as we can go, we can't cut any further without doing damage to our military. That is effectively where the Republican budget is. That is not where this year's Obama budget is. The President's budget, which is also replicated by the Democratic substitute, cuts the military far lower than that. They are bringing the Army and the Marines to a level we have not seen since before World War II. They are shrinking our Navy to a size we have not seen since before World War I. They are shrinking our Air Force to a level we have never seen before. They are cutting compensation for our men and women in uniform, not to save money for other parts of the military, like readiness and training and equipment, but they are cutting compensation, cutting force structure, cutting personnel, cutting equipment, cutting defense--not to reduce the deficit, but to spend it on more domestic spending. The Joint Chiefs have said that now, with this budget submission, it represents a moderate risk of actually affecting our national security. They have never said that before. They have said we have had a low risk.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Yielding myself 15 seconds, the shared responsibility we are asking for is let's fix these problems within our generation and not pass it on to the next generation. With that, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford), the policy chair of our conference.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself an additional minute. Our competitors, the countries we compete with, tax their businesses at 25 percent. When we tax ourselves a lot more than our foreign competitors tax themselves, they win, and we lose. What we are hearing from the other side is that $1.7 trillion tax increase is not enough. Let's go farther and tax another $1.8 trillion. Then this rhetoric about winners and losers and the few and the this and the that is a notion that all of the good ideas come from Washington. It is a notion that goes beyond the idea that government needs to play a supporting role in our lives, in fulfilling important missions like health and retirement security and a safety net, to government needs to play the commanding role in our lives, that it needs to dictate these things, that government runs the economy, that government decides who wins and who loses. Guess what, Mr. Chairman? When you do that, the interest groups that they are all complaining about, they are the ones who call the shots up here. What we are trying to do with this budget is to get the basics right. What we want to do is to make sure that we can make good on these very important missions of health and retirement security, and we want to make sure that people get to decide how it is done in their lives. We want to make sure that American businesses have what they need to compete and survive and grow and to create jobs in this global economy. What we want to make sure is that we don't live beyond our means so that our kids live below their means. We want to grow this economy.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I do not have any further speakers at the moment.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. I think there is this view that the pie of life is fixed, that society is static--the economy, a fixed pie--and that we here in Washington should decide how to redistribute the slices of the pie. We reject that whole, entire premise. Life is dynamic. The economy is dynamic. We want to grow the pie for everybody. You don't grow the pie--grow opportunity or grow the economy--if you drive this country to a debt crisis, if you continue spending way beyond your means, if you spend money we don't have that is taken from the next generation. This President has already raised taxes $1.7 trillion. The top effective tax rate on successful small businesses is almost 45 percent. The tax rate on big businesses, like corporations, is 35 percent.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. As the Ryan of the Ryan-Murray agreement, look, I wish that the Murray side of the agreement would have agreed to these out-year numbers. That didn't happen. That agreement is a 2-year agreement, so to compare this budget and the baseline against that of the 24 cut, that is not accurate. Here is the problem, Mr. Chairman. We are spending money we don't have. We are going through the budget, program by program, line by line, and trying to reform these programs so that they can better deliver on their promises. We are looking at certain programs, say, like food stamps, and saying, some States have some pretty innovative ideas on how better to deliver these services. There have been some wasteful and fraudulent activities that needed to be gotten at so that we don't waste taxpayer money. We think it is important to encourage able-bodied adults who do not have dependents to go to work. When we did that in welfare reform in the 1990s, it worked. People went to work. By the way, child poverty dropped by double digits. Single moms went to work. It helped reduce poverty. We want to replicate that kind of success with these kind of reforms on these kinds of programs. When they talk about education, this administration, and this Democratic budget, is making a bunch of empty promises. They are promising the world in Pell grants, but they are not funding that world. We are saying, let's keep Pell and let's fund it, and let's keep it where it is, but let's fund it throughout the decade. I would rather take a full-funded promise than an empty promise any day. I think that is more honest with our students. The other part I think we have to look at is, we are feeding tuition inflation. If we just keep pumping more and more borrowed money, empty- promised money into the system, what we are getting out of it is higher tuition. Why don't we look at why tuition is going up so much in the first place? Gosh, when we look at that, we are learning the Federal Government is part of the problem. Let's fix that. Mr. Chairman, we do go through these things line by line. The gentleman likes to talk about tax reform. What he won't tell you is specifically what this tax reform bill does, because we don't have a specific tax reform in here because this is the budget. The Ways and Means Committee does specific tax reform. That is where the loophole closers are. We are saying the outline of it is to get tax rates down on businesses, small and large, so they can compete. There are $1 trillion in loopholes every year that they can work with to get those tax rates down. So to suggest that this, all of a sudden, does these tax breaks for millionaires and does this for these other people and does that, they are just making that stuff up. What I think we ought to do is put the rhetoric aside and balance this budget. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield myself 15 more seconds to say, of all the problems that we have in the President's budget, it hollows out our military, sends the wrong signals overseas, and we are not going to do that. With that, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Price, the distinguished vice chair of the Budget Committee.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to thank Mr. Woodall for all of his hard work on this issue, as well as Mr. Gohmert, who was here a moment ago, for raising this issue, for keeping focus and attention on it, and for bringing this much-needed reform through the House Budget Committee and to the House floor. This bill basically fixes a real quirk in our budget process. Under the current law, the Congressional Budget Office assumes every discretionary spending account gets an increase every year to keep up with inflation. What does that mean? This means that this increase is built into the baseline, and the baseline is our starting point of spending. It is our starting point of budgeting. So every year, Congress moves the line forward. It assumes that there is always going to be an increase in every one of these programs, regardless of the facts on the ground. There is no consideration to whether a program is working or not or even whether it is still necessary. Under this bill, the baseline would just show the previous year's funding level. That is basically what we are saying. If we are spending X amount of dollars today, when we write next year's budget, we will start with X, and then we will make a decision here in Congress: Should it be more or less or the same? That is not how it works today. We spend X today, then there is an automatic increase, and then we decide how to budget after that automatic increase. We should write the Federal budget just like families write their own budgets. They don't get an automatic increase. They don't get to decide like that. We have got record deficits. We have got an unprecedented debt. Our job here in Congress is to make decisions. It is to set priorities. It is to look at the hardworking taxpayers that are working so hard to pay their taxes, to raise their families, and tell them we are going to watch their money more closely than just assuming automatically each and every year we can just take more from them and then decide how to spend more on top of that. It is no way to run a budget. It is no way to run a government budget or a family budget or a business budget. So that is all we are saying. This, I think, is an inflated baseline which is a smoke-and-mirror move. What we are saying is take away the smoke and the mirrors, start from scratch, and then make informed decisions from there. That is why I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia for all of his hard work on this. That is why I encourage all Members on both sides of the aisle to support this much-needed reform.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett) for yielding, and I also want to thank him for his hard work on this issue and for bringing this to our attention. Look, it is really simple, Mr. Speaker. When Washington makes or guarantees a loan, it is putting taxpayers at risk. Our budget rules don't account for all of that risk. We understate the cost of Federal credit programs by about $50 billion a year. That is what the current accounting rules do. Current accounting rules make it look like the government is making all this money from all these loans when, in reality, we are consistently overstating their profitability. Let me give you one example. Our current rules led to the projections that the FHA--those loans made between 1992 and 2012 would save us $45 billion. It sounded like a great deal, a $45 billion boon to the Federal Government. In reality, those loans cost us $15 billion of hard-working taxpayer dollars. That is a swing of $60 billion. It is not about imposing costs. This bill is about recognizing the actual costs of what this government does. That is really what this is all about. CBO has reviewed this time and again. The gentleman from New Jersey just mentioned this, and they have very much concluded, like the private sector, that budgeting Federal credit programs should use fair value accounting as the most accurate method for these programs. Washington needs to be up front with taxpayers about the true cost of its decisions because the taxpayers themselves are the ones who are on the hook, but that is what the Garrett bill would do. We can't also forget that the Office of Management and Budget--which is a more political office under the service of the President--they are ignoring the cost of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, OMB shows them as saving money when they are huge liabilities. Since 2008, Fannie and Freddie have been wards of the State. They are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Federal Government, and in 2013, the GSEs accounted for 60 percent of first lien mortgage originations. Taxpayers are exposed to over $5 trillion of outstanding liabilities. OMB keeps it off budget. Despite the fact that, if they ever go under, if anything happens again, like it did recently, guess who gets stuck with the tab--the taxpayers. We cannot look at our budget through rose-colored glasses. We have to be as clear-eyed as possible. We need transparency. We need real accounting. We owe it to our taxpayers. So this bill would require the government to use fair value accounting. It would require OMB to be more honest about Fannie and Freddie's true costs, and it would build on the best practices in the private sector, so that we, in Congress, can make better-informed decisions about the hard-working taxpayers and what we are committing for them on their behalf. That is all this is. It doesn't impose a cost on anybody. It simply recognizes the actual costs that are occurring.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to thank the vice chair of the Budget Committee for bringing this bill forward and for his hard work on this issue. Mr. Chairman, this bill is really pretty simple. It will help Members understand how legislation affects the economy. Under current law, the CBO doesn't have to provide that kind of big picture analysis. It usually assumes the economy will stay the same no matter how much in government taxes is spent. Think about that. We all know that that is not true. People respond to incentives. Federal policy changes the economy, and under this administration, the economy has consistently failed to meet expectations. This is the chart that the CBO has shown over the years where they have consistently lowered their economic outlook. This has had a huge effect on our budget, and it has made balancing the budget that much harder. Traditionally, our economy has grown at about 3 percent a year, but over the past 4 years, it has grown only by 2 percent a year. It has grown less than half the average rate of other recoveries since World War II. The labor force participation rate has fallen to 63 percent. That is close to the lowest level in over 35 years. There are 10.5 million Americans who are now unemployed, and 7.2 million Americans are working part time for economic reasons. Those who are working have seen meager growth in their wages. The typical household income for families has actually declined. In fact, it is at the lowest level since 1995. This weak recovery isn't something that just happened to us. It is not just by accident. It is clear that now that we are 5 years into this that the President's policies are weighing down the economy and are hurting the budget outlook. The Congressional Budget Office now expects us to take in much less revenue, and that makes it much harder to balance the budget because of this poor economy. Since just last year, the baseline deficit has grown by $1.2 trillion. The top line shows you last year's estimate, and the bottom red line shows you this year's estimate. Just from last year's estimate of where the economy was heading to this year's estimate of where the economy is heading by the Congressional Budget Office, it tells us there will be $1.2 trillion in more deficits because of these failed economic policies. We want to stop the failure. We want to get this economy growing. The CBO knows that if you actually have a better policy that actually grows the economy, you will help the budget outlook, and you will help get people back to work. You will help increase take-home pay. Just as a weak economy can drag us into the red, a good budget can push the economy forward. That is why Members need to know this before they vote on legislation. They need to know what the world might look like under a new law. It is common sense to ask how legislation will affect the economy. This bill requires the CBO to give Members just that estimate. We are asking the CBO to give the same kind of analysis that we use in our own budget. In an analysis provided by the CBO, they find the deficit reduction like we are proposing will help the economy grow. In 2024, economic output will be 1.8 percent higher per person than it otherwise would be. That is about $1,100 per person. That is a pretty crucial piece of information. So we are adding to the toolkit. We are not taking anything away. To the criticism I am hearing from others that, gosh, you are not doing this on every piece of legislation, you need to do this for the appropriations process, do you have any idea how many thousands of estimates come from the Appropriations Committee? If you actually gummed up the works like that, you would bring this place and the estimating agencies to a screeching halt. That is why there is an important threshold that is for significant pieces of legislation, legislation that is a quarter a point of the economy or higher, so that we can be well informed on big pieces of fiscal policy and so that we don't gum up the works and bring this agency and this institution to a screeching halt. We think this hits the fine balance between the two. We think it is important that Members of Congress have a sense of how their votes will be affecting the economy. That is only common sense, and I urge the adoption of this bill. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for actually bringing this to our attention.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Lucas and Ranking Member Peterson for their work on this issue. Although I have deep concerns about this bill, I understand that in divided government, no party will get everything it wants. That said, this bill lays the foundation for a fundamental reform of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP--namely, it will allow states to require work in exchange for benefits. Before the 1996 welfare-reform bill, several states experimented with work requirements, and the evidence gathered from those experiments led to the most expansive reform of the welfare state ever. This bill also partially closes a loophole in the SNAP program known as ``heat and eat''--a reform included in previous House Budgets. Finally, this bill eliminates Direct Payments, excludes supply- management provisions in the dairy program, and reduces the deficit by $16.6 billion over the next ten years. This bill would save more money than doing nothing. I wish this bill included more reforms to our agricultural programs. It did not include crop-insurance reforms supported by both the House and the Senate. We should have a safety net for our farmers. We should help the little guy--the family farm that's in need. We shouldn't bankroll the big guys. So we should tighten the eligibility standards for crop subsidies. I'm disappointed we didn't use this opportunity to make fundamental changes to business as usual. But on the whole, I think this bill will do some good. It will save more money than if we did nothing. It will provide some much-needed certainty to family farmers. It is an improvement over the status quo, and so I support it.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, Section 401 creates a new category of employee called a ``Further Revised Annuity Employee'' and would require Further Revised Annuity Employees to contribute additional amounts into the CRSDF. It is the intent of Congress for OPM to create a new normal cost for the Further Revised Annuity Employees, and to ensure that the retirement plan not be underfunded. Additionally, it is the intent that for the new Further Revised Annuity Employee Plan that the only determinant of whether an individual is a FERS employee or Member, as opposed to a FERS Revised Annuity Employee or FERS Further Revised Annuity Employee, is through application of the FERS Revised Annuity Employee test. And that the new Further Revised Annuity Employee test only differentiates between FERS Revised Annuity Employee coverage and new FERS Further Revised Annuity Employee coverage.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself an additional minute. The Budget Control Act would have had us at $1.58 trillion. This agreement puts us at $1.12 trillion. Under this agreement, we would not hit that discretionary spending number of $1.19 trillion, the one we asked for 2 years ago, we wouldn't hit that number until the year 2017. With respect to a fiscal track record, we are ahead of schedule, and we are replacing some of these across-the-board spending cuts that are indiscriminate that don't set priorities, that treat the efficient and inefficient programs the same, with smarter, permanent spending cuts in the autopilot part of spending, that part that Congress all too often ignores. Mr. Speaker, this is good government; it is also divided government. Under divided government, we need to take steps in the right direction. To make divided government work, you can't ask each other to compromise a core principle because we don't do that here. We ask each other to find some common ground to advance the common good. That is what this agreement does. That is why I ask my colleagues to support it. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.