Paul Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I will just simply say we choose to reduce spending. And we don't reduce revenue; we reform the tax system. With that, I would like to yield 2 minutes to a member of the Budget Committee and the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield myself 10 seconds to simply say, yeah, less spending, less government, less debt; more jobs, more prosperity. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Appropriations and Budget Committees, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds simply to say the gentleman is talking about Medicare. If he had read that CBO letter a little later, he would see it says that Medicare is on such an unsustainable path that there's no way it can sustain itself where it is. So we're making comparisons to fiscal myths. We're making comparisons to futures that aren't going to exist. The greatest threat to Medicare is the status quo and those who cling to it. I would also simply say the President yesterday said he wants this unelected board of bureaucrats to cut a trillion dollars out of Medicare. We don't want to see that happen. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield myself 1 more minute to explain, Mr. Chairman. That means we would have to take $62.9 trillion, set it aside, invest it at Treasury rates, just so government can keep the promises that it is now making to everybody in America. In 2009, we owed more than we were worth as total households in America. Last year, 2010, that fiscal gap grew to $76.4 trillion. Now, $99.4 trillion. We are digging our hole more than $10 trillion a year by kicking the can down the road. Every year we fail to fix this problem, we are submitting our children to a worse future, a diminished country. So the sooner we get our act together, the sooner we fix this problem, the better off we're going to be. If we keep ignoring this, if we keep spending on the path we are on, this fiscal gap, the pile of empty promises that politicians from both parties have been making to Americans gets that much higher. We have about $100 trillion of empty promises Washington is making to Americans. It is time we tell people the truth. It is time we get government to live within its means, and it is time we get Washington to honor its promises, fix these programs, get spending under control, and give our children a debt-free Nation. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Chair, the House is not in order.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of extending surface transportation funding for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year before the authorization expires at the end of this week, on March 4th. I support the highway program; it is a critical part of an efficient and effective 21st century transportation infrastructure in the United States. However, I want to highlight a concern I have with an extraneous provision that is included in the language of this extension. Section 308 of this bill attempts to extend the budget ``firewalls'' in Section 8003 of SAFETEA-LU for highway and transit categories to protect those programs from having to compete for funding against all other discretionary programs should Congress put in place overall discretionary spending caps. More specifically, Section 8003 amends Section 251(b) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 that expired on September 30, 2002--a law that is squarely within the jurisdiction of the House Budget Committee. Section 308 of this extension has no substantive effect not only because there are no overall spending caps for FY 2011, but because Clause 3 of Rule XXI in the new House Rules for the 112th Congress eliminated the requirement to uphold such firewalls. However, if the intention is that this provision should have a substantive effect, it is premature. There are many tough choices ahead given the fiscal realities we face. We clearly need to set caps on spending. Funding guarantees that protect a certain category of spending prevent lawmakers from having the flexibility to balance other needs within an overall discretionary spending cap. Given the nation's trillion dollar deficits and $14 trillion in debt, Congress should be working to remove, not continue, spending floors in statute. Furthermore, these highway and transit firewalls were originally established to protect the user-pays/user benefits principle. Unfortunately, the opposite has happened. The Highway Trust Fund is insolvent and has required $35 billion in bailouts since 2008. The Congressional Budget Office projects shortfalls of $140 billion over the next ten years. These spending guarantees have pushed the Highway Trust Fund deeper into insolvency and have forced it to rely more and more on borrowed money. I am concerned that continuing even the appearance of firewalls for these categories in this extension suggests that spending on these programs is a higher priority than getting deficits under control. It also suggests that surface transportation should get first claim on the Treasury over other priorities for discretionary spending such as Veterans medical care or funding for our troops. Congress may decide that ultimately highways and transit have such a high priority that we should continue to run high deficits to pay for them, but we should do that as part of the budget process and not part of a short-term highway extension that must be passed quickly or the entire program shuts down.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Section 3 of House Resolution 5 and House Resolution 38, I submit for printing in the Congressional Record the allocation for fiscal year 2011 to the Committee on Appropriations. This interim allocation will be used to enforce sections 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Section 302(f) prohibits the consideration of legislation inconsistent with the budgetary levels set forth in the budget resolution and the accompanying report. For the Committee on Appropriations, the allocation for fiscal year 2011 is set at $1,055 billion in discretionary budget authority. This submission also includes language related to Advance Appropriations as required by House Resolution 5. If there are any questions on this interim allocation, please contact Paul Restuccia, Chief Counsel of the Budget Committee.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I thank the chairman for yielding. Madam Speaker, I'm enjoying sort of the hyperbolic rhetoric we are hearing here today about one person, one committee, one man dictating in all these things, as if it's an unprecedented action. Well, this move is not unprecedented. The reason this is necessary is unprecedented. It is unprecedented since the 1974 Budget Act passed that Congress didn't bother to pass or even propose a budget. Madam Speaker, the reason we are here today is because the last majority last year didn't even bother trying. That means we have no budget in place. And with no budget in place, there's no Budget Act to enforce. That means government is going and spending unchecked. No limits. No policemen on the beat. Nothing. Why are we giving this kind of power to the chairman of the Budget Committee to put these numbers in? Because we don't get the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office until tomorrow. And we've said all along what we aim to do: bring discretionary levels down to pre- bailout, pre-stimulus levels. And then for all the authorizing committees, it has put the CBO baseline in place. The CBO baseline doesn't exist right now. It comes tomorrow. So what we are simply trying to do, Madam Speaker, is get some sense of limits back on spending, is to get some sense of a budget process back in place. We don't think we should have a system, a spending process, without restraints, without limits, without any prioritization. That is exactly why we are doing this. Business as usual has to come to an end, Madam Speaker, and we've got to put limits on spending. And that is why we have a Budget Act, to police the spending process to make sure that it conforms. But there is no Budget Act, there is no number to police, because they didn't do a budget last year. That is exactly and precisely why this measure is necessary. So all the rhetoric aside, the days are over of unlimited spending and of no prioritization. And the days of getting spending under control are just beginning. This is a first step in a long process. This is a minimal, small down payment on a necessary process to go forward so that we can leave our kids with a better generation, so we can get this debt under control, so the spending spigot can close, and so we can do right by our constituents and treat their dollars wisely.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield myself an additional 20 seconds to say this. She said to me, I believe it's my obligation to offer health insurance to my employees, but my two competitors, my publicly traded competitors, have already said they're dumping their employees. Instead of paying $17,000 a year for employee health care, they're going to pay a $2,000 fine. That's a $15,000 difference that her competitor will have as a competitive advantage against you. So what did she say? ``I have no choice. I'm dumping my employees into this exchange.'' And thousands of employers are making the same decision. This should be repealed. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 26, I call up the bill (H.R. 2) to repeal the job-killing health care law and health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield myself an additional 20 seconds to simply say we believe that health care ought to be individually based, and it ought to be patient centered. There are two ways to go: Put the government in charge and have the government put in place rationing mechanisms to tighten the screws and ration health care; or put the consumer in charge and have providers compete for our business as patients, hospitals, doctors, and insurers. That's the system we want. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 2.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 90 seconds to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), a new member of the Budget Committee.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Huelskamp), a member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield myself 10 seconds simply to say that if the doc fix should be considered outside, then why did the Democrats have it in their bill in the beginning? Secondly, either we are financing this entitlement or raiding the Social Security and Medicare funds--you can't do both. If you are going to fund the entitlement with these revenues, then you are consigning to raid Social Security and Medicare. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Amash), a new member of the committee.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 90 seconds to a member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford).

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes to address some of the charges we've heard. Number one, they're saying this is a jobs bill. Half a trillion dollars in tax increases creates jobs? That mandates the taxes, that creates jobs? Others have been saying, well, this isn't going to pass the Senate and the President's not going to sign it, so why bother doing that. If that's the logic we take on every bill we bring to the floor, then we ought to just go home. We think it's important to define ourselves with our actions, and that's why we're acting. We think this law should be totally repealed, and that's why we're doing this. Let me speak to the fiscal house of cards as represented by this law. The minority is saying, This reduces the deficit. Just look at the letter from CBO to Speaker Boehner. It reduces the deficit by $143 billion over 8 years; $230 billion over 10 years. It does that if you manipulate the CBO. I've heard charges of Enron accounting. The only Enron accounting that's been employed here is the previous majority gave the CBO a bill full of smoke and mirrors and made them score that. Well, here's what the CBO says, if you take away the smoke and mirrors. If you take away the fact that there's $70 billion in CLASS Act premiums that are being double-counted; $53 billion in Social Security taxes that are being double-counted; $115 billion in new appropriations required to hire the bureaucracy that wasn't counted; $398 billion in Medicare cuts that are being double-counted; and oh, let's not forget the fact that we're going to do the doctor fix, $208 billion, that we just discounted and ignored. When you take away the smoke and the mirrors, this thing has a $701 billion deficit. If you don't believe me when I say it that way, how about this way: The CBO says this raises the debt. Now, how is that different where they say on one hand the bill lowers the deficit but on the other hand it raises the debt? Because when the CBO looks at whether or not a measure raises the debt, they can look at everything. They look at the interplay of all fiscal policies to determine its effects on the debt. When they score a particular bill and its effects on the deficit, they look at what you put in front of them, all the smoke, all the mirrors, the double-counting, the noncounting, the discounting, and they give you that answer. So if this bill actually lowers the deficit, how on Earth can it then increase the debt? You know why? Because you have to play a phony trick with all this double-counting to do that. What does this bill ultimately do when you really look at it all? This bill blows a hole through the deficit. When you look at the first 10 years, this bill is a $1.4 trillion increase. That's because you have 10 years of tax increases and Medicare cuts to pay for 6 years of spending. But when you actually look at the full 10 years of implementation of this law, $2.6 trillion in spending. $2.6 trillion. Mr. Speaker, let me just say this as far as jobs and the effects of this health care bill. I had a very alarming conversation with a very large employer in Wisconsin not too long ago, a privately held company with thousands of employees. She takes good care of her employees.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I think we have already fairly well established the fact that when you strip out all the budget gimmicks and all the double accounting, ObamaCare is a budget buster. But let's take a look at where we are as a country. We have a debt crisis coming in America, Mr. Speaker, and the primary reason why we have this mountain of debt is because of our already existing health care entitlements which have a massive unfunded liability. So what did the previous majority do? They just put two new unfunded, open-ended entitlements on top. Now, a lot of people on the other side of the aisle said health care is a right and we are giving it to the people. Well, if we declare such things as a right to be given to us by government, then it's government's right to ration these things; it's government's right to regulate these things; it's government's right to pick and choose winners and losers. Health care is too important for that. I want to be in control of my and my family's health care. I want individuals to be in control of their health care and their destiny. We have to ask ourselves when we create these new programs how much of our children's future and our grandchildren's future are we willing to sacrifice to give them this mountain of debt that is getting worse by the passage and creation of this law. This, of all reasons, is why we should vote to repeal. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to a new member of the committee but a senior Member of Congress, the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I am going to begin by saying why we're doing this, and I want to get into the accounting of all this at a later time in this debate. But let me just simply say why we are here. We are here because we heard the American people in the last election. We are here because we believe it's really important to do in office what you said you would do. We said we would have a straight up- or-down vote to repeal this health care law, and that's precisely what we are doing here today. Now, Mr. Speaker, why do we believe this? Because this health care law, if left in place, will accelerate our country's path toward bankruptcy. This health care law, if left in place, will do as the President's own chief actuary says it will do: It will increase health care costs. We are already seeing premiums go up across the board. We are already hearing from thousands of employers across the country who are talking about dropping their employer-sponsored health insurance, and we are already hearing about the lack of choices that consumers will get as this new law is put into place. This new law is a fiscal house of cards, and it is a health care house of cards. It does not make our health care system better. I would argue it makes it weaker. There are two ways to attack this problem, and I want to say in the outset to my friends on the other side of the aisle we agree that health care needs fixing. We agree that there are so many serious, legitimate problems in the health care system that need fixing. Affordable insurance, the uninsured, people with high health care costs and high health care risks, those need to be addressed. But we can fix what's not working in health care without breaking what's working in health care. With that, Mr. Speaker, I would simply say this: We believe we can get to the moment of having affordable health care for every American, regardless of preexisting conditions, without having the government take it over, without $1 trillion of a combination of Medicare benefit cuts and tax increases. We believe in this: Let's have health care reform put the patient in charge, not the government in charge.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I thank the gentleman from Los Angeles, California, for yielding. Madam Speaker, it's a good day because we're bringing some fiscal sanity back to this institution. What governed this place with the rules in the last two Congresses was a ruled called PAYGO. Let me walk you through what PAYGO accomplished. Before we had the Democrats' PAYGO rule, the deficit was $161 billion. Now it's $1.4 trillion. Its report card wasn't so good. After the last two Congresses, PAYGO was gimmicked or waived 32 times, to the net total of $932 billion in extra deficit spending. But when PAYGO was used, when it was invoked, it was more often used to raise taxes. Madam Speaker, we do not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. And that is why this brings CutGo--cut-as-you-go. If you want new spending, you better cut spending somewhere else to pay for it. This does a couple of other things. It gets rid of a gimmick which was used very artfully in the last Congress to use reconciliation procedures to grow more government and create new spending programs. It also adds a new rule that says we need to look at the fiscal consequences in the future of what we're doing--not just in 5 years, not just in 10 years, but in the out years--because the debt crisis is coming, mark my words. It also gets rid of the automatic debt increase. We used to call this the Gephardt rule. Congress has to vote a clear up-or-down as to whether or not to vote the debt limit. And what also happened last session for the first time since the 1974 Budget Act passed is that the House didn't even propose, let alone pass, a budget. That is why this gives us an interim authority to actually put a budget in place so that we can have a mechanism to actually police the budget. We have no budget; we have no limits; no restraints; no priorities whatsoever because of the failure of the leadership in the last Congress. And that is why this interim authority occurs: so that we can actually put some numbers in from the CBO to police and actually have budget enforcement until the new budget arrives.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I was absent for legislative business and missed rollcall vote 663 on December 21, 2010, and rollcall vote 664 on December 22, 2010. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes'' on H.R. 6547, the Protecting Students from Sexual and Violent Predators Act, and ``no'' on rollcall vote 664 (H.R. 847). The vote I wish to discuss is the bill H.R. 847, the James Zadroga 9/ 11 Health and Compensation Act. Without a doubt, Republicans and Democrats can agree that both the victims of the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the first responders who bravely served following the attacks deserve to be fairly treated and compensated. However, this bill would create a new health care entitlement, the World Trade Center Health Program, while also extending eligibility for compensation under the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. As a result, had I been present, I would have voted against passage of the bill. Since the terrorist attacks occurred nearly nine years ago, I have supported legislation to ensure that these individuals are cared for and receive access to the services they deserve. However, rather than working with Republicans to craft a bill which truly addressed the shortcomings in care provided to those directly impacted by the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Majority instead rushed this bill to the floor in the waning hours of the 111th Congress, refusing to allow an open debate or consider amendments. The result is a deeply flawed bill. H.R. 847 creates yet another mandatory spending program--increasing spending by $4.2 billion dollars over 10 years--and paying for it by an excise tax on foreign manufacturers, an extension of Travel Promotion Act fees, and the extension of HI-B visa fees. There is no doubt that we owe a debt of gratitude to those who came to the rescue of countless individuals following the attacks on September 11, 2001, but these provisions distort that noble goal. At a time when our budget deficit is $1.3 trillion and our national debt stands at $13.8 trillion, we must accurately account for those programs that take priority. I remain hopeful that as the 112th Congress convenes, my colleagues and I can work together to reform some of my concerns with this proposal and truly provide the services these first responders deserve.