Paul Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the chairman how many more speakers he has remaining?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield myself 1 additional minute only to say, Mr. Speaker, we have real solutions here that have real spending control so we get to real deficit reduction, so we really get on to the process of paying off our debt by reforming how much money we spend. That is not what the Democrats are doing. They are passing a fiscal facade so that they can do so with the right hand while in the left hand they pass more spending out the door. A trillion-dollar cap-and- trade bill a couple of weeks ago, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations bill, a trillion-dollar stimulus package, next week a $1 trillion new health care entitlement, which even the Congressional Budget Office is telling us is going to grow at unsustainable rates, faster than even Medicare and Medicaid. Let's stop this fiscal insanity. Let's pass real spending control. Let's pass the Republican substitute that actually controls and caps spending. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Speaker, our distinguished Speaker of the House came to the floor 1 minute ago and gave a nice speech and said with passage of this PAYGO bill, the deficit won't go up any more. Wow. Let me just simply say that is not true. Here is what the deficit path is by the Democratic budget that passed earlier. It is up to $1.8 trillion now, and that admittedly is for some unforeseen circumstances, the TARP and the financial crisis and other things. It goes back down, and then just like a rubber band, it springs right back up. And under the deficit path that the majority passed with their own budget resolution, the deficit goes right back up to over $1 trillion, a huge, huge increase in the deficit, to the point where the deficit stays above 3 percent of our economy the entire time, above $600 billion. Unsustainable deficits, unsustainable borrowing. Here is the problem, Mr. Speaker. One of these days, we are not going to be able to keep borrowing all this money. One of these days, our bond financiers, 48 percent of whom, these days, are foreign governments, China, Japan and India, one of these days they are not going to keep lending us all this money because we are not getting our fiscal house in order. We already have a $62 trillion unfunded liability. That means we are making promises to spend $62 trillion for people in this country today that we don't have. And so when people lend us money--this year, we are borrowing half of our budget. Borrowing. I went to the Bureau of Public Debt last week, and I watched a bond auction. I watched the Treasury Department borrow $40 billion in about 4 minutes. We had very talented people sitting around a room of flat-screened TVs and laptop computers sipping coffee as if it were just another day at the office. Forty billion dollars, forty minutes. We are doing something like this every day these days. Two trillion dollars of our $4 trillion budget, effectively, is being borrowed just this year. There is going to come a moment when they are not going to keep lending us all this money. There is going to come a moment when we may not be able to have an auction succeed. There is going to come a moment when we are going to have to pay these people, these governments, a lot more money to lend us their money. That moment is a fiscal day of reckoning for America. That moment is a moment when our interest rates go up. That moment will happen faster, sooner, rather than later, if we don't fix these problems. What is the problem? Spending is the problem. Spending in excess of what we tax is what creates deficits. It is what is creating this unprecedented level of debt. And so what does this PAYGO bill do? It just says raise taxes, effectively, if we want to build more programs, if we want to spend more money. What are we proposing? Let's cut spending. Let's control spending. Let's cap spending. Let's make the American Federal budget work like a family budget so that we actually control and cap how much money we spend. I know around here that sounds like a novel idea, but it isn't. Every American family inevitably must do this. If you live beyond your means, sooner or later you are going to have to make up for that fact. The question is whether this Congress will do that so that the next generation doesn't get hit with this tab, so that the next generation doesn't have this inferior standard of living that we know quantifiably, irrefutably and demonstrably we are consigning to the next generation.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield at this time 3 minutes to the vice ranking member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Hensarling of Texas.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the House Republican Conference chairman, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence). (Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess).

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. May I inquire as to how much time remains between the two sides.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I will yield myself 1 minute just to continue this dialogue. The reason we have a super-majority vote in Congress to break these caps is because we want to make it very difficult--you can never fully tie the hands of a future Congress. We want to make it very difficult for Congress to avoid this budget discipline. We want to make sure that we put a system in place with binding caps that are tough to circumvent, that are backed up with sequesters so that, you know what, Congress actually makes the tough choices; Congress actually prioritizes spending and that we live within our means and that we have a process in place that forces us to focus on the problem. The problem is, spending is out of control; deficits are out of control; borrowing is out of control. We do not want a process, which we believe your PAYGO system does, to simply always go to raising taxes. The American people are taxed too much. The American people are paying more taxes than they have in the history of this country. We don't need to raise their taxes any more. We will sacrifice our economic livelihood. We will make ourselves less competitive to foreign countries if we keep raising taxes. Spending is a problem. That's why our substitute focuses on spending. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. May I inquire as to how much time remains?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. If the gentleman will continue to yield, we believe we need to have a tough enforcement regime so that a simple majority cannot waive these kinds of spending caps.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. That's correct.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. That's correct. We think this is better than PAYGO. We think instead of having a PAYGO system in place, which puts the bias in favor of raising taxes, we ought to have the bias in favor of controlling and cutting spending. That is just the difference we have between the two of us.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I will just be quick and brief. Three caps: The discretionary cap is set at inflation; the percent of GDP cap brings us back to trend historical growth and the size of our government; and the deficit targets bring our deficits down to being no higher than 3 percent of GDP, and that is the result of what you are reading.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Would the chairman yield just for a quick clarification?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, as we mentioned earlier in the debate, we're offering better ideas. We think it's incumbent upon us on the big issues of the day, if we don't think the majority is going in the right direction, if we don't think they're offering the right ideas, it's not just enough for us to criticize and say we're against what they're doing. We owe it to our employers, the American people, our constituents, to offer an alternative. That's what we're doing right here today. And I want to first say thank you to the majority leader and to the chairman for making it such that we can offer this alternative. Normally, in the minority one would naturally expect to offer a substitute. Unfortunately, that is not the norm these days, and I appreciate the fact that the majority leader and the chairman were true to their word and made it so that the minority could offer a substitute so that we, too, can say we think we have a better way forward. Let me explain what our bill does, three basic components to our substitute bill. Caps on spending. So what we think ought to happen here is let's fix the problem. Let's focus on the problem. And what is the problem, Mr. Speaker? Spending, deficits, and debt are out of control. First off, we propose caps on discretionary spending. Yes, caps on discretionary spending. When this was combined with PAYGO in the 1990s, it worked. It helped pave the way for surpluses. It's an idea that has enjoyed bipartisan support, until now. So if you take a look at who really controls the deficits, the deficits under our substitute or the deficits under the majority's plan, our deficits are far lower. Still higher than I would like, but our deficits take this deficit down to no more than 3 percent of gross domestic product, which is what all economists say is a minimum. If your deficits are above 3 percent, then the debt spirals out of control. Unfortunately, under the Democrats' plan, their PAYGO bill, the deficits always stay above 3 percent, spiraling out of control, according to any economists if you ask them. Second, we think we ought to have caps on total spending. Let's keep in mind just how big the Federal Government is relative to our constituents and the economy's ability to pay it. So we propose a cap to keep the size of the Federal Government relative to where it has been in history, and no larger, meaning don't let the government grow faster than the economy. Don't let the government grow faster than our constituents have an ability to pay for it. Don't let the Federal budget grow faster than the family budget. And so what we also do is we have a cap on Federal spending as a percentage of GDP, gross domestic product. What we are showing here is, yes, spending not only goes down and then stays in control, we keep spending historically where it has been, slightly above 20 percent of gross domestic product. What does the Democratic PAYGO bill do? Nothing. It allows spending to grow far in excess of where it has been before, meaning what this Democratic PAYGO plan does is it locks in place the growth of the Federal Government so that it will grow faster and higher than it ever has in the history of this Republic. What does the future look like under their version of fiscal control versus our version of fiscal control? Here's what the Federal Government looks like. Under the Democratic PAYGO bill, the Federal Government keeps growing forever and ever and ever. Look at the moment in the middle of this chart. That's the moment when my three children who are 4, 6, and 7 years old are my age. And what the Democrat PAYGO bill says is the government will literally be twice as big as it is today for them at that time. Under our bill, we put the Federal Government on the pathway of sustainability. It's really about this. The question is: Are we going to fulfill the American legacy or not? Are we going to face up to the challenges confronting this generation so that we can make the next generation better off? That is, after all, the lessons we were taught as Americans. We own up to the challenges confronting us so that our children and our grandchildren can have a better tomorrow. Unfortunately, under the Democratic PAYGO bill, that's not the case. The Democratic PAYGO bill severs that tie. It breaks the American legacy. Here's what I mean when I say that. Here's what I mean when I say that: For the last 40 years, the size of our government has been relatively the same in that it's been consistent. About 20 percent of GDP has gone to the government. About 20 cents out of every dollar made in America has been spent by the Federal Government to run the Federal Government. Well, by the time my kids are my age, according to the current plan that we are on, 40 cents of every single dollar made must go to the Federal Government just to keep this government going for my kids at that age. I asked the Congressional Budget Office, what would the tax rates on my three children, who are 4, 6 and 7 years old, have to be when they are my age, in their late thirties, if they are going to have to pay taxes to pay for all of this government we're consigning them to? Here's what the Congressional Budget Office said. They said the lowest tax bracket, the low-income Americans that pay 10 percent bracket, must go up to 25 percent. They said the middle-income tax brackets that middle-income Americans pay will have to go to 66 percent. And they said the top income tax bracket in America, the one that all the small businesses pay, the one that all the job creators pay, would go to 88 percent. If we don't fix this problem these are the tax rates that will have to occur for the next generation. These are the tax rates that will occur on the next generation if you pass the Democratic PAYGO bill. If you pass the Republican substitute, we are putting the kinds of tools, the kinds of tools in place, the kind of enforcement and discipline in place to make sure that doesn't happen, to make Congress face up and fix these problems. We have three different spending caps enforced by sequesterers to make sure it actually happens, belts and suspenders to make sure Congress actually fixes this fiscal train wreck. The question before us, Mr. Speaker, is: Will this generation, will the people right now elected by Americans face up to this reality? And this is the key question, Mr. Speaker. The sooner we do it, the better off everybody in America is. The sooner we tackle the spending that's out of control, the sooner we take ourselves off the reliance of debt purchases by China, India, Japan and everybody else, the sooner Americans can be in control of their own destiny and their own economy. The sooner we reform government and the entitlement programs that are presenting us with this $62 trillion unfunded liability, the more likely we can prevent those people in and near these programs, depending and counting on these programs, will not have severe disruption in their lives. The more likely the kinds of changes that must happen can be phased in gradually. But every year we delay, every year we punt, every year we pass bills like this Democratic PAYGO bill, the more likely people will see severe disruption in their lives, the more likely you will have crushing tax increases, massive borrowing, unsustainable deficits, the more likely we will not be able to sell our bonds, the more likely our interest rates will go up, the more likely our tax rates will go up, the more likely we lose jobs and competitiveness. Every year we delay fixing just the entitlement problem, we add about $4 trillion of debt to our children and grandchildren. So we are saying, let's fix what's broken; and what is broken is spending. What is broken is that spending is out of control. Both parties contribute to that. Let's face up to that. Both parties should come together to fix it, and that's what we are proposing to do. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), the vice ranking member of the committee, the rest of our time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the chairman as to how many speakers he has remaining, as we have just one left.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield myself 3 minutes. Let me recap what's happening here, Mr. Speaker. This bill has good intentions. The gentleman bringing the bill to the floor has the best of intentions. He's a good man. This bill, however, Mr. Speaker, is a fiscal facade. It doesn't work. It's not like the bill that occurred back in the 1990s. This bill has no spending caps, for example. This bill exempts 40 percent of all the spending we have in place today. How can you say that this makes the Federal Government work just like the family budget when you get to exempt 40 percent of the budget? Families don't get to do that. If a family is already living beyond its means, if a family is spending on credit card money, if a family is spending more than it takes in, that's an unsustainable budget. This does nothing to change that. The Federal Government is already living beyond its means. The Federal Government already is on an unsustainable fiscal course. The Federal Government already has a $1.8 trillion deficit this year. It's passing an 11 percent increase in all domestic agency spending. The Federal Government already has a $62 trillion debt unfunded liability. What does this PAYGO do about it? Nothing. Not a single thing about all of those fiscal problems. This is not a bill to get Congress to live within its means. This is a bill to give Congress men and women an ability to put a press release out to make it look like they're being fiscally responsible in the most fiscally irresponsible Congress of all time. Next week, Congress is going to create a new entitlement, a new unfunded entitlement that the Congressional Budget Office tells us will grow a lot faster than any spending cuts or revenue increases. We're going to create a new entitlement next week for health care on top of the other ones we already have, which are about $58 trillion in debt. We're going to do this bill after we've already spent an 11 percent increase on domestic spending programs, after we borrowed $1.1 trillion for a stimulus, after we passed a $410 billion bloated omnibus appropriations bill. This is PR politics. This is press release. This is not fiscal conservatism, fiscal responsibility; and what's so unfortunate about this, Mr. Speaker, is I'd like to think we could have had a bipartisan agreement to fix this. If we had actually brought the Blue Dog bill to the floor, which included spending caps like we're going to be proposing, we could have had something that we could have all supported. Unfortunately, the leadership bypassed the committee, as is usual these days, ran this thing to the floor so they can get their press releases out before they create a brand-new entitlement next week. It's sad, it's cynical, it's wrong, and the American people aren't buying it, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell), a member of the Budget Committee.