Paul Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. The gentleman from Florida, I agree with much of what he said. He and I are friends. We both love turkey hunting. We have a lot in common. And the gentleman was right when he said that they are using honest numbers. They are being candid with their numbers, that's correct. The Congressional Budget Office is showing that this budget resolution doubles our publicly held debt in 5\1/2\ years and triples it in 10\1/2\ years. This budget resolution raises taxes on the American people by $1.5 trillion, the largest tax increase in American history. This budget resolution brings the size of our government to levels we haven't seen since 1945 at the end of World War II. And the gentleman is right where he says to get big things done we ought to do it with bipartisanship. All the more reason, Madam Speaker, why we should not have reconciliation. What is reconciliation? It's a method by which the majority can fast track legislation through to law without any participation from the minority. In order to have bipartisanship, you have to have collaboration. Both sides of the aisle sit down, hammer out compromises, work together to pass legislation. That is not what reconciliation is being used for here. Reconciliation is saying one-party rule, one party can do it all. In the Senate, no filibuster, 50 votes plus one can get it through, no amendments, 100 hours of debate, done. No involvement from the minority party. It is the prerogative of the majority party to do that. The majority party has the power and they can do it. And apparently they are not supportive of this motion to instruct to make sure that that reconciliation doesn't occur, to make sure that we agree with the Senate, with the majority party and the Senate that we don't do reconciliation. Unfortunately, I think the truth of this matter is being revealed here today. And where we are seeing this majority in the House is basically saying no, we are not going to follow the Democrats in the Senate. We are not going to have a bipartisan procedure. We are going to ram this stuff through with reconciliation.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time, Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), the vice ranking member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Reclaiming my time, and I believe the gentleman from Florida is very sincere on what he says in that, and I believe he is true to that. I would like to insert into the Record a question and answer I had with the chief counsel of the Budget Committee and the majority staff during our markup where the majority counsel said that if, in fact, reconciliation instructions do go to the Commerce Committee--which they do in this budget reconciliation--nothing stops that from going toward cap-and-trade legislation. Markup of the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2010 Wednesday, March 25, 2009 The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:40 a.m., in Room 210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. John M. Spratt, Jr. [Chairman of the Committee] presiding. Present: Representatives Spratt, Schwartz, Kaptur, Becerra, Doggett, Blumenauer, Berry, Boyd, McGovern, Tsongas, Etheridge, McCollum, Melancon, Yarmuth, Andrews, DeLauro, Edwards, Scott, Langevin, Larsen, Bishop, Moore, Connolly, Schrader, Ryan, Hensarling, Garrett, Diaz-Balart, Simpson, McHenry, Mack, Conaway, Campbell, Jordan, Nunes, Aderholt, Lummis, Austria, Harper. Chairman Spratt. For simplicity, just simply address your question to the staffers at this time. Mr. Ryan. Mr. Chairman, I will begin. I do not know if we are going to take a lot of their time because we realize we have a lot of amendments. It is going to be a long day and we want to get to it. And we have had a good chance to pore through this budget. I do have a question, I guess for you, Ms. Millar (Gail Millar, majority staff General Counsel), on reconciliation. The Chairman's mark includes reconciliation instructions of three Committees, to each produce one billion in deficit reduction over the six-year period from 2009 through 2014, to the Ways and Means, the Energy and Commerce, and the Education and Labor Committees, under the subsection including healthcare and investing in education. Here is my basic question. Am I correct that the only binding aspect of these instructions is that each of the Committees are directed to produce $1 billion in deficit reduction in their jurisdiction? Ms. Millar. That is correct. Mr. Ryan. And so while the Budget Committee can make assumptions about policies, education, healthcare, energy, we cannot bind these Committees to certain policies? It is up to those Committees to determine what policies are within those instructions and they simply have to meet that goal of achieving one billion in deficit reduction; is that correct? Ms. Millar. That is correct, sir. Mr. Ryan. Okay. So serving on Ways and Means, that is how we always interpreted it. I just want to make sure that the reconciliation discussion we are having here is consistent with what it has always been in the past which is these Committees are free to do what they choose to do, they have just got to meet that $1 billion number? Ms. Millar. That is correct. Mr. Ryan. All right. Thank you. That is really all I have. So let's be very clear here. Reconciling to the Commerce Committee-- --

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Let me see if I can go at it in a different direction. Under reconciliation, the total debate on the reconciliation bill here, 4 hours on a bill, 1 hour on a conference report. In the Senate, 20 hours on a bill, 10 hours on a conference report. That means total debate on reconciliation in Congress, 35 hours. Let's assume that they break up the bill into three reconciliation vehicles, as could be the case with this, 105 total hours, total hours, of debate between the House of Representatives and the United States Senate. Wow, 105 total hours of debate in this Congress to determine the largest and the most sweeping transformation of our Federal Government we have not seen since the New Deal. These aren't my words. These are words from the administration who claimed that that's the ambition of this budget. We are being presented with a new budget with such awesome ambition, with such an enormous increase in spending, taxing, and borrowing, a virtual takeover of 25 percent of our economy in just the health care and energy sectors alone, the largest tax increase we have seen ever in the history of this country, the largest debt increase proposed under this Presidency than all prior Presidencies combined, all rushed through with a simple majority vote in as little as 35 hours and no more than 105 hours of debate. Is that democracy? No. Is that what reconciliation was meant to be? No. Reconciliation, the spirit and the idea behind it, was to get our fiscal house in order, was to get spending and borrowing under control, not out of control. Unfortunately, this rule is being twisted, contorted, distorted to achieve these ends as quickly as possible to ramrod it through Congress without giving many voices to it, without having any bipartisan collaboration, and just moving through the gauntlet. This is the problem with this, Madam Speaker, which is when the American people voted for change, and I heard this at my 25 listening sessions, I don't think a lot of them thought this was the kind of change they were voting for. They didn't think they were voting for the kind of change to more mortgages on their children's future. They didn't think they were voting for a brand new national energy tax on their livelihoods, on their heating bills, on their gas bills, on their electricity bills. They didn't think they were voting for a new tax on the manufacturing jobs in America when our own competitors in China and India will not do this to themselves. They didn't think they were voting for the largest tax increase in history. They didn't think they were voting for the kind of change that gives us a sea of red ink, a mountain of debt, a government that is the biggest we have seen in a generation.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time, Madam Speaker, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Broun). (Mr. BROUN of Georgia asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I yield myself an additional 30 seconds. The whole idea of ramming all of this government, this gusher of spending and taxing and borrowing through, in as little as 105 hours of debate is not democracy. It is not the way this House is supposed to work. Unfortunately, that is precisely what the majority aims to do. And that is why we agree with the Democrats in the Senate to stop that from happening.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I would like to start off by, first of all, saying, and I comment on this a lot, I have tremendous respect for the chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Spratt. He is an admirable man who has a very difficult job. I would like to hearken back to a day where bipartisanship on the budget worked, the year before I came into Congress, and Mr. Spratt was a key part of this. That was the 1997 budget agreement. That is when reconciliation was used for its intended purpose. In that 1997 budget agreement, where you had a Democratic President and a Republican House, they came together in bipartisan fashion to reduce spending and to reduce taxes, and it is that budget agreement that paved the way for the surpluses that then occurred and followed that helped us pay down debt. The fact is, Madam Speaker, that both parties should claim credit for that job and that improvement in our fiscal situation, for bringing those surpluses, for balancing the budget and for having a substantial contribution to debt reduction. Both parties did that. Both parties should get credit for that. But here we are today, taking this process that has been used to good effect in the past, fulfilling the spirit of the process, and we are just turning it upside down. Let's review the contents of this. We very well might have, with as little as 35 hours of debate between the two Chambers and no more than 105 hours of debate because of this fast-track procedure, the greatest transformation of our Federal Government since the New Deal. Let's review the issues. Taxes: What this budget proposes to do is to impose a new national energy tax on everybody who consumes energy: a tax on manufacturing, a tax on coal-burning States like my own, a tax that is bad for our economy. Higher taxes on small businesses. Higher taxes on investments. Higher taxes in a recession. We proposed an alternative in our budget. We said, no, let's not raise taxes in a recession. Let's make our businesses more competitive in the global economy so we can create jobs in this recession. That was rejected. Now there they are steamrolling these tax increases through with very little debate and very few amendments. Let's talk about cap-and-trade. The chairman gave an articulate defense for how cap-and-trade is not happening here. It is not in this budget. Well, then why on Earth is the Commerce Committee marking up cap-and-trade legislation next week? They are having hearings right now, and they are marking this bill up next week, and they are bringing it to the floor. Here is the problem with cap-and-trade. We don't think it works. Even if you think you have a carbon problem, hitting our economy with this while our very competitors in China and India won't do it will not even reduce carbon in the atmosphere. It will actually increase carbon, but from China and India. For every one ton of greenhouse gases we reduce in America, China increases theirs by three or four tons. We lose our manufacturing jobs. They get the jobs. They emit carbon in the atmosphere. There is more carbon in the atmosphere and America has fewer jobs. How is that a good idea? We proposed an alternative in our budget. We said let's drill for oil and gas in our own country, where we have a lot of it; and let's invest the proceeds of it in a clean energy trust fund so we innovate our way toward a clean energy system, so we innovate our way for nuclear, clean coal, renewables, biomass, wind, solar, all these things, fuel cells. Americans are innovators. Let's not hit ourselves with a huge energy tax that costs jobs. Let's innovate our way out of this problem through a cleaner energy economy. That is our alternative. That was rejected. Now this cap-and-trade thing could get swept through with as little as 35 hours of debate. Let's talk about health care. I just came from the Ways and Means Committee, another committee I serve on, before coming to the floor here today, where they are discussing how in the budget reconciliation they are going to have a new health care plan that has a government-run plan option. The problem with the government- run plan option is it quickly becomes a government-run plan monopoly. One of the leading health insurance actuaries in America, the Lewin Group, is telling us that as many as 120 million Americans would lose their private health insurance under this government-run plan option. This is government-run health care. It may not say it in name, it may not be what it says it is going to do tomorrow, but it is clearly what all the actuaries and the economists are telling us what it becomes. The advocates in the Ways and Means Committee are already telling us, why have private health insurance in the first place? Let's just have the government run it all. So clearly the intention is being made known, and this confiscation of 17 percent of our economy will run through Congress with as little as 35 hours of debate. This is what we are talking about. Should we have a government takeover of health care in America? Let's have a debate about that. Let's not have 35 hours of debate. Should we impose the largest energy tax in the history of this country on our manufacturers, on seniors, on the upper Midwest where we have cold winters, or should we just ram this thing through with 35 hours of debate? Should we hit our economy in the middle of a recession with the largest tax increase in history, ram it through with no amendments with as little as 35 hours of debate? Should we transform the Federal Government, the largest transformation we have seen since the New Deal, with as little as 35 hours of debate? We think no. And we agree with the Democrats in the Senate who agree with us that the answer should be no. Let's concur with the Senate Democrats. Let's pass this motion to instruct and let's give America democracy and debate.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) manage our time for a moment until I return.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I will yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina, who doesn't want the 3 minutes.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. That's right.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, we are here today to move the process along on going to conference on the budget resolutions. I just spent the last week doing 25 listening sessions throughout the 1st Congressional District, which is the district I am privileged to represent, talking to the people I represent about the fiscal future of America, how we just went through this process of the House passing a budget resolution, the other body passing their version of the budget resolution. There is very little distinction between the President's budget, the House-passed budget resolution and the Senate budget resolution. Therefore, this move to go to conference should not be a very lengthy conference because the differences between the two are very few and far between, with the exception of the process called reconciliation. We will talk about that a little bit more. But I think it's important to understand what this is. And I spent a lot of my time talking with constituents about that, because they think sort of when you pass a budget resolution, the budget is done and it's passed. That is how it works in our State legislatures, which is, a budget is a budget and it's passed and it's executed. This is the beginning of the process, not the ending of the process. The best way to think about the process we are engaging in and what we are doing right here with the budget resolution is the budget resolution is the fiscal architecture of the Federal Government. It's the blueprint of what our government should look like, how big it should get, what is the fiscal policy of it. So we are here debating these blueprints of the Federal Government. And the blueprints were approved by the House a couple of week ago, by the Senate, and now the idea here is to smooth out any differences, which are few and far between, and then move forward to implement the component parts of the budget. So once this process is done, then we have the architectural diagrams in place; then we go start building the government that's being proposed here. The new cap-and-trade legislation, new national health care legislation, all these new spending bills, the tax increases, that's where Congress goes from here, which is once the budget resolution is done, start implementing these pieces, the goal of which is by this fall all of this is in law and is done. Let me reiterate what we are talking about here, just the huge magnitude of what's being proposed here. Just with respect to the cost of government to the future generations, our debt, this budget proposes more debt, more borrowing, under this Presidency than all prior Presidencies combined. This budget proposes that our publicly held debt, the amount of bonds we have to go out there and sell to the Chinese, to the Japanese, to other people to cash flow our government, our debt will double in 5\1/2\ years and triple in 10\1/2\ years. What's more, what this budget says we ought to do is we should chase ever higher spending, an unprecedented level of new spending with ever higher taxes. It not only proposes the largest tax increase in American history, which is $1.5 trillion, taxes on energy, taxes on incomes, on small businesses, on the very investments that make up our savings portfolios, our 401(k)s, our pension plans, things that are probably going down by about 40 percent for the average American, not only are those tax increases huge, the spending increases are much larger. So what these architectural designs do, what this blueprint for the Federal Government that the President has sent to Congress that Congress is now in the midst of rubber-stamping does is it says let's have this unprecedented gusher of new spending, let's chase it with higher taxes. Those taxes never quite catch up with the spending, and the result is an unprecedented increase in our national debt. Mr. Speaker, this is how you end prosperity in America. Name me a great country that has been able to increase standards of living, increase jobs, increase prosperity where they increase the size of government, the taxes of government, the borrowing of government like this. This is an unprecedented spending, taxing, and borrowing spree which we simply do not stand for, which we simply can't go along with. And I want to draw your attention to one other point: This unprecedented borrowing spree is done in the face of an already bleak fiscal future for this country. This is an ad that has been taken out in many newspapers across America by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan advocacy group that says America should get its fiscal house in order. It just shows this tip of the iceberg. Today's economic crisis is the tip of the iceberg. What this says is right now to pay the bills for the Federal Government, right now to make sure that the government programs that everybody has come to know, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, right now those three programs alone show us a $56 trillion unfunded liability. What that means is for everybody in America today, my mother's generation, my generation, my children's generation--and my children are 4, 5, and 7 years old--for us to pay the bills of all the government promises that are being made to these three generations, today we would have to set aside $56 trillion, invest it at Treasury rates in order to just make sure these programs are solvent. It is an enormous fiscal liability. Rather than tackling this problem, rather than confronting America's fiscal wreck that's coming, rather than getting us under control, what does this budget resolution do? It makes it worse. It adds more debt on top of this debt. It is saying never mind the fact that all these programs are going insolvent, never mind the fact that we're not even prepared for the baby boomers, never mind the fact that today the per- household debt is $483,000 per household, for every household in America right now today they owe $483,000 just to pay the bills we have already racked up that are unpaid for the Federal Government, the majority wants to what? Not fix it but make it worse. Rather than getting spending under control, it goes out of control. I mean the Environmental Protection Agency this year alone gets a 124 percent increase in their budget. On and on and on the spending goes. Rather than getting taxes under control so entrepreneurs can keep more of what they earn; so small businesses, the economic engine of America, have an incentive to go back to work to hire people, not to lay people off, taxes go out of control. And rather than tackling this challenge of debt, what are they doing? They are accelerating our increase of debt, accelerating the fact that $483,000 per family is owed today and makes it much, much worse. At the end of the day, what it's really all about is freedom. The question really before the American people today is with the government's taking more and more money out of your pocket, with the government's growing and making more and more decisions here in Washington, with the government's making the decisions on how your health care is to be delivered rather than you and your doctor making the decision, with the government's taking over the energy sector, the health care sector, 25 percent of our economy, with the government's saying to future generations we are going to have to take more money out of your pocket in order to pay the bills, in order to borrow the money, you have less freedom. And this just shows you how the President and the majority here in Congress are proposing a dramatic and radical new increase in the size of government way beyond where we have historically been. I asked the Congressional Budget Office before this budget came due, what will the tax rates on my three children have to be if we're going to have to finance all this growth of government through taxes, which ultimately must happen? If the government is to spend beyond its means by borrowing, somebody's going to have to pay that back through higher taxes, and that's the next generation. And the answers I got from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office keep me awake at night. As I mentioned, I am in my late thirties. My kids are 4, 5, and 7 years old. And what they said was really scary. They said that by the time my three kids are my age, in order to pay these bills that they are racking up for them, the lowest tax bracket in America, today the 10 percent bracket, would have to go to 25 percent. The middle-income tax bracket for middle-income taxpayers would have to go to 66 percent income tax rate. And the top tax bracket, the ones that small businesses pay, will go to 88 percent. That's the ending of America. That's the end of prosperity. That is severing the legacy of this country. And the legacy of this country is that each generation takes its challenges seriously, fixes those problems so that they can bequeath onto the next generation a more prosperous, a more secure America. We are at risk for severing that legacy for the first time in the history of this country. If we consign to the next generation that burden of debt, that increase in tax rates, there is no way we will be able to provide a higher standard of living to the next generation of Americans. But the matter is even more urgent than that. The matter is urgent to the fact that we are in the worst recession we have seen since the 1940s. It's a global recession. And the question we ought to be asking ourselves: Should we be raising all these taxes in the middle of a recession? Should we be raising the energy fees on consumers by anywhere from $1,600 to $3,500 a year in a recession? Should we be raising taxes on small businesses, which create most of our jobs, in a recession? Should we be raising taxes on the assets that make up our pension plans, our children's 401(k) plans, their college education plans, our IRAs in a recession? Of course not. Unfortunately, that's precisely what the President and this budget do. This is a huge moment for America. And Americans may not know this because they are greasing this thing through so fast: It's a moment where America may abandon its tireless principles, its timeless ideas that built this country, the idea that the goal of government is to protect our rights and to equalize opportunity for all so people can stake their claim and make the most of their lives and replace that with more of a Europeanized notion where we try to micromanage the results of people's lives, where people are less concerned about their liberty and more concerned about security. We believe in having a safety net to help people who cannot help themselves. We believe in having a safety net to help people when they are down on their luck. But we reject the philosophy and the approach of this budget which says we need to have more than that, we need to have a society where more and more Americans become dependent on the government itself for their own well-being. We want people to maximize their potential. We want people to make the most of their lives. We don't want to lull people in lives of complacency where they are becoming more and more dependent on the Federal Government. We have seen what those ideas do. We see them on display in foreign capitals all around the world. Higher unemployment, a lower standard of living, stagnant wages, decaying societies. That's not America. That is not what this country is. It's not the idea of America. We want the idea of America that we have known for the 20th century to be the idea of America in the 21st century. That's what this budget is about. That's what this blueprint or this architecture that we are debating here today is really all about. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the vice ranking member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I believe I will reserve the balance of my time and allow the gentleman from South Carolina to get started.

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

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Yes.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I assume the gentleman from South Carolina has the right to close. Is that correct, Madam Chair?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Chair, we, on both sides of the aisle, have very hardworking budget staffers. And I just wanted to take a moment to thank them for all of their late nights and all of their hard work, starting with Austin Smythe staff director, Chauncey Goss, Tim Flynn, John Gray, Jim Herz, Matt Hoffmann, Charlotte Ivancic, Patrick L. Knudsen, Angela Kuck, Ted McCann, Stephen McMillin, Courtney Reinhard, Paul Restuccia, Jonathon Romito, Stephen Sepp, Conor Sweeney, Sarah Ulrich and Dana Wade; as well as our interns, who gave us the greatest free labor we ever get around here. And I want them to know that they should double whatever we are paying them. Jacquie Adams, Krysta Carlson, Michael Koutnik, Nicole Marquart, David Rabe, Kyle Roskam and Abigail Weinshel. Thank you, staff, for your hard work.