Paul Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I'd like to yield 4 minutes to a senior member of the Commerce Committee, Mr. Upton from Michigan.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence). (Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, it's not my intention to consume the full amount of time, as we had discussed earlier. At the beginning of this Congress, the Speaker of the House said the following: ``After years of deficit spending, this new Congress will commit itself to a higher standard: pay-as-you-go, no new deficit spending.'' Well, the majority did follow through on half of their promise. One of the first things they did when they took control of this place was put in a new pay-as-you-go rule. But things haven't quite worked out as well on the deficit. This year's deficit is projected to double as spending is projected to rise by over $200 billion. But at least they did put in the rule. And one of the things that makes this rule interesting, that requires this rule, is that the House must use the most recent CBO baseline when determining whether a bill complies with PAYGO. Let me read this rule word for word to be clear: ``The effect of a measure on the deficit or surplus shall be determined on the basis of estimates by the Committee on Budget relative to the most recent baseline supplied by the Congressional Budget Office.'' It sounds pretty straightforward, Mr. Speaker. You've got to use the current baseline when you apply PAYGO, no questions asked. But despite this, everyone I have talked to about this issue, everything I've heard, everything I've read in the newspapers had told me that the farm bill isn't going to use the updated 2008 baseline but instead is going to use the 2007 baseline, an outdated baseline from over a year ago. Now, I hope that this is not the case. I hope that this does not happen. But it sounds like that's the direction they are headed. And that is what this motion is all about. This motion is very simple. All it would do is require that the House will follow its own rules and use the current CBO baseline when determining whether or not the farm bill complies with PAYGO. Why should we care? Why does this seemingly technical issue make a difference? First of all, economic conditions have changed in the past year. Agricultural profits are way up. Food prices are soaring. And it's simply not accurate to use an estimate that's over a year old. Second, there's a strong possibility that using the old baseline could hide billions and billions of dollars in new spending. We don't have all the details yet, and we don't know exactly how CBO is going to score it, but based on what we've heard, based on rising food prices and other factors, we think it's quite likely that this bill is going to appear to cost billions of dollars less under the old baseline than it really does under the current one. Now, isn't that convenient? I'm sure that a lot of taxpayers would love to have this type of choice. I'm sure that when they were filling out their taxes a few weeks ago, a lot of people thought it would surely be nice to have the option of paying taxes on either last year's income or this year's income. They could just pick the year where they made less money and save a couple bucks. But the taxpayers don't have that choice. They are required to play by the rules. They have got to pay taxes on their current income whether they like it or not. And if the majority follows the rules, it doesn't have this choice either. They must use the 2008 baseline, or they will be in clear violation of their PAYGO rules. Now, the majority has dodged PAYGO before. The farm bill they passed last year had over $5 billion in timing shifts and other gimmicks in it, and I wouldn't be surprised if you saw some of those in the conference report again this year. But if they use an old baseline, this would take it to a whole new level, Mr. Speaker. This would be the first time the majority actually used baseline shopping to violate the PAYGO requirement. You see things like this, and it's no wonder people think Washington is broken. These types of games are exactly what make people cynical about Congress. And I agree. This just isn't the way the House should operate. The American people deserve better than having the House play games with its own rules and then go home and claim they have entered a new era of fiscal discipline. You know, some people might find it odd for me to be down here talking about PAYGO, and I will be the first to admit that I have been critical of this rule and don't think it's the best way to proceed with respect to fiscal discipline. But let's put those concerns aside for a minute. Budgetary rules are only as good as the integrity of the numbers that you use to enforce them. So let's enforce those rules with updated CBO estimates. Let's have a strong bipartisan vote for this motion and say that these games have got to end. Let's not manipulate the rules and pick and choose whichever baseline is more convenient. With that I urge my colleagues to support this motion. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier).

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. If the gentleman is willing to yield back his time, I will just have a 1-minute speaker and then I will close--fast.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I am curious, does the gentleman want time from me or time from them? Four quick points. The war supplemental, been working on it for a year. That is going to be done under the new baseline. Number two, CBO can score this on time. They have already told us they are going to give us simultaneous scores under the 2008 baseline. Number three, you have had plenty of time to do this. The CBO baseline has been out for 2 months. But number four, and lastly, this isn't an option, this isn't a choice. You don't have discretion. It's the rules. This is your PAYGO rules. So the question is: Are you going to violate your rules or not? I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I hereby give notice of my intention to offer a motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 2419, pursuant to clause 7(c) of rule XXI. The form of the motion is as follows: Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin moves that the managers on the part of the House on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 2419 be instructed, within the scope of the conference, to use the most recent baseline estimates supplied by the Congressional Budget Office when evaluating the costs of the provisions of the report.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I was absent for legislative business conducted on April 24, 2008, to attend the funeral of a fallen soldier who lost his life in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. As a result, I missed rollcall votes 220 through 223. Had I been present, I would have voted: ``Aye'' on rollcall vote 220--the Poe Amendment to H.R. 2830; ``Aye'' on rollcall vote 221--the McNerny Amendment to H.R. 2830; ``Aye'' on rollcall vote 222--the Motion to Recommit H.R. 2830 with instructions; and ``Aye'' on rollcall vote 223--Passage of H.R. 2830.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 7(c) of rule XXII, I hereby give notice of my intention to offer a motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 2419, the Food and Energy Security Act. The form of the motion is as follows: Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin moves that the managers on the part of the House on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 2419 be instructed, within the scope of the conference, to use the most recent baseline estimates supplied by the Congressional Budget Office when evaluating the costs of the provisions of the report.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Does the gentleman remember when we had a markup where the budget was written in the Budget Committee, and we had 36 amendments? Remember the different kinds of amendments we had, and the votes, we had votes on whether or not it's right to cut the child tax credit in half, whether it's right to bring back the marriage penalty, whether we should or should not raise income tax rates across the board for all income taxpayers. Vote after vote after vote, on all these taxes, and our friends on the other side of the aisle, the Democrats voted time over again to raise those taxes on individual tax rates. They voted specifically to cut the child tax credit in half. They voted specifically to bring back the marriage tax penalty. They voted specifically to raise income tax rates across the board, to bring back death taxes, to raise capital gains and dividends taxes. They did this so they could pass a budget that increased spending. I want to thank the gentleman from Florida, who has the most passion and who so well articulates the problems we have in America today. I want to thank you for your knowledge, your passion, and your understanding. I also want to just ask you if you recall all those votes and all those differences that we have seen here in just this Congress in this last short year.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. And I want to just thank you for all the leadership you've shown not only on this issue but that you've shown throughout your career. You fought the income tax in Tennessee. You're here fighting for lower taxes here in the U.S. Capital, and I want to thank you for all the leadership you have shown. And it's a pleasure for me to join you with this. I thought, given the comments recently by our majority leader about this year's budget, it would be fitting to go through the budget that we're talking about. The majority leader just said, in one of the publications printed here, that we don't need a budget conference report. Now, that's happened in the past. Under Republican leadership, when the Republicans ran the majority, there were a few times when the Republicans were unable to pass a budget. And you know what happens? No priorities are set. What happens when a budget is not passed, when a budget is not agreed to between the House and the Senate, is that only spending occurs or tax increases. And so there's no chance of fiscal discipline. There's no chance of putting us on a path to balancing the budget, to making sure we get rid of the deficit and pay down the debt. There's just spending. And 1 year into the majority, 1 year into the majority, they're now showing us that just 1 year in the majority they can't pass a budget. They don't have a plan to get us to a balanced budget. They don't have a map for the fiscal future of our country. But they can come to the floor with spending bills. They can come to the floor to spend more money. And in fact, they do have a plan. And this budget is not necessary to raise taxes. So I would like to talk about exactly what it is that they have been proposing, what it is our partners on the other side of the aisle have proposed. And if you take a look at what they proposed this year, it is the largest tax increase in American history. The biggest tax increase before this was back in 1993. That was a $241 billion tax increase. This tax increase that they're proposing now is a $683 billion tax increase. Now that is a big number. People probably want to know what does that number mean? It sounds big. It is going to do a lot. Well, here is exactly what they mean when they are talking about a $683 billion tax increase. They want ordinary income taxes to go up across the board. So for people who got an income tax rate cut, that is every income taxpayer in 2003, they are going to go up across the board. We are now going to make small businesses who file their taxes as ordinary income taxpayers at about a 40 percent tax rate. What is interesting is the people in the top tax bracket. We hear a lot of people running for President saying, we want the rich people to pay taxes. Guess what? Seventy-five percent of those who file in the top tax bracket are small businesses. They are not Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. They are small businesses who pay their taxes as individuals because that's the way small business taxation occurs in America. What's more to the point is the fact that 70 percent of our jobs in America come from small businesses. So they're saying, not only do we propose to raise income taxes across the board for all income taxpayers, also on the engine of economic growth and job creation in America is small businesses. They're also saying, we want to raise taxes on capital gains and dividends. Those are the taxes that affect the value of our 401(k) plans, our IRAs and our pensions. They also want to bring the death tax back into full force so that you pay taxes not once, not twice, not three times while you are living, but after you die as well. They also want to bring the marriage penalty back. We actually repealed the marriage penalty in 2003. They are proposing that it comes back in so they can spend that money on more government spending programs here in Washington. That hits taxpayers an average of $1,400 per married couple. They are also proposing to cut the child tax credit in half from $1,000 down to $500. That means a tax increase of $500 per child. And they are also proposing to get rid of the lower income tax bracket, which is a 10 percent bracket, to a 15 percent bracket.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I hope the people of Tennessee realize a big reason they don't have an income tax imposed upon them is because of Marsha Blackburn. You led that antitax fight in Tennessee to prevent a new income tax from being imposed on the people of Tennessee. And now in Congress you have led the fight up here to see that they can have the same kind of deductibility of their sales taxes as those of us who come from States that have income taxes have that deductibility. So I want to thank the gentlelady from Tennessee for being a champion of the Tennessee taxpayer. I am a Badger. I am a Wisconsin fan. I am a Packer fan. I am not a big Titan fan or a Volunteer fan, but I am a Marsha Blackburn fan because you fight for taxpayers. We need more people in Congress fighting for taxpayers, just like we have champions like the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Diaz-Balart, and Mr. Conaway from Texas. Texas has a lot of people who fight high taxes, but Mike Conaway is one of the guys leading here. I am glad we got together to set the record straight on the budget and on the fiscal path that we are on in this country, and set the record straight for what future lies before our children and grandchildren if we don't take our responsibilities here seriously and change our course. I want to thank the gentlelady for hosting this hour.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Yes.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Will the gentleman yield for a question?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. If the gentleman would yield, because we can pass amendments eliminating programs or cutting back wasteful spending. By the practice and the rules of this Congress, that money just gets spent somewhere else. I simply want to applaud the gentleman, I want to applaud him for coming up with a creative, innovative, idea to get these rules back to the world of common sense. Then we could actually go after wasteful spending, we actually save the money, and give it back to the taxpayer by lowering our deficit, than just finding other places to spend it, which is what happens today. I just want to thank him for taking on this very important fight.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I have explained this to constituents at home in Wisconsin and they are just dumbfounded. They think that if you come to the floor and bring an amendment to eliminate wasteful spending, let's just say we did an amendment to get rid of the $50 million Rain Forest Museum that is being built in Iowa City, Iowa. You could come to the floor and say, you know what? We probably shouldn't be spending our taxpayer dollars on this $50 million Rain Forest Museum, this rainforest in a bubble in Iowa. Let's not do that. We could pass that amendment and that $50 million couldn't go to that Rain Forest Museum. But by the way the rulings of our Congress work today, that $50 million won't be saved. It will be spent somewhere else in the government. Most people think, if you actually go and eliminate wasteful spending, you actually save the money, but that's not the system. It gets spent somewhere else by the rules, somewhere else in the Federal Government.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. That's right. And what the majority is basically proposing is they are going to deem this budget resolution. They are going to simply say that this is the resolution that we deem to be the case, and this is how we are going to manage the fiscal affairs of this Congress in this session. So we're planning on a big tax increase, and we're expecting it to happen because this is our plan, and now we're going to start spending the money. And I want to be fair to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They did bring a budget to the floor that does balance the budget. It does reach a balanced budget by 2012. The way and the method that it reaches a balanced budget by 2012 is this $683 billion tax increase. They only increased spending by $280 billion. But they increased taxes by $683 billion. So by raising taxes even more than all their spending increases, they are actually hitting a balanced budget. But take a look at who gets affected by this. I mentioned the actual tax policy that they're proposing with their big tax increase to fund some of their spending increases and to actually hit a balanced budget. But let me just say who is going to actually be affected in America by this. One hundred sixty million taxpayers will see an average increase of more than $1,800 per year, $3,000 per taxpayer in Wisconsin, more than 6 million low-income individuals and couples who currently pay no income taxes will no longer be exempt. A family of four earning $50,000 will see their taxes increase by $2,100. Approximately 48 million married couples will face this average tax increase of $3,000 per year. Low-income families with one or two children will no longer be eligible for the refundable tax credit. Roughly 12 million single women with children will see their taxes increase by $1,100 per year. About 18 million seniors will be subjected to tax increases of more than $2,100 per year. And the tax bill for an estimated 27 million small business owners will increase by more than $4,000 each. These are real people, real Americans, really hardworking people struggling to make ends meet. And these are real tax increases at a time when people are having a hard time just to make ends meet right now because of all these high prices, you see the price of food going up, groceries, gasoline, health care premiums, across the board. I just did a telephone townhall meeting the other night. So many constituents said, Congressman, my paycheck is not stretching as far. People's paychecks aren't going as far as they used to go. Inflation is before us. The consumer price index just reached a 4.3 percent increase. And so what we see happening right now is with all these price increases in gas, groceries and health care, people's paychecks are not going as far as they used to go. It is eroding the standard of living of people. We are possibly going into a recession. And the last thing we ought to be doing right now is raising all these taxes on all these hardworking Americans. We shouldn't be raising taxes on seniors. We shouldn't be raising taxes on people who get married. We shouldn't be raising taxes on parents with children. We shouldn't be raising taxes on small businesses. What we should be doing in Washington is controlling our spending appetite. And that's the problem. That's the problem with this budget that has passed the House. That's the problem with the budget that the other side of the aisle is planning. They don't want to control spending. They don't want to cut spending or even control it. They want to increase spending. In order to hit their commitment of a balanced budget, they will increase taxes even more than that. My fear is that this will take this possible recession we are going into and make it even worse, because people are having a hard time making their paychecks stretch as it is today. Take a look at what Republicans believe and at the budget we passed. This is just a simple graph. The red line is the line of revenues that the Democrats chose to pick on their way to a balanced budget. The green line is the path that we brought with our budget, the Republicans. What does that line do? It says that we are not going to raise taxes. We are not going to raise taxes on income, on families, on people with children, on seniors or on small businesses. And we're going to repeal this alternative minimum tax. And we're going to balance the budget faster and better by cutting and controlling spending. Because if you take a look at the real problem in our fiscal situation, it's really spending that drives our problems. And if I could just mention this one thing before I yield back to the gentlelady because I think we ought to have a conversation here, take a look at where we are today. And this chart is fairly confusing, but if you take a look at it, the blue line is the line that we want to be on, which is not raising taxes. The red line is the line that the Democrats are trying to propose, which is all these tax increases, the $683 billion we just articulated. The green is the future trajectory of spending. So even if you take all these Democrat tax increases, that will only give you a temporary balanced budget. Because if you don't address spending in Washington, if you don't address our entitlement programs, the spending path that we are on will swamp any level of taxes. We're going to go into permanent deficits and massive debt. So this notion that we can have a lasting balanced budget by just raising taxes is wrong. This notion that we should just raise taxes and increase spending is dangerous. And the reason that notion is dangerous is because spending is already out of control. And it is on a path that is really dangerous. If I could just briefly mention this, the budget resolution that the Democrats brought to the floor on just two programs increases the debt by $14 trillion on just two programs. By saying we are not interested in controlling spending, by saying we are not interested in controlling and reforming government or fixing our entitlement programs, just the debt to Social Security and Medicare goes up by $14 trillion under the Democrat's budget. That's just two programs. Every year we don't do anything to fix, save and make solvent Social Security and Medicare, we go another $2 trillion in debt just in those two programs. Our friends on the other side of the aisle are saying, instead of taking care of this $39 trillion debt we have with these two programs, we're going to raise it to $53 trillion. And that's wrong. We believe that the way to fix our fiscal problems is to let Americans keep more money in their paychecks. It's to protect their paychecks, stop the pork barrel spending, control spending, reform government and reform our entitlement programs. Because we owe it to the next generation to leave them better off than we were left off. That's what my mom and dad told me growing up, that the whole point of America, the legacy of this country, is that you leave the next generation safer and more prosperous with a better chance at a better standard of living. But for the first time in the history of our country, we have a real serious chance of severing that legacy, of discontinuing that tradition. Because if we give our kids and our grandkids the kind of debt that they are right now slated to get, and if we say for the next 5 years, as our friends on the other side of the aisle are now saying, we're not going to do anything to help that, we're not going to do anything to fix that, we are, in fact, going to add to the problem. We are going to raise taxes, increase spending and make it even worse for our children and grandchildren. We are going to sever that legacy. And our kids and our grandkids will not have a higher standard of living. They will not have a better government. They will not have more freedom in their lives. And they will not have more money in their paychecks. And if you want to just bring this point finally home, this is the chart that the General Accountability Office has given us. This shows us that what is unique about our budget and our fiscal history is that for the last 40 years, our government has been remarkably same in size. The Federal Government has had to take 18.3 cents out of every dollar earned in America. That is 18.3 percent of gross domestic product. So 18.3 cents on the dollar earned in America for the last 40 years is what Washington had to tax to pay for the Federal Government, to pay for everything, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, national defense, the Department of Education and the Department of Commerce. But what is happening is the baby boom generation is retiring. And the first baby boomer retired just a few months ago. She was a retired school teacher in Maryland who started collecting her Social Security benefits. And behind her are 77 million more retirees. And so the problem for our country is with what we call a pay-as-you-go system, where current workers pay their current taxes to support current beneficiaries, that works out fine if you have an equal number of beneficiaries, retirees and workers. But we are doubling our retirees. We are going from 40 million retirees to actually 78 million retirees. But we are only increasing our workers in this country by 17 percent. So there is about 100 percent increase in the retirees in this country in one generation, but only a 17 percent increase in taxpayers. So what does that do for our children? Well, I can tell you what it does for my children. My son, Sam, is 3 years old. My son, Charlie is 4. And my daughter, Liza, is 6. And by the time my three kids are exactly my age, exactly my age, they will have to pay 40 cents on the dollar just to keep today's Federal Government going for them at that time. That is exactly right. By the year 2040, today's Federal Government, which costs about 20 percent of GDP, 20 cents on the dollar, we are in deficit and raising about 18.8 percent, it is going to cost 40 percent. And that is if we do nothing. That is what it is all about. If we do nothing and we let government go on as it is, add no new programs, take none away, our government will double in size within one generation. So my children, instead of sending, like we are, about 18.3 cents on the dollar to Washington to pay the bills, will have to send 40 cents on the dollar to Washington to pay the bills, the bills we are giving them, the debt we are giving them. That is unsustainable. You can't win globalization. You can't compete with the likes of China and India. We are having a hard time doing that right now. You can't compete with the likes of China and India and Europe and Japan when you are taking 40 cents out of every dollar just for Washington, before you get to local government, State government, gas, groceries, healthcare. This is the future we are consigning our children and grandchildren to. And the budget that is before us today, the budget that the Democrats passed on the floor just this last moment, says, you know what? Here is our answer. Do more spending, more taxes. Make the problem worse. Increase the debt to two programs by just $14 trillion. It is irresponsible. It is wrong. It is going to sever this legacy to our children and grandchildren. We need to leave them with a better country, a safer country, a more prosperous country, one where they can compete and thrive and survive. I don't want to just have my children survive globalization. I want America to win globalization, to shape globalization, to make sure that our kids can have careers that they like, that they love, that they enjoy, so they have a higher standard of living. But in fact that is not what is going to happen if we don't get our fiscal house in order right now. If we sign on to these tax increases and these spending increases, what we will do in the short run is we will make the recession worse. We will take more money out of the paychecks of working Americans at a time when they are having a hard time staying afloat right now. We will put more debt on to the backs of our children by building up all the spending in the baseline around here. We need to say no to spending sometimes around here. There is one little easy piece of spending that I think we could say no to, and that is earmarks. Earmarks are what we call pork-barrel spending. Our budget, the Republican budget, not only balanced the budget by controlling spending and kept taxes low, but our budget said for one year, let's just have Congress say no earmarks for a year. No more pork for one year. A pork-free diet in Congress for just one year. Do you know what we can accomplish in our budget by saying no earmarks for one year and keep banking that money, carrying out those savings? We can make the per-child tax credit permanent, make it stay at $1,000. We can permanently repeal the marriage tax penalty and prevent that $1,400 average tax increase on married couples from happening, by just saying no pork for one year and saving that money. That is what our budget does. So the question on just the earmarks is, is it pork for Members of Congress, or is it paychecks for working Americans? We chose paychecks. Our friends on the other side of the aisle are choosing pork. That is wrong. So when you take a look at the short run, more pork, less money for people's paychecks. Higher taxes, less economic growth, more job loss, higher taxes on small businesses, on seniors, on families, on married people, on children, on people with children. What you are seeing is they are going to increase the debt. They are going to increase the already unsustainable path that we are on and this unsustainable debt we have today. This is why we take this seriously. This is why we come to the well of the House to say we need to get our fiscal house in order, and the other side is recklessly spending with abandon. Now, I want to say this as a Republican: Our party did not do a good job on this either as well in many instances. There are ways in which we should have done better. And that is why it is important for those of us who see what is going wrong to fix it. That is why it is important for us to have proposals to fix these things. So nobody is perfect in Washington. Republicans did too much spending, but Republicans look like fiscal scrooges compared to the Democrats today. They look like they are the austerity Congress compared to the Democrat Congress today, because the Democrat Congress today is putting no limits on anything. They are saying bring a budget to the floor and just bring up more spending, bring up the taxes, and let's just let our children and grandchildren pay the bill. That is wrong. So I want to thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee for her courageous leadership on this. It is not easy to say no to all of the people that come looking for spending. Most people who come to visit their Congressmen and their Congresswomen say we need more money for this, we need more money for that. Every time you say yes to that, it is more money out of the paychecks of working men and women in America. This Congress chose less money for paychecks, more money for Washington. I want to thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee for being strong and being a leader on this and for fighting those kinds of instincts, and being a voice in the wilderness for fiscal discipline. I appreciate that.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. As the gentleman knows, this is their money, and if they choose to withdraw their money for non-health care reasons, they pay taxes.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, why are we here? We're here because it's Tax Day and the majority decided they had to have a tax bill to come to the floor to pass on Tax Day. There are some good provisions in this bill. I want to talk about one provision that is not a good provision. That's what we call HSA substantiation. What that basically means is without a single hearing, the majority wants to bring these new red-taped complicated rules to health savings accounts so that every time somebody goes and makes a health care purchase that's under the deductible, they have to first get permission from their banker or from the government before they do it. That's essentially what substantiation does. Now, we've heard from banks, from the credit unions, from the NFIB and the small businesses. They're all saying, we're not going to do it anymore. We're not going to offer HSAs to our clients. Madam Speaker, the key with health savings accounts is that people can save tax free for their out-of-pocket health care savings. Why on earth would we want to bring a bill to the floor which we know will reduce the use of health savings accounts? The goal of this Congress ought to be to make health care more accessible and more affordable. Unfortunately, this bill goes in the wrong direction. So we want to inflict all of this red tape that we don't inflict on individual retirement accounts or on home equity lines of credits on this, and this will make it harder for people to save tax free for health care. It will tie them up in red tape. It will say to the banks and credit unions that offer these things, don't offer them anymore, and more to the point, we're doing this clumsy legislating without having had one hearing in the Ways and Means Committee. More to the point, Madam Speaker, is this. The market is already fulfilling the need to have better recordkeeping. The market is already showing us they can do this without this law. But if you impose this law, as this bill does, guess what's going to happen? People in rural America, people in some small towns, people in Janesville, Wisconsin, they won't be able to subscribe to this law. Their retailers don't have the technology that's being required here. So you're going to leave rural America, small town America out, and only urban areas can comply with this. This is not good legislating. This has not been seen through. No foresight. No hearings. More to the point, it's going to make it harder for people in rural and small towns to save tax tree for health care. It's going to make it harder for anybody to save tax free for health care. This is going to raise health care costs, and it is going to make it harder for patients to really get control of their health care destiny. And that is why this bill should be defeated. For this piece of policy alone, this bill should be defeated because it was not thought through. It was slammed in there at the last minute, and that is enough of a reason that on this day, on Tax Day, we should not be telling the American people, we're going to raise your taxes if you want to go buy health care. That's wrong, but that's what this bill does; and I think we should reject this bill for that reason alone.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I want to start off by complimenting the chairman of the committee and the ranking member of the committee, along with all the other members of the Foreign Affairs Committee for working in a bipartisan way to put together this compromise. We heard a very good fulfilling debate about the merits of PEPFAR. I, too, agree that the PEPFAR program is a very worthwhile program. So we agree that this is the right thing to do. The question is, should we more than double the authorization of this program? Now, the President's budget called for doing just that. And I think you can make a very good and compelling case that this program is so successful that it ought to be doubled. That's not what the underlying bill does. This underlying bill more than triples this program. I have three concerns about this tripling of this program. Number 1, the spending levels set out in this authorization bill are higher than the recipient countries can even accept. They can't absorb all of this money. We know this from the studies in the field. So even if we hit these authorization levels, we know that the recipient countries cannot even accept all of this money. They can't spend it that fast. Point Number 2, the Congressional Budget Office has told us that we couldn't even spend this money this fast. So why are we having this kind of an authorization level when our own Congressional Budget Office is telling us that it would take at least 10 years to spend down a $50 billion authorization? And that brings me to my third point, and that is the budget resolution that passed the floor just 2\1/2\ weeks ago. The Democratic budget resolution itself assumes the $30 billion level. The Democratic budget resolution assumes we're funding this at the President's request of $30 billion. In fact, the Democratic budget resolution has a lower level of funding for section 150, the Foreign Affairs program, than even the President's budget does. We don't know what cut they're talking about, but more to the point, why don't we defend the budget resolution that passed this very house 2\1/2\ weeks ago? Mr. Speaker, we support this program. I support this program. It's a good program. It has proven to work. By any metric, by any definition, it's impossible to deny the success of PEPFAR. The question is, should we be tripling a program when we know full well it breaks the budget resolution, it purports to spend money faster than we can even spend, and those who are receiving this money can't receive it nearly as fast as we're proposing. This recommit is not intended to kill this bill. This is a forthwith recommit. This recommit is very simple. It says, rather than funding it at $50 billion, let's fund it at $30 billion. That's the level called for on the Democratic budget resolution. That's the level called for in the President's budget. That's the level that independent experts have said can be justified. So this says go from 50 to 30 forthwith, that's all. I want to compliment the gentleman, the chairman of the committee, the ranking member of the committee, all of those who worked in a bipartisan basis for this very worthwhile program, but this is a time when we have fiscal problems in America. We have a deficit. We have a looming debt. We need to show discipline in Congress. We should not be tripling funding for programs that we know the recipients themselves cannot receive at this pace and we know from our own independent budget experts that we simply can't spend at this pace. Let's bring it back down to earth. Let's double it and keep it within reason. That is why we should pass this motion to recommit. I yield back the balance of my time.