Paul Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I am in its current form.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, if there was ever an equivalent of what we call a no-brainer in Congress, it is the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. Congress needs to bring this to the floor and pass this agreement. Why? Colombia already has free access to the U.S. market, but we don't have access to their market. Let me say that again. They already have free access to United States markets. We ought to be able to get the same fair trade in their market. Number two, Colombia is our ally in fighting the drug trade. It is a democracy that is in a tough neighborhood that is helping us defeat the narcoterrorists, helping us cut off the drugs. I had the pleasure of going to Colombia 3 weeks ago to see the progress, to see the democracy, to see the things they are doing to help individuals, to demilitarize the narcoterrorists and the paramilitary organizations. Colombia is lifting up their people from poverty. They are helping us in a difficult neighborhood. More important, for our Wisconsin soybean growers, corn growers, dairy producers and manufacturers, it will create more jobs in Wisconsin because we will be able to sell more of our products to Colombia if they treat us like we are treating them. That is why we should pass the free trade agreement with Colombia.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. The gentleman is right. Earmarks proliferated under Republican watch. You're right about that. Both parties are guilty. That is why we should have a moratorium and clean the system up.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Will the gentleman yield for a friendly point on that?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas, a senior member of the Budget Committee, (Mr. Hensarling).

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to make three points. The gentleman's revenue chart makes our point. After the dot-com bubble, we went into recession and revenues went down. After the tax cuts, and his own chart makes the point clear, revenues went up. Point number two, this budget, the Democratic budgets, has the single largest increase in the national debt in any given year in the history of the country. Point number three, Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman just acknowledged more or less, their budget raises taxes. We don't believe we should be raising taxes at a time when people are paying a lot just to live in a time when we're about to go into recession. With that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina, the vice-ranking member of the Budget Committee (Mr. Barrett).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds just to simply say to my friend from Illinois, cutting military benefits? Where did that one come from? Not true, not even anywhere in our budget. You know what? Medicare goes up, spending goes up. Education? Spending increases. I don't know where these cuts are coming from that he's talking about, but that's not in our budget. At this time, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia, our assistant minority whip, Mr. Cantor.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield myself 6 minutes, and I'm going address the House in the well. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I want to start off by thanking my friends from New Jersey and South Carolina. They did put together a credible budget that adds up. We did, too. Budgets are about priorities; they're about values; they're about what way you think the country should go on a fiscal ship. Let me walk through our budget and how it's different. Number one, my friend from New Jersey and the chairman himself said that by calling our budget that makes today's tax policy a permanent tax cut, I want to thank them for saying that. By keeping tax rates where they are today, which is what we propose, a tax cut, then the opposite of that is a tax increase. They have proven my point. Their budget raises taxes. Now, let me simply show you, Mr. Chairman. This red line is the baseline that the Democrats have chosen to adopt for their budget. This blue line is the baseline we've chosen on revenues to adopt for our budget. The blue line says, make the child tax credit permanent, repeal the marriage penalty forever, make the income tax rate not go up, keep the death tax repealed, keep the lowered tax rate on capital gains and dividends. What does the Democrat budget do? It raises taxes $683 billion on everybody, not just rich people. What do we do on the alternative minimum tax? Here's what the Democratic budget proposes to do: It proposes to patch it for a year by swapping it out with another tax increase. Then, by 2009, about 30 million people are going to get hit by it; 2010, 31 million people. On and on and on. We propose to make sure no new people get hit by the alternative minimum tax, then we phase it out completely. That's point two of what our budget achieves. Point three, and I think you're going to hear this a lot, we cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cutting here, cutting there. You hear this sort of legislative gobbledygook about function 920. Well, as we looked at the Democratic budget, we really couldn't find any savings, but we did, we found a sliver of savings in the budget. Where was that sliver of savings kept? Function 920. What matters in a budget resolution are two numbers, the discretionary number, the 302(a) we call that, we do that, and the direction to the committees, we do that. We do it just like the Democrats did it. That's how we wrote our budget. But there's a difference. You may not be able to see this. For those who are watching on TV, you may have to zoom in. The CBO baseline is the red line. The Republican substitute is the blue line. Not a huge gap of difference in spending. We are simply saying let's not spend that money as fast, and by controlling the growth and the increase in spending, we can make sure we don't raise taxes on the American people. We can repeal the alternative minimum tax. That's the difference in values between the two of us. Let me give it to you in a different way. What we Republicans are proposing to do is, instead of spending $15.82 trillion over the next 5 years, let's instead spend $15.32 trillion over the next 5 years. Don't spend 15.8, spend 15.3. What's the difference? We're not cutting the child tax credit in half. We're not bringing back the marriage tax penalty. We're not raising every single income tax payer's tax rates across the board. We're not raising the tax on pensions and 401(k)s by raising the tax on dividends and capital gains, and we're not going to keep taxing people when they die. At the end of the day, though, what are we doing for our children and our grandchildren? That's what we should be talking about in budgeting. Budgets are moral documents. There is a moral imperative before this country, before this Congress, and that moral imperative is, what are we doing for future generations? In just one program, in just one program, the Medicare program, one of the most important programs in the history of the Federal Government, the Democrats' budget proposes to increase its debt by $11 trillion. The debt for Medicare right now stands at $34 trillion; that's the unfunded liability. What are the Democrats doing by doing nothing, by going 5 years with blinders on? $45 trillion. That breaks down to $395,000 per household, each household would owe to make Medicare whole. What are we doing? We're reforming the program. We're making it work better. We're giving it changes that are needed so that we can make it sustainable, so we can save the program for the baby boomers. We lower the Medicare debt and unfunded liability by $11 trillion to 23. The Democrats raise the debt to Medicare alone by $11 trillion; we reduced it by $11 trillion. At the end of the day, it's about priorities. We also call for a 1-year moratorium on earmarks. We're simply saying, let's just take a time-out from pork for a year in Congress. What do we achieve with that? By not doing earmarks for 1 year and by saving that money in this budget, we can make sure we don't raise taxes on every household by $500 per child. We can make sure we don't return to the days of taxing people when they're married. Just those two things can be accomplished by saying ``no'' to earmarks for a year, having a time-out, saying let's have Democrats and Republicans from both parties from both the Senate and the House get together and figure out how to clean up this system and, in the meantime, save the money. So we don't tax people for having kids and we don't tax people for being married. At the end of the day, you're going to hear all this rhetoric about cuts, about devastation, about how wrong it is and how immoral it is. We're simply saying, instead of spending $15.8 trillion, spend $15.3 trillion. We're still increasing spending, but let's not increase it as fast as Washington has been spending it so we can save that money, so we can make sure we don't raise taxes on Americans. That's what our budget does.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, at this time, I yield myself 1 minute simply to praise the majority leader before he leaves because he has been a man who has sincerely discussed and talked about the need to reform entitlements most of his career. And we need to talk to each other more often. I want to praise him for his leadership on entitlements. I also want to say that this budget proposes to borrow more in one year from foreign governments than any has in history. Also, Mr. Chairman, let's take a look at the 2003 taxes.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, at this time I would like to yield 2 minutes to our minority whip, Mr. Blunt.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, at this time I would like to yield 1 minute to the esteemed minority leader, Mr. Boehner.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Will the gentleman yield on that point? This budget is a 1-year, for-the-rest-of-the-Congress moratorium.

Mr RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Reclaiming my time, my point is the Democrats' budget, the Spratt budget, has the single largest increase in national debt in any given year, which comes from largely foreign governments these days. My other point was I understand why my friends on the other side of the aisle are so dismissive of these tax cuts in 2003. Only three Democrats who are here today voted for them. All but three of them voted against them. They voted against reducing the marriage tax penalty. They voted against expanding the child tax credit. They voted against lowering tax rates across the board. They voted against lowering dividends and capital gains and repealing the death tax. I simply would say that, as this chart shows you, even after all of those tax cuts, look what happened. Receipts went up. Four straight years of income tax receipts increased. Do you know why? People went to work. They got jobs. They paid taxes. Economic growth, even at those lower tax rates. At this time, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman from Texas mentioned, we are not saying all earmarks are bad. Some of them are worthy. Some of them are vetted. Some of them fit within the proper role of the Federal Government. But a lot of them are bad. A lot of them are wasteful. A lot of them probably go outside of what most people think is the proper role of the Federal Government. The point is we don't have all the answers on how to make it work right. That's why we think we ought to have a commission of an equal number of Democrats, an equal number of Republicans, the Kingston-Wolf Commission is what everybody calls it, to figure out how to make these things work right so that Congress can regain the trust and confidence of the American people. But in the meantime, let's say ``no'' to these earmarks for a year. Let's do a moratorium. That's what we do. Do you know what we can accomplish by actually having a moratorium of earmarks for 1 year? By banking those savings, by saying ``no'' to earmarks for a year and carrying those savings in our budget, we can make sure that we're not going to cut the child tax credit in half; that we are not going to tax people for being married. We can make permanent the $1,000 per-child tax credit, the repeal of the marriage tax penalty. Let me just read along this list of earmarks that we have: an ode to Tom Daschle, a nice guy, former Senate majority leader, a $1 million earmark to create a center for Tom Daschle in South Dakota. Or we could look at the Hippie Museum. This one's been pretty well known, $1 million to commemorate hippies at Woodstock. Or we can look at the sailing earmark, they call it, a 65-foot catamaran sailing around Monterey Bay. It sounds like a fun thing to do. Why should people in Wisconsin pay their Federal taxes to pay for that? Or we could take a look at all the lists and lists and lists that go on. One of my personal favorites is the ``ferry to nowhere.'' That came from our side of the aisle, $50 million for a Navy expeditionary marine craft, just a ferry to go to a peninsula that serves 40 people. The point is, Mr. Chairman, we're not saying that Republicans are so much better than Democrats on all of this. We're saying Congress is broken in this area. Let's fix it. But in the meantime, let's save this money. Let's have a time out. Let's fix this problem so that we can regain the trust and take that money and do two really important things: let's not tax people for being married, and let's not raise taxes on American families by $500 per child. We can do those two things by simply saying ``no'' to earmarks this year. That's what our budget will do.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I thank the gentleman for yielding. And I thank the gentleman for all the work he has done on making us fiscally secure, being fiscally responsible, and bringing fiscal sanity to Congress. He's one of the leaders. Mr. Chairman, the problem in Washington is not that we have too little tax money coming in. The problem in Washington is spending is too high. Let me show you what this chart shows. It's a little complicated. The red line shows you the Democrats' line of higher taxes. The blue line shows you the revenue line that our budget will do, which is lower taxes. That's the difference of the marriage penalty, the child tax credit, income tax rates across the board, capital gains, dividends, the death taxes. The green line is the current spending trajectory that we are on. Let me describe what it looks like in just one program, as foreseen in the Democratic budget. Under the Democratic budget, the Medicare program today has an unfunded liability of $34 trillion. What does that mean per household, per family? Three hundred thousand dollars. Right now, every family in America would have to put in $300,000 just to make Medicare secure, just to make Medicare viable and solvent. Under the Democratic budget, they increase that debt by $11 trillion in just 5 years. This 5-year budget says that in 5 years, by the time their budget expires, it will be about a $400,000 burden to every single household in America. You can buy a pretty darn nice house for $400,000. Let me explain what this looks like across the board. And that's just one program where they're raising the debt by $11 trillion. This is the one that counts the most, Mr. Chairman. For the last 40 years, the Federal Government has been pretty consistent in how much money it has had to tax to pay for the Federal Government. Washington had had to tax about 18.3 cents on the dollar for every dollar made in America. About 18.3 cents of the dollar made in America went to pay for Washington. Well, because of the baby boomers, because of their retirement, this isn't a Democrat thing or a Republican thing. It's just what's happening in America, because we are doubling the amount of retirees we have in this country, we're going from 40 million retirees to 78 million retirees. And these programs are what we call pay-as-you-go, where current workers pay a current tax to finance the benefits for current beneficiaries. So I'm paying my payroll taxes and my income taxes for my mom, who's on Medicare and Social Security. That's the way the system works. And it works out well if you have an equal ratio of workers and beneficiaries, but we don't. The reason we don't is because our birth rates declined after the baby boomer generation. There's nothing wrong, nothing sinister about it. It's just that it is what it is. And so we're increasing our tax-consuming generation. We're increasing the beneficiaries by 100 percent, but we're only increasing the taxpayers by 17 percent. That, in a nutshell, is why we have this fiscal train wreck. That, in a nutshell, is why we're staring at these enormous debts in our country's future. What does that mean to the future of our country? What does that mean for our children and our grandchildren? I'll tell you what it means to my three children. My son Sam is 3, my son Charlie is 4, my daughter Liza is 6. By the time my three children are exactly my age, and I'm not the oldest guy around here, by the time they are my age, they will have to pay twice what we pay in taxes just to keep today's Federal Government going for them at that time. Let me say it a different way. Instead of taking 18.3 cents out of every dollar made in America today, when my three kids are my age, they're going to have to spend 40 cents on every dollar made in America just to pay the bills to the Federal Government. Mr. Chairman, we have real competition that we have staring us in the face. We have competition from India, from China. The age of the global economy is here with us whether we like it or not, it is here. You can't extend and give a prosperous Nation a higher standard of living to the next generation if we're doubling their taxes. If we say today it's 18 cents on the dollar and tomorrow it's 40 cents on the dollar, you can't give our children and grandchildren a chance at a great career at a higher standard of living in this new competitive era we're in. If we do go down this path, we're going to give more and more jobs to China, to India, to other countries. So we say what we ought to do is do what our employers want us to do. The people that sent us here to Congress want us to fix this problem. They want us to fulfill the mission of healthy retirement security and do it without bankrupting future generations, and do it so we can stay competitive in a global economy so that we can pass a better future on to future generations. That's why this budget should be defeated.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Reclaiming my time from the chairman of Financial Services, I'm not sure if he's on the same page as the chairman of the Budget Committee. The chairman of the Budget Committee is claiming that their budget balances the budget by 2012. I'll take him at his word, and actually it's correct. The Congressional Budget Office certifies that the Democratic budget does indeed balance in 2012. Here is how they certify it balances in 2012: by raising taxes. They simply cannot say on the one hand they're balancing the budget, and then on the other hand not raising taxes. Because the only way their budget balances is only by raising taxes. So, Mr. Chairman, don't listen to me. Listen to the 99 Senators who just voted this morning to validate everything I just said. Ninety-nine Senators, just a couple hours ago, voted for the Baucus amendment, the Democratic chairman of the Finance Committee's amendment, that said the tax increases in this budget are just a little too big; let's cut them in half. Let's reduce the tax increases by $341 billion. So it's only about a $300 billion tax increase. The Senate budget now has half the tax increase in it that this budget here does. My friends, the Progressives, I want to compliment them because they're bringing a budget to the floor that reflects the principles that respect their values, and they are putting their rhetoric where their mouth is by bringing a budget to the floor, and I want to commend my Progressive friends for doing that. That's what we all should be doing. You hear me criticizing the underlying budget. You hear me criticizing the Progressive budget. But we will be bringing our own budget to the floor in just a few minutes to show what we stand for; and what we stand for is controlling spending, is doing an earmark moratorium and saving that money. By just saying ``no'' to earmarks for a year, as our budget proposes to do, we can pay for making the child tax credit permanent, making the marriage penalty repeal permanent. Just those two things. So at the end of the day, Mr. Chairman, it's about choices. It is about values. Do we want pork, or do we want more money in paychecks of Americans? Pork or paychecks? We are going to vote for paychecks. And the reason we're going to vote for putting more money in people's paychecks, for protecting their paychecks, is because people's paychecks aren't stretching as far as they used to. You have high gas prices, high home health heating prices, high health care prices, high food prices. The last thing the American workers need today, the last thing American families need today is an average $3,000 tax increase. We shouldn't be taxing people because they're married. We shouldn't be raising taxes $500 per child. We shouldn't be making small businesses pay a higher tax rate than the largest corporations in America. Yet, that is exactly what the Democratic budget does. It's what the Progressive budget does as well. It's what the Congressional Black Caucus budget does as well. It's a difference of opinion. It's a difference of values. We think Washington spends too much money. And my friend from California, she was right when she said it is about morals; it is about values. And we have different ideas. We believe that the engine of economic growth, what makes America great, is its people, are the families, the workers, the small businesses, the entrepreneurs of America. We also believe we have a moral imperative to make right by future generations. You know, my parents told me that the legacy of America is you leave the next generation better off. You make them safer, more prosperous, and will to them a higher standard of living. We may sever that relationship because of the unsustainable past of our entitlement programs which each of these budgets makes worse. The Democratic budget, just in two programs, sends two programs, Medicare and Social Security, $14 trillion deeper in debt. That's wrong. That's giving our children and grandchildren a huge debt, a higher debt. We think we need to go the other direction. We need to reform these programs so it can fulfill the mission of health and retirement security, but do so while still guaranteeing our children and grandchildren get a better future, a more prosperous future, a higher standard of living. That's why we should vote ``no'' on all of these budgets.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Oh, well, that's different than what the Budget chairman says.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. My question was, Does the budget achieve balance in 2012?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I wish my friend from Massachusetts would have stayed at the mike. I simply want to ask if the Democratic budget balances the budget, if it achieves balance. Would the gentleman care to answer the question if the Democratic budget achieves balance in 2012?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I don't know what kind of statistical contortion must have gone through producing that last chart. We just finished 52 consecutive months of job growth, the largest expansion in our Nation's history. But more to the point is this issue of whether we are raising taxes here or not, because we need to be honest with the American people. The underlying Democratic budget, don't take my word for it, it raises taxes. Take the Senate's word for it. Because just this morning on a 99-1 vote in the U.S. Senate, they rejected the logic of this budget. They said we want to preserve the middle-class tax cuts, which they define as the kid credit and the marriage penalty and 10 percent bracket and some others. But they changed the budget by $341 billion to prevent $341 billion of the $683 billion tax increase from taking place. So don't take my word for it, but the Democrats and the Republicans in the Senate. All but one person said we should not raise taxes as much as the House Democrats are raising taxes; let's raise taxes half as much. So the point is this: our friends on the other side of the aisle can come up with reserve funds and senses of Congress and preferences and hopes and dreams and aspirations. But what counts is what you put in the budget. And if you are coming to the floor and saying you are balancing the budget, by the way this budget is written, it only does so by giving us the largest tax increase in American history. No sense of Congress, no empty reserve fund can change that fact. Don't listen to me. Listen to the fact that the Senate looked at this same budget and said, that is not what we want to do. We want to preserve some of these tax cuts, and they just voted 99-1 to do just that. They decided to raise taxes half as much as the Democrats here in the House are doing. So what really matters are budgets, because that is the numbers. They don't lie. This budget that we are voting on, this underlying budget, gives us the largest tax increase in American history. Let me read a few of them: Some 116 million taxpayers will see an average tax increase of more than $1,800 per year. More than 6 million low-income individuals and couples who currently pay no taxes will be no longer exempt. A family of four earning $50,000 will see their taxes increase by $2,100. Approximately 48 million married couples will face an average tax increase of $3,000 per year. Low-income families with one or two children will no longer be eligible for the refundable child tax credit. Roughly 12 million single women with children will see their taxes increase by $1,100 a year. About 18 million seniors will be subjected to tax increases of more than $2,100 a year. Tax bills for an estimated 27 million small business owners will increase by more than $4,000 each. That is what the underlying Democratic budget does. It was rejected in the Democratically controlled Senate. It ought to be rejected in this House here today.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I thank the gentleman for yielding. First off, Mr. Chairman, I would like to congratulate the gentlewoman from Michigan and the gentleman from Virginia. The gentleman from Virginia is a knowledgeable man who's very sincere, who understands the budget process, and I want to congratulate you for bringing a budget to the floor. It's not easy to write a budget resolution, and it's important to bring a budget to the floor that reflects your priorities. So first of all, to the CBC, I simply want to congratulate you and your staff for doing this because that's how a debate works here. It's not enough just to criticize; it's important to propose things. Now for the criticizing part. I simply want to talk about the underlying Democratic Party budget. And there was a debate yesterday about this for a number of hours, whether there's a tax increase in the Democrats' budget or not. Well, when we hear the Democrat chairman say that they are balancing the budget, that is what their budget does. It is certified by the Congressional Budget Office as actually achieving balance. So we need to accept the fact that their budget does balance. There's only one reason, there's only one way that it balances. It does so by passing the largest tax increase in American history. Now, here's what they do with their budget: this red line, which is what we call the Congressional Budget Office baseline, that is the line they use to show that they are achieving a balanced budget. The green line here says here's what the line would be if you don't raise taxes, if you keep the marriage penalty repealed, if you don't raise the child tax credit, and so on. This is the difference between the two budgets. So when we hear our friends on the other side of the aisle say, We're balancing the budget and we're not raising taxes, they can't have it both ways. It's simply not correct. It's simply untrue. You can't, on the one hand, say you're balancing the budget, which by very definition requires by their math you raise taxes in order to achieve balance, and then not say you're raising taxes. The question is this: What taxes are we talking about? Are these taxes that just hit wealthy people? No. Everybody who pays income tax rates will see a giant tax increase. All income tax rates will be increased under the Democratic budget. The per child tax credit will get cut in half, from $1,000 per child to $500 per child. That means every family in America will see a $500 per child tax increase. The marriage penalty will come back in full force. That hits people, on average, $1,400 for married couples. Capital gains and dividends tax, which is the tax on our pensions and our 401(k)s, that goes on. And the death tax comes back in full force. The question before us now, Mr. Chairman, is this: We are almost going into a recession. We are clearly in an economic downturn. Is this the time for a tax increase? I think the answer is no. The other question is this: We have high prices. It costs a lot to fill the gas tank today. It costs a lot to send kids to school. It costs a lot of money for health insurance. Where I come from in Wisconsin, it costs a lot to heat your home. So the real question for this Congress here and for the American people is, Can you afford the Democrats' tax hike? Can you afford the massive tax increases? We are paying higher prices for everything in America today. Our paychecks for working men and women in America aren't going as far as they used to go. So at this time can we afford this tax increase? We think there's a better way. And in 2 hours we will be showing the American people the better way we think we ought to go, and that is let's balance the budget, but let's do it not by raising taxes but by controlling spending. The big problem I also see with the Democratic budget in addition to that it has the largest tax increase in history is that it doesn't think there is any waste in Washington. They believe we should keep earmarking this place. They believe there is no room to find waste, fraud, abuse and inefficiencies in government. We disagree. We think that there is waste in Washington. We think that there is fraud in the way our taxpayer dollars are being spent. And we think we ought to say this earmark system is coming unglued. This earmarking system needs to be cleaned up. All this pork, 11,000 pieces of which left this Congress last year, to the tune of $14.9 billion. Let's say stop it for this year and let's clean it up. Let's have a bipartisan commission, clean up the way Congress porks this place up. Save that money. Reduce the deficit. Make sure we don't raise taxes and clean up the way Congress spends taxpayer dollars. By simply saying no to pork this year and banking that savings in this budget, we can make sure that that per child tax credit stays. We can make sure that people don't pay higher taxes by virtue of simply being married. Those are the choices we have before us today. We in the Republican budget say no more pork. Let's protect paychecks, and let's make sure we are not taxing people for having children or for getting married. That's the values we have in our budget. And we think we can go farther and say, let's reform government. Let's reform spending. Let's clean it up. Let's not raise taxes.