Paul Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

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

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, at this time, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. McCrery of Louisiana.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time, Mr. Chair, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Lungren.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, we are coming to the end of 2 days of debate on how to organize our Nation's finances; how do we want to prepare the budget for the next 5 years for our country. This is a big debate. It is a debate that really underscores the different philosophies between our two parties. The Democrats have chosen the path of higher spending and a lot higher taxes. The three Democrat budgets we had before us here on the floor today, one raised taxes by $400 billion, another raised taxes by $711 billion and a third one raised taxes by $949 billion. The last tax increase we had was the last time the Democrats had the majority, and that was a $241 billion tax increase. Now, 3 months into their new majority, they are proposing anywhere from a $400 billion to a $1 trillion tax increase. We don't believe that we should take more money out of the pockets of hardworking Americans. We don't believe we should tax, tax, tax and then tax more the American economy and the American family and the American workers. We believe Washington has a spending problem, and that is why we are proposing to control spending, and that is how we achieve the balanced budget. Not only do we achieve a balanced budget, but we stop the raid of the Social Security trust fund and pay down $100 billion in debt in the fifth year of our budget. Now, here is the difference. The blue line is our line, the revenue line, where we keep the tax cuts intact. The red line is the line where the Democrats raise the taxes. The green line is the current trajectory of spending. We have to control spending if we are going to ever fully balance the budget. Even if we accept the Democrats' tax increases, the balance they achieve in 5 years will only last for a couple of short years because we will go right back into deficits if we do nothing to control spending. Now, you are going to hear a lot of words about our budget in the next few minutes. Cut this, cut that, we are savaging this, we are taking a chain saw to that. We are pitting Medicare and Medicaid. Let's be really clear. Medicare, spending goes up every year from here to the next to the next. Medicaid spending under our budget will go up faster than health care inflation. But we are going to reform the program so that it works better, doesn't cost as much, and extends its solvency so that it is there for people. Medicare. Are we cutting Medicare? No, we are not cutting Medicare. We are growing Medicare. We are growing Medicare, not as fast as it is currently scheduled to grow because we are reforming Medicare. And what do we do? We extend the solvency of Medicare. Overall, if you take a look at the difference in spending we propose over the next 5 years, on entitlement spending we propose growing, increasing, adding entitlement spending at 4.1 percent a year for the next 5 years, instead of 4.7 percent a year. Now, at the end of the day, it is about how we get our fiscal house in order. Here is the devastation of the Democrat budget. And I am just going to pick one program. Medicare, the unfunded liability of Medicare is $32 trillion. $32 trillion is how much money we would have to set aside today in current dollars to make sure that Medicare is there for my children when they receive Medicare. Under the Democrat budget, the Medicare unfunded liability will go to $52 trillion. That means doing nothing to reform Medicare. Doing nothing to reform Medicare at all will actually lead to adding a huge debt onto the problem. It will mean that our children and grandchildren will have another $22 trillion in debt thrown onto them if we decide not to do a thing for the next 5 years to reform our entitlement programs. But that, in fact, is what the Democrat budget does. The actual household burden today on Medicare is $282,400. That is what we would have to set aside today, per household, to make sure Medicare is there for my children when they retire. If we do nothing for the next 5 years, as the Democrats propose, that goes up to almost $476,000 a household. We have got to fix these programs. We have got to reform these programs. We have got to reform them so that they work better. They were written in the 1960s. We are now in the 21st century. We can make these programs work better. We can better meet the mission of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, income security, health security; and we can do it without bankrupting our children. The problem is, we can't put our heads in the sand for 5 years and do nothing. That is what the Democrat budget proposes to do. Absolutely no savings, no spending control, no reform. We have to reform these programs, Mr. Chairman, because if we don't, our debt gets higher. We go back into deficits, and there isn't another tax you can raise to get out of that hole. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to thank the gentleman from Texas for his wonderful expertise on budget issues. He has been a leader on this issue. I also want to compliment the Progressive Caucus for coming to the floor with an earnest budget and for putting a budget together. These are not easy things to do. The Progressives have put together a budget that embodies their philosophies, their opinions, and I think that is good. I completely disagree with the direction of the budget, deep cuts to defense, incredible increases in spending across the board, and a $949 billion tax increase. I think it is the wrong recipe for our economy, but I compliment the Progressives for bringing a budget to the floor that actually achieves balance, albeit by raising taxes. Madam Chair, I want to give a little foreshadowing of our next budget. You are going to hear the word ``cut'' and the words ``drastic cuts'' and things like that. I think we are going to hear that from the other side of the aisle because they propose to control no spending. Those chose to cut nothing, not even controlling the growth of spending. Rather, they choose to raise taxes. On Medicaid, our budget will propose, yes, to increase spending, albeit not as fast as it is going right now. This will extend the solvency of Medicaid. We propose to increase spending even faster than medical inflation. What about Medicare? Again, our red line below the blue line, we propose to increase Medicare spending and reform the program. What will our budget achieve? It will achieve savings that will extend the life and solvency of Medicare. What does the Democrat budget achieve? An exacerbation of the problem. Here is what our budget proposes to do on all entitlements. I don't even know if the viewer can see the difference between the blue line, which is the current trajectory of entitlement spending, and the red line. We propose to increase entitlement spending each year at 4.1 percent a year, instead of 4.7 percent a year. Is that a drastic cut? Is that a terrible, awful cut to programs? Let me repeat it one more time. We are increasing entitlement spending 4.1 percent a year, instead of 4.7 percent. That is above inflation. Here is the legacy of the Democrat budget. Right now, today, according to the Government Accountability Office, the current unfunded liability of Medicare and Social Security is $37 trillion. That will go to $62 trillion of money that we would have to set aside today to make these programs work for the next two generations, my generation and my children's generation, by 2012. By doing nothing to save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the Democratic budget is actually increasing the liability of these programs. The Democrat budget is making matters worse by postponing the necessary reforms that must occur. But there is one thing the Democrat budget does, and it was very well described in the Washington Post this morning. Let me quote: ``While the House Democrats say they want to preserve key parts of Bush's signature tax cuts, they project a surplus in 2012 only by assuming that all of these tax cuts expire on schedule in 2010.'' That means cap gains, dividends, income tax rates, per child tax credit, marriage tax penalty, all of those tax cuts go away. Let me make it very clear. We use the Congressional Budget Office by law to develop our budgets, and this red line shows you that, in 2010, tax cuts go away, taxes increase, and revenues go up. That is the line that the Democrats are writing their budget based on. Their budget requires, assumes, legislates, needs these tax increases for them to balance the budget. The green line is the line we use to write our budget. We balance the budget without raising taxes, and they raise taxes.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Chair, I wish to compliment the Congressional Black Caucus with their budget today because they are bringing a serious budget to the floor. They are bringing a budget that does achieve balance. They are bringing a budget that reflects their philosophies and their policies, and that is important. I commend the Black Caucus under the leadership of Ms. Kilpatrick for that. This is what we do. We come to the floor with our budgets to encapsulate our priorities and what are the visions we have for the future of our country. This budget does raise taxes. You simply can't get around the fact that it calls for $711.9 billion in additional tax revenues over the next 5 years to make the budget balance. But that is fine. I wish to talk, at this time, about the underlying Democrat budget. And let me just quote from The Washington Post this morning. The article in The Washington Post this morning, in talking about the Democrat budget says: ``And while the House Democrats say they want to preserve key parts of Bush's signature tax cuts, they project a surplus in 2012 only by assuming that all of these tax cuts expire on schedule in 2010.'' Now, we understand that people say, on the other side of the aisle, they don't want to raise taxes. I hear those words. I even hear that they say they have these sort of mythical reserve funds, which is really nothing more than a wish list. So we had all these votes in the Budget Committee. We said, okay, if you really don't want to raise these taxes, then let's put it into the budget. Let's make it clear. Let's put it into the numbers of the budget so that we clearly can tell the American people we are not going to raise your taxes. So we had a whole series of votes in the Budget Committee to amend the budget to make sure taxes weren't being raised. We had an amendment to make sure that we didn't increase marginal tax rates. We had an amendment to make sure we didn't eliminate the $1,000 per-child tax credit. We had an amendment to make sure we didn't eliminate marriage tax penalty relief. We had an amendment to make sure we didn't eliminate the capital gains and dividends tax relief. We had an amendment to make sure we didn't eliminate the State and local sales tax relief which applies to States like Texas and Tennessee and Florida. We had an amendment to make sure we didn't bring back the death tax. Amendment after amendment after amendment, which would have made this clear and simple that we weren't going to raise taxes was defeated, every single one of them, by party-line votes. The Democrats defeated every single amendment in attempts to stop these tax increases from coming into this budget. Now, let's take a look at what kind of tax increases we are talking about. The Democrat budget only reaches balance because of this. This is how their budget achieves balance. They have $32.5 billion in higher taxes coming from higher tax rates on dividends and capital gains. They have $40 billion in higher revenues because they cut in half the per child tax credit. They bring back the marriage tax penalty, which makes people pay taxes simply because they are married. They get $91 billion in extra tax revenues by bringing the death tax back in full force, and they gain another $78 billion by taking away the lower 10 percent bracket for low-income Americans. They bring into the government an extra $104 billion by raising all other marginal tax rates, and that is also the tax rate that small businesses pay. So small businesses, which are the engine of economic growth of America, and most jobs come from small businesses, under their plan small businesses will pay a tax rate at about 40 percent, when we are going to actually be giving a tax rate to the largest companies in America, IBM, Exxon, Microsoft, at 35 percent. This is how their budget balances: Raise taxes on businesses, raise taxes on small businesses, raise taxes on investment in seniors' pension funds, raise taxes on people with children, raise taxes on people who get married, raise taxes on people who die, and raise taxes on low-income Americans. That is the only way, the only reason, the only ability that the Democrat budgets actually achieve balance. We can do better, Madam Chairman, and the reason we can do better is because we have to attack out-of-control spending. Washington does not have a revenue problem, Madam Chairman. Money is coming in as fast as it ever has. Money is going out too fast. Both parties are to blame for this. I am not going to be here and sanctimoniously say that our party has been wonderful on spending. No, we have not. What I am saying is we have to agree spending is out of control. That is the problem. Let's control spending. The budget we are bringing to the floor later on does just that. We give the tools to get rid of pork. We give the tools to let the American people see exactly how their tax dollars are being spent. We bring more accountability and transparency to the Federal budget process. We reform our entitlement programs so we can extend their solvency, so we can make sure that people can better count on Medicare and Medicaid. These are the things that we have got to do so we don't crank up our debt, raise our taxes, and put a huge burden on our children and grandchildren.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I will take a little time on our side to try and catch up. I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter), a member of the Budget Committee and the distinguished chairman of the Republican Policy Committee.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. McHenry).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, at this time, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from the House Budget Committee, Mr. Smith from Nebraska.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the chairman of the RSC, a distinguished member of House Budget Committee, Mr. Hensarling from Texas.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to a distinguished member of the Budget Committee, a member who has great financial expertise, the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, at this time I yield myself 1 minute just to read some clarifying language, which is in the Democrats' budget. At the end of these reserve funds, so called, for middle income taxpayers, it says we want to provide this tax relief, but only to the extent that such bills or joint resolutions in the form placed before the House in the Committee on Rules would not increase the deficit or decrease the surplus for fiscal years 2007 through 2012. Then, in section 401, where they talk about these tax extensions as a statement of their policy preferences, they assume that the cost of such a policy is offset. What does that mean? That means they are not covering the tax cuts. That means if you want to extend these tax cuts, they would have to pay for them on top of raising these taxes. What this budget resolution also does, if you simply merely want to extend this tax relief, that is past 2010, you would have to come up with more tax increases to do so. This prohibits the ability of Congress to simply extend this tax relief, thereby bringing these tax increases to a curve. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Barrett).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, the numbers are very, very clear. The numbers, equivocally, have the largest tax increase in the American history. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1\2/3\ minutes. I would simply say the gentleman from North Dakota represents a State that pays a lot of capital gains tax and farm income, death taxes. Under this bill, the average household of North Dakota will see a tax increase annually of $2,613, which had 244,000 taxpayers. In the State of Georgia, the gentleman just spoke, that State will see an average household tax increase per year of $2,743, which will hit 3,132,000 taxpayers. If this budget doesn't raise taxes, then why is it that the Democrats shot down every single amendment that was offered to prevent all of these tax increases? If you really believe it doesn't raise taxes, then why would you prevent us from adjusting the numbers to make sure it didn't raise taxes? You can read any word you want. You can read any word you want of these so-called reserve funds. At the end of each of these reserve funds, it says, well, we got to come up with offsets to pay for these priorities. We don't want to raise these taxes. We want to extend the child tax credit, but they are not paid for. Actions are louder than words. More importantly, numbers are louder than words. Announcement By the Acting Chairman

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I thank the Chair.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, if I may just interject, may I just inquire as to how much time is on each side remaining?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield myself 30 seconds, Mr. Chairman, only to say that I can't understand how you can say that their budget lowers taxes, let alone doesn't raise taxes. You can't have it both ways. Either you are raising taxes and balancing the budget or you are not raising taxes and not balancing the budget. It is mathematically impossible for the other side to say they are balancing the budget and not raising taxes. With that, I yield 6 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, Mr. Buyer of Indiana. (Mr. BUYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. The gentlewoman from Oregon who just spoke, the tax increase in this budget would hit the average Oregon household with an annual tax increase of $2,751 which would affect 1,336,000 taxpayers in that State alone. I would like to take a moment to compliment my colleagues on the other side on the veterans' portion of the budget. They do add more resources for veterans, to veterans' health care. They do meet the President's numbers on defense. This is a part of their budget that I would like to compliment them on. We, too, in our substitute, will add additional resources to veterans and veterans' health care. This is an area where I think they have made some improvements over the President's budget in their budget. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bonner).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time I yield myself 20 seconds to say, the gentleman from Virginia who just spoke, Mr. Chairman, according to the numbers in this budget, that State will have an average household tax increase of $3,119; and this will hit another 2,958,000 taxpayers in the State of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway).