Paul Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, today, I take to the floor to reluctantly cast my vote against H.R. 5449. Although I deeply admire the hard work performed by our Nation's air traffic controllers and support their efforts to negotiate a fair contract, I cannot support this legislation. I believe that this bill goes too far and needlessly picks a winner and a loser between the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Association of Air Traffic Controllers, NATCA. In addition, this bill will completely remove congressional oversight from this process. No workers, regardless of their profession, should be forced to accept a contract without having a chance to negotiate the terms. I believe the existing negotiating framework between the FAA and the air traffic controllers is broken and needs to be fixed. That is why I not only cosponsored H.R. 4755, the Federal Aviation Administration Fair Labor Management Dispute Resolution Act, but sent a letter to the Speaker asking for a floor vote on this bill. H.R. 4755 would have prevented the FAA from instituting one-sided, unilateral contract terms on the labor union. If negotiations were to stall, Congress would have 60 days to review the FAA's last proposal and then decide whether or not more negotiations were necessary. The bill would have prevented air traffic controllers from having to accept a contract they clearly rejected, while at the same time ensuring that negotiations did not remain deadlocked. I supported H.R. 4755 then and I support it now. Unfortunately, this is not the bill that has been brought to the floor today. H.R. 5449 goes too far and needlessly puts Congress in the position of picking a winner and a loser in this debate. While I agree that the current process is flawed, the role of Congress is to reform the system, not to circumvent it. This bill would further hinder negotiations, prevent real progress from being made, and remove Congress from the process. For these reasons, I cannot support this bill.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to support the Milk Income Loss Contract Program (MILC). Created under the 2002 Farm Bill, the MILC program has been a major success for Wisconsin dairy farmers. I believe it is inherently unfair to set the expiration date of the MILC program one month before the expiration of other farm bill programs. MILC should be on a level playing field with all other commodity programs, so that it will be dealt with equitably under the 2007 Farm Bill.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), an esteemed member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, on unpatriotic, irresponsible, immoral, wow, those are big words. First, a couple of facts. Veterans spending, defense spending, homeland security spending, they are increased in the budget. They are not cut. They are not savagely cut. Increased. Let us talk about the differences between the Spratt Democrat substitute and the majority budget that is on the floor here today. Number one, we believe it is important that we reform government. Just because we take our taxpayer dollars and spend them on government programs does not mean we cannot always look at reforming government. That is why this budget proposes reconciliation, going and looking and trying to find savings on the 60 percent of the Federal budget that is entitlement. They do not even touch that part of the budget. We are saying let us do it every year. That is important reform, number one. Number two, we are trying to bring some common sense to the emergency spending process. Far too long in Congress, Congress has been able to declare virtually anything an emergency. Not anymore. We are saying if we are going to do emergency spending, it has to fit a tight definition of what truly is an emergency, an act of terrorism, a natural disaster, an act of war, things like that. And more importantly, Mr. Chairman, we are going to budget for those emergencies because we always know that there is going to be that hurricane, that tornado, or that flood. That is smart and prudent budgeting. That is what we do. The Democrat substitute doesn't do any of that. But where is the real difference? The real difference is this: we believe that the money that is made in America is the individual's money. We believe that the fruit of the labor of people who are working hard and paying taxes is theirs. It is their money. That is different from the premise on the other side of the aisle. Let me explain it. One of the great things we accomplished in the 2003 tax cuts were that we saw that the vast majority of income tax ratepayers, the top ratepayers, were small businesses; yet we were taxing them at 40 percent when we were taxing IBM, Microsoft, and Exxon at 35 percent. So we lowered that tax rate on small businesses, on entrepreneurs, on family businesses and on farmers so they are at least not paying more taxes than the largest corporations in America. What did the Democrats decide to do? Raise those taxes. Let's make sure we raise taxes on family farmers, raise taxes on small businesses so that that small business in America, the job-creating engine of America, pays higher taxes than Exxon and Microsoft and IBM. That is wrong. I think that is immoral. I think that is irresponsible. Yet that is what they are proposing to do. You know what they are saying to the rest of America? You know what they are saying to the families that are getting a per-child tax credit, people who are married and who aren't paying a marriage penalty any more, people who are trying to save to send their kids to school, people who are saving for their IRAs or their pensions or their 401(k)s? You know what they are saying? They are saying to those people, if you don't want a massive tax increase, if you don't want a huge tax increase, we have to make sure we go after deadbeat tax cheats. And if we can collect more money from tax cheats, then we won't raise your taxes. But if the government can't collect money from tax cheats, if the IRS can't do a good enough job and go get an extra $772 billion, then we are going to raise your taxes. That is what their budget proposal is. And on top of that, they propose even more spending. Reject tax increases, reject high spending, and, Mr. Chairman, let us hold the line on domestic spending. Let's fund our veterans, let's protect our troops, let's support the war on terror, and let's not raise taxes. Defeat the Spratt substitute and support the majority budget.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Mr. Nussle.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I also want to thank Mr. Hensarling for his leadership on budget reform. It is a pleasure to be a coauthor of the Family Budget Protection Act with him. Mr. Chairman, budgets are about values. Budgets are about priorities, governing philosophies. What this Republican Study Committee budget does, what this Contract with America budget, renewed, does is express our values that the nucleus of the American economy and the American society is the individual. It is the families. It is not the government. What this budget recognizes is that it is entirely possible not to cut the deficit in half in 5 years. It is entirely pragmatic and possible to eliminate the deficit in 5 years. What we are simply proposing to do is what Congress tried to do and did in 1995. It is not a ridiculous proposition that we can restrain the growth in government to eliminate the deficit in 5 years. We can keep taxes low, and we can restrain the growth of government to do this and reform the entitlements that are in desperate need of reform. I compliment the gentleman on this budget. I urge its adoption.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I would like to analyze this budget in several different ways. First of all, I want to compliment the Member from South Carolina for bringing the substitute to the floor. That is an important first step, because without competing ideas and competing budgets, we cannot really have a good debate here. But what is this substitute we are dealing with right here? Number one, if you take a look at this substitute, it has enormous tax increases in it, and that is okay. It just defines the difference between the two parties and the two philosophies that we have. Why does it have what I just said? Well, this budget claims to want to extend the extension of the child tax credit, extend the marriage penalty relief, 10 percent individual tax bracket, alternative minimum tax rate, estate tax relief, research and development tax credit, extension for the deduction of State and local sales taxes, marriage penalty, all of the kinds of things that we passed in the 2003 tax cuts that we all think are good ideas. But the question, Mr. Chairman, is do they pay for it? No, they do not. They claim in their budget they have $150 billion set aside for this. Well, if you add up the costs, if you add up what it would take to continue this tax relief, that is $922 billion. So they put in $150 billion in the budget for this tax policy, when it costs $922 billion. Where do they make up the difference? How do they come up with this $772 billion difference? Well, that is the little asterisk that they have on their budget. That is the little footnote that they have on their budget. That is the tax gap. What they propose to do is simply this: If we just give the IRS some more money, if we hire more IRS agents, audit more Americans, and crack down harder on enforcement of the Tax Code, we will get this $772 billion. So just trust us, the budget adds up. We know we are only setting aside $150 billion for the $922 billion of tax cuts we would like to pay for in this budget. So to make up the difference, we are just going to send the IRS after more people, and that is how we make up the additional $772 billion. Now, the other question you want to ask is, well, are they being more frugal with the taxpayer dollars? Are they spending less money? Well, no this budget does not do this either. This budget spends more money than the majority budget, than the proposed budget. This budget spends $139 billion more. Well, where do they spend that money? We have heard a lot of talk here on the floor about the need to support our troops. We need to support our soldiers. We need to invest in science and basic research. We need more mathematicians, more scientists to compete in the global economy and globalization. Those are not extra funding in this budget. What about our veterans? Our veterans are returning from our wars, from Iraq and Afghanistan, coming back from other tours of duty. We need to work on our veterans. They do not propose any additional veterans spending over the base budget in here. They have $139 billion of more spending in other areas. So they are not proposing more money for veterans, for science, for defense, which we believe are the top priorities. They are basically sticking with our numbers. Mr. Chairman, I think what you have here is the same old same old: more spending, higher taxes, and a budget that just does not add up. Mr. Chairman, I think the base budget that we are passing here today is a good budget. I prefer to do less on spending. I was here speaking on the Contract with America renewed budget, the Study Committee budget, just a moment ago. But this budget honors our commitment to our troops, honors our commitment to our veterans, makes sure that we do think about the global economy and invest in basic research and science, and, more importantly, this budget budgets for that tax policy so our constituents, the American economy and the American taxpayer does not get stuck with higher taxes. Gasoline is $3 a gallon. The cost of living is high in America because health insurance premiums are going up double digits a year. The last thing the American taxpayer needs is a tax increase. Yet if this budget were to pass, something tells me that these IRS agents, as smart as they are, as aggressive as they are, as good at doing audits as they may be, these IRS agents are not going to go out and get another $772 billion to make up and fill this hole to prevent those big tax increases from hitting the American people, from hitting the American economy. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. This is Pat Toomey, President of Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group. He was one of the most conservative Members of Congress for many years here, I believe, all through the nineties. Here is Pat Toomey in the Philadelphia Inquirer last Monday: ``Republicans have abandoned the principles of limited government and fiscal discipline that historically have united Republicans and energized the Republican base. Too many Republicans have gotten too comfortable in office.'' That is Pat Toomey. That is not Tim Ryan. That is not Kendrick Meek. Mr. Toomey went on to say: ``There is a very high level of frustration and disappointment among rank-and-file Republicans when they see a Republican-controlled Congress engaging in an obscene level of wasteful spending.'' We see it day in and day out: $9 billion in Iraq, nobody knows where it is; $16.3 billion, corporate subsidies to the oil companies; $16.3 billion of public tax money that hardworking citizens sent down here, the Republican Congress took that money and gave $16.3 billion of it to the energy companies. Wasteful spending, corporate welfare, time and time and time and time again. The family budget would not allow for money just to be spent. You ask yourselves, where did it go? Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another third-party validator, talking about the Republicans. This was at the end of March: ``They are seen by the country as being in charge of a government that can't function.'' That is not me. That is Newt Gingrich, the father who gave birth to the Republican revolution. When Newt Gingrich is saying this, when Pat Toomey is saying this, we have a real problem in our country. What Democrats have tried to do, Mr. Speaker, time and time and time again is implement rules of the House that will constrain spending by saying, if you want to spend money, you either need to cut it from a program that we currently have or you need to raise the revenue somewhere, but it has got to be budget neutral. It is called PAYGO, pay-as-you-go. We have tried to do this. Mr. Spratt, the ranking member on the Budget Committee, tried to offer an amendment, rollcall number 87, on March 17, 2005. Not one Republican voted for it. Again, this is rules that we can put in place here that won't allow you to spend more money than you have. Or if you are going to spend it, you have got to get it from somewhere. Democrats offered an amendment here. Mr. Spratt offered a substitute amendment again on March 25, 2004. Republicans shot it down. Charlie Stenholm when he was here tried to do it. Dennis Moore of Kansas tried to do it. Time and time and time again, Mr. Speaker, the Democrats want to put these fiscal restraints in place. So it doesn't matter if there is a Republican Congress or a Democratic Congress, the rules are in place. These rules were in place all throughout the nineties. That is why we had surplus money. That is why we made the targeted investments, focused in certain areas that yield results, that yield tax money. Investments in education, you get a good return on that. We had a study done at the University of Akron, Mr. Speaker, a few years back, this was on State tax money in Ohio, but when the State spent $1 on tax money that went towards higher education, they got $2 back in taxes. Education is a great investment. Let's make this investment. Let's invest and do it in a way that we can get a good return on our money down the line. But today the Republican Congress has just been tied up in knots with the special interests, the oil companies, the energy companies, the health care industry. Time and time again they are given public tax dollars in the form of corporate welfare. Stop the corporate welfare. Stop the corporate welfare and let's move forward. But I want to say that it is not me, Mr. Speaker. It is not me. It is Pat Toomey. It is Newt Gingrich. It is a lot of the conservatives, or some of the conservatives that are still left on the Republican side. All we want to do is get this country back together. Because where we are getting the money, because we are running deficits, how do you plug the hole? You got to go borrow it. The Republican Congress continues to borrow from the Chinese government, from the Japanese government, from OPEC countries. This is really happening. This is one of the K Street fairy tales. This is like a K Street fairy tale. The Republican majority is borrowing money. As we run these deficits and they give millionaires tax cuts, $42,000 they are going to give them more next year. As they do that and we run these huge budget deficits, we can't fill the gap, so this Republican Congress and this Republican President, they are going to OPEC to borrow money from OPEC to help plug the hole. Can you imagine? It is like you are making it up. It is another K Street fairy tale that we have here. Running huge deficits. Gas is $3 a gallon. You not only give the oil companies $16.3 billion in corporate subsidies, but you also borrow money from OPEC countries to help plug the deficit because you are giving tax cuts to millionaires. Now, I am not opposed to giving middle class people a tax cut. I am not opposed to giving a small business a tax cut. But I am against giving a millionaire $42,000 back when you are fighting two wars, your average people are struggling, tuition costs have doubled in the last 5 years, and you are giving Bill Gates another tax cut? That just doesn't make any sense. I don't care what your party affiliation is. That is irresponsible. That is irresponsible governing. And until we get the Republican Congress out and the Democratic Congress in, we are not going to be able to fix this thing, because we have tried. Mr. Spratt has tried. Mr. Sabo has tried. We have all tried. But, Mr. Meek, as you know, we are having a very difficult time doing it.

Mr RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield my time to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hayes).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I hope the gentleman appreciates the fact that I yielded him a minute to beat me up some more.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Reclaiming my time, a couple of points. Number one, as a percentage of this economy, this is not the largest deficit we have had in history, which is the statistic that matters. But you know what? This deficit is too big because it is a deficit, period. Number two, if you do not pass this tax bill, taxes automatically go up. That means they are increased. Here is what this tax bill does: It prevents these tax cuts from going away. Said another way, it keeps taxes where they are so they do not automatically increase because the law requires that taxes go up next year, the year after, and the year after that. So the concern we have is that because we lowered taxes, got economic growth going again, created new jobs, it actually increased revenues to the Federal Government and lowered our deficit projections. The concern we have is let us focus on spending, not taking more money out of the pocketbooks of our constituents. Let us not take a bigger bite of the paychecks of the workers of America by taking more of their tax dollars. Let us prevent these tax increases from hitting the American people and let us focus on the real problem, spending. So if you try to defeat this tax bill, you are basically saying we want taxes to increase. Or if you want to offset it, you are saying to prevent tax increases we need to increase taxes. That does not make a lot of sense. So the point is we have probably a fundamental disagreement. We believe that we should not raise taxes on people. We believe that the more money a person has in their paycheck, the more money a person has in their pocketbook and wallet and their business, the more successful they are going to be, the more freedom they have, the more prosperous they will be and the better our economy will be. And its impact on our budget deficits is a beneficial one, usually, because it means there are more revenues coming to the government. Nevertheless, we should not look at it as an opportunity to spend. We should look at this good economic news we have right now, the fact that the economy is growing, people are going back to work and paying taxes, we should look at this as a moment to make sure we do not spend as much money so we can reduce the deficit and pay down our debt. That is what it is all about at the end of the day. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the dialogue and the debate. I urge a no vote on this motion to instruct. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate a lot of what the two gentlemen have said, the gentleman from Georgia and the gentleman from Tennessee. A lot of it I agree with. And the Blue Dogs traditionally here in Congress have been joining with a lot of us fiscal conservatives on this side of the aisle to work for some of these budget reforms, and I hope in the future, in this session, that we could see a merger on budget process reforms to improve the quality of our budgets that we have here. Tonight, we are talking about this motion to instruct. This motion to instruct I think is misguided in a few ways. Number one, I think it is hitting the wrong target. If the problem is with the budget that we pass and the results of those budgets, then the target ought to be the budget resolution. The budget resolution has already passed. I think it is very noteworthy to point out the fact that last year's budget resolution, and we are negotiating this year's now, but last year's budget resolution, for the first time since modern budgeting, actually reduced domestic spending. It reduced nonsecurity discretionary spending. So we actually passed one of the most frugal budgets ever passed since we created the 1974 Budget Act here in Congress. So we are on a path of being very frugal with the taxpayers' dollars. But what this motion to instruct is about is the tax bill. More importantly, this discusses cutting taxes. And the claim in this motion to instruct or the inference in this motion to instruct is that we shouldn't be cutting taxes; that we should take pressure off of cutting taxes. It is very important to point out that this tax bill really doesn't cut taxes, it simply stops taxes from being increased. It stops tax cuts from going away. What we did in 2003, and it is important to remember, we came in to a recession in this country. We had the Enron scandal, the dot com bubble burst, the recession hit, 9/11. We got hit really hard as an American economy. The American people got hit hard. What is so wonderful about the story that has occurred since 2003 is the resiliency of the American people, the American entrepreneurs, the families, the farmers, the businesses, and of the American economy. But there is one thing that happened in 2003 to get that going, to get our economy back on track, to get our budgets going in the right direction, and that was the tax cuts. Now, this chart shows where we were as an economy prior to the tax cuts that occurred in 2003. Now, if you take a look at the left side of this chart, the average economic growth rate in America, the 10 quarters before, going back to 2001, the 10 quarters before the tax cuts was 1.3 percent. This is where the recession was. We had very anemic growth. We were losing hundreds of thousands of jobs in America every month during this recession. So what did Congress do to respond to this? Congress did cut taxes and cut taxes across the board. We cut taxes on families, cut taxes on businesses, cut taxes on savings for seniors, cut taxes on capital formation which creates jobs, like capital gains and dividends and business expensing. But what happened after those tax cuts? Since the enactment of these tax cuts, the unemployment rate fell from 6.3 percent in June of 2003, the high, to 4.8 percent. Since the enactment of these tax cuts, we have gained nearly 5 million net new jobs in America. What this shows you is the average growth rate of our economy for the 10 quarters since the tax cuts has been 3.9 percent. So take a look at what happened in America. We had the recession, the dot com bubble, the 9/11 terrorist attack, and we went into a recession and our economy was sputtering. We were growing at an average of 1.3 percent and losing hundreds of thousands of jobs. When we cut taxes on the American people, on the American economy, we had a huge rebound right away. Right away the economy kicked into gear, produced jobs and has grown at an average rate of 3.9 percent, faster than the national average for the history of our economy. Five million new jobs were created. Now, one of the other things that occurred was during that time, because of the dot com bubble, because of the Enron scandal, the stock market really fell. And who really got hit by that were seniors and savers. There are so many seniors that I have talked with in my district, in the first Congressional District of Wisconsin, who literally saw their savings portfolio, in that period of 2001 to 2003, cut in half; wiped away by 60 percent. One of the things we were so worried about was the fact that senior citizens and their pension plans and their 401(k)'s and their IRAs had so much less value in their savings that they had much less to live on. So we went immediately to act, and what we did was we reduced tax rates on capital, tax rates on the things that stocks matter, which is capital gains and dividends. What happened after that? Since the enactment of these 2003 tax cuts, the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by 27 percent and now is back to where it was before the crash of the market. So we were able to build back that growth in savings for most of the seniors who rely on that, for the pension funds, for the 401(k)'s, so people could get their retirement savings back. Those are some of the fundamental tax cuts that are in this tax bill. See, if we do nothing, taxes go up. If this motion to instruct would see its way through, taxes would go up. The effect of this motion to instruct is to say, do not prevent these tax increases. And if you do want to prevent these tax increases, you will have to raise taxes somewhere else to prevent these other tax increases. I think that is bad economic policy. Now, where we need to improve is on spending. We need to bring the deficit down, and that is where the three of us are going to agree. That is where the gentleman from Georgia and the gentleman from Tennessee and I will clearly agree. Our deficit is too high. Our debt is far too high and we have to get it going in the other direction. But, what has happened since 5 million net new jobs were created since 2003? What happened since the economy grew at such a faster rate? What actually happened was revenues increased. So when we cut tax rates, you would have thought that revenues would have gone down. In fact, the budget estimators here in Congress and in the administration said, we know that if you cut taxes, we think revenues will go down. Even though that may happen, it is important to get us out of the recession. So back then we used this estimating measuring stick and our estimates predicted that revenues would go down if we cut taxes. We still cut taxes because we wanted to get people back to work. But what happened was the opposite occurred. Revenues went up. Revenues from capital gains taxes went up, even though the rate was lower. Revenues from marginal income tax rates went up, even though the rate was lower. Revenues from corporations surged by 47 percent last year alone, even at lower tax rates. What happened was, just last year alone our tax revenues went up 15 percent. The year before they went up. So as a consequence of that, the budget deficit went down by 23 percent in 2004 and went down by 25 percent in 2005 from their projections. So the budget deficit projections actually went down because revenues went up, because people went back to work. They went from collecting unemployment to having a job and paying taxes. That is good economic policy. It is good budget policy. And to reverse that by raising taxes would be bad economic policy but also bad budget policy. Where we need to focus is on the spending side of the ledger. If you want to put it into perspective, the size of these tax cuts, and I want to rephrase that again, the tax cuts are simply preventing tax increases, the size of these tax cuts are $70 billion out of a 5- year budget that will spend $14 trillion. Next year's tax cuts, or to put it another way, to prevent tax increases from occurring next year amounts to $11 billion out of a budget that will spend $2.7 trillion. Let me just read a list of some of the tax policies that would go away if this were to see its way through. AMT relief for personal tax credits; State and local sales tax deduction. That is a huge issue in States like Tennessee and Texas and others. Research and development tax credit, a big job producer. Above- the-line deduction for higher education expenses; work opportunity tax credit; the welfare-to-work tax credit; savings accounts; enhanced 179 expensing for small businesses that allows small businesses to write off investments in their plant and equipment so they can create new jobs. Brownfield expensing to clean up environmental catastrophe areas; capital gains and dividends, the very tax cuts that have actually increased economic growth, produced jobs and increased tax revenues to the Federal Government. So, at the end of the day, I think we are going to have a difference of philosophy when we talk about this. We may agree on the need to reduce spending. I hope we have agreement. But what we do not agree on this side of the aisle is the wrong thing to do to the American taxpayer today is to raise their taxes. The problem here is not that Washington taxes too much; the problem here is that Washington spends too much. That is what we should focus on. The pressure should be on spending, not on raising taxes. I am sorry, but the effect of this motion to instruct would be to do just that. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to instruct. May I inquire as to how much time is left?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, after long deliberation and discussion with the bill's author, I decided to vote ``aye'' on H.R. 4437. This bill is far from complete, and far from being ready to become law. Yet, it has become clear that Congress will deal with immigration reform through several stages in a long process during the next session of the 109th Congress. I supported H.R. 4437 to begin this process, so we can ultimately achieve comprehensive immigration reform. Among the provisions I believe are instrumental toward achieving such reform are the reforms to secure our borders. Border security is no longer simply an issue of illegal immigration. It is an issue of national security, where we are vulnerable to terrorist infiltration. This proposal offers a comprehensive way to address this threat. However, I have several concerns with this legislation that must be addressed in order to receive my support for a final, comprehensive solution to fixing our broken immigration system. First and foremost, the provision in H.R. 4437 that makes undocumented alien status a federal felony is totally unacceptable. Prior to the bill's passing, I received a commitment from the author, Chairman Sensenbrenner, that this provision will be removed. Second, the employer verification system proposed in this bill is unworkable and must be fixed. Third, a final bill should include the creation of a secure, legal channel by which foreign workers needed to keep the United States' economy growing may enter and leave the country. And, finally, we must bring into the open, in a reasonable and fair manner, the millions of immigrants who are living in our communities without any documentation. Failure to address all of these issues will simply prolong our broken immigration system. Because Congress is so divided on how to achieve comprehensive reform, it has become clear to me that such reform will occur in stages over the course of the next year. I look forward to working with my colleagues in both political parties to make sure the final version of this legislative effort is one we can all be proud to support.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, let us talk about the fact that that same CBO report did say that child support payments will increase, yes, increase. Mr. Speaker, what are we doing with child support payments? What we are simply saying is that we have a Federal Government match. What the Federal Government match is spending on child support with State governments is 50 percent for food stamps, for Medicaid, that is what we are proposing here. When we passed welfare reform, we increased the match for child support to 66 percent. What happened: child support collections went way up; welfare case loads way down. Yet we still have a higher match than normal even though our case loads are way down. What we are simply trying to do is reform government to save money and still meet the needs of the people. What about Medicare. This motion to instruct says let us gut the Medicare Advantage Program. What is the Medicare Advantage Program? Do you ever hear that line when you do a town hall meeting with senior citizens that say we on Medicare ought to get the same health care you in Congress get? That is the Medicare Advantage Program. We are simply saying to seniors, if you want to have comprehensive health insurance like we have in Congress, like other Federal employees have, you should get that. What does this motion to instruct do? It compromises that entire program. Mr. Speaker, what about all these issues? Food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, child support, all of that spending is increasing in this bill. What does this budget do? This budget proposes to increase spending over 6.3 percent but not 6.4 percent, the current projection. Let me say it another way. We are proposing to save $45 billion out of a $15 trillion budget over the next 5 years. We are proposing to increase spending 6.3 percent instead of 6.4 percent, and that sounds like a draconian cut. I have also heard speakers say that we are proposing deep tax cuts. Mr. Speaker, here is their definition of deep tax cuts: we are not raising taxes. What we are proposing to do in this budget is to not raise taxes. We are proposing simply to keep taxes where we are today. When we had a recession 2 years ago, when the Dot-com bubble burst, people lost their savings when the market went down. We lost hundreds of thousands of jobs; we had 2 years of economic growth no higher than 1.3 percent, and we cut taxes. What happened after we cut taxes, 4.5 million jobs were created. The stock market came back. Our stock market savings portfolios, our savings for seniors grew 23 percent. We are averaging 148,000 new jobs being created every month. We created 215,000 just last month alone. Our economy grew 4.3 percent last quarter alone. We raise taxes; we hurt jobs. It is a difference in philosophy. The Democrats are saying raise taxes and do not do anything to control spending. We do not want to raise taxes; we want to control spending and balance the budget.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Does the CBO report also not say that child support payments will go up from one year to the next?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. The gentleman just answered my question, child support payments will go up.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I cannot think of anything more scary, anything worse than working one's lifetime, working hard every day and then seeing their pension go before them, seeing their pension get terminated. That is the worst possible thing that could happen to a worker and to a family. We have a system that needs fixing, Mr. Speaker. We have a pension system that has some loopholes where companies could not put money in their pension plan when they needed to, to make them funded, and then we have a system that disincentivizes companies from putting more money in their pension plan to prefund the workers and employees when they have one and they have the will to do so. That is wrong, and that needs to be fixed. Yet, on the other hand, Mr. Speaker, as this legislation was being drafted, we want to make sure we get to a time where companies fully fund their workers' pensions. Getting to that transition was difficult, and I want to thank the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Thomas; the chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee, Mr. Boehner, for working with us to address our concerns specifically on behalf of the auto sector. Because of this, the issues surrounding credit balances, plant shutdown benefits and those things that were raised by the auto sector, by the UAW, have been addressed in this legislation, are being addressed in this manager's amendment. I opposed this bill in committee. I was the only Republican to do so. But, Mr. Speaker, we have fixed this legislation. This legislation is good for labor. This legislation is good for management. But, most importantly, this legislation is good to the employees and the workers of America. I encourage and I ask for a yes vote on this bill because it is fixed. It is good, and it should pass.