Paul Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Brown).

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, since we are going into the debate on the substitute, I will not take too long to close, although I think some of what the gentleman from California just said bears some responding to. I think this debate has done a pretty good job of showing those who are viewing it the differences, the differences between the two parties here on the floor, the differences between the two approaches to fiscal responsibility, between two philosophies. What you just heard the gentleman from California say is we have recklessly cut taxes by $500 billion over the next decade. It is important to put that in context. Mr. Speaker, this Federal Government will spend about $2.7 trillion this year. Off the top of my head, we will be spending, with taxes coming in, about $29 trillion over that 10-year period. So we are proposing to allow the American taxpayer to keep about $500 billion out of that $29 trillion of their money we are about to spend. It kind of comes down to this, Mr. Speaker, two points. Number one, we believe the best way to get ahold of our fiscal problems, to reduce our deficit, is to hold the line on spending and cut spending and grow the economy. The budget resolution we brought to the floor just a month or so ago was a resolution that froze spending and actually reduced spending in critical areas so we can get a handle on our Nation's finances. The other side did not vote for that budget agreement. We also need to recognize the fact that when you cut taxes, economic growth occurs from that. One of the great stories being told right now, the success that we see in the data from this new economic recovery that is producing all these jobs, is the fact that this year, with the lower tax rates we are paying, we are getting more revenues coming in to the Federal Government. What we see is that when you cut taxes on entrepreneurs, when you cut taxes on families, when you cut taxes on investors, they engage in more economic activity, they create jobs, and people go from being unemployed and collecting unemployment to going and working and paying taxes. That is what is happening today. That is a recipe for success. We do not want to squelch this economic recovery. We do not want to raise taxes on people. We want to keep taxes low, watch our spending and reduce spending, and help people get work, so when they go to work they can provide for their families, and, yes, pay taxes, so that we can get the revenues we need to reduce and eliminate our deficit. That is the approach we are advocating. What is the other side's approach? What is the substitute they are about to bring to the table? More tax increases. Okay, you can cut taxes to these people over here on the right hand, but we have to raise taxes to these people on the left. Net tax increases. It is a fundamental difference in philosophy. Whereas they believe we have to keep taxes high and higher, that the emphasis should not be on spending, but we should raise more taxes, we believe the emphasis should always be on recognizing the fact that the taxes that this country collects is not our money, but the money of the American person, the man and woman in the marketplace, who is working hard to provide for their family, who is creating jobs, who is sweating and working every single day. It is their money, not ours. So we do not believe philosophically, that is the root of what we believe in, that we should just cavalierly take more and more and more money out of a person's paycheck, out of their wallet. We believe they should keep more of what they earn. What is so great about that philosophy is it is also good economic policy, and we are seeing that. We are actually getting more revenues because of lower taxes. How about that? And the good news is, this can be bipartisan. When John Kennedy did this, it worked. When Ronald Reagan did this, it worked. This has been done by Republicans and Democrats coming together in the past. When Reagan did it, it was because of good Democrats working with Jack Kemp and Bill Roth in the Congress to reduce tax rates on the American families. What happened? Economic growth was encouraged, tax rates went down and revenues went up. This does work. It is working right now. What we are seeing in this debate is a difference in philosophies. Mr. Speaker, I want to conclude by saying one thing. If a Member of Congress comes to the floor today and votes against this bill, they are voting to increase taxes on 23 million low-income workers. They are voting to increase taxes on 23 million low-income workers by one-third, to raise their taxes by one-third. They are also voting to increase taxes on 80 million taxpayers across the country. It is a very clear vote. If you vote for this bill, you preserve these tax cuts. If you vote against this bill, you are going to raise taxes on 23 million low-income earners, the least of whom among us should be facing this kind of a tax increase.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the substitute

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

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, let me just bring three points up in respect to this substitute. Number one, my colleague from Florida sort of outlined the convoluted pay-for in this bill which will render this tax cut temporary, not permanent, by giving the decision whether or not to keep this tax cut permanent to some accountants at the Office of Management and Budget, to in 2010 speculate what is going to happen in 2014 to make sure that the tax cut becomes permanent. This is another way of saying this is a temporary tax cut, meaning they are going to increase this 10 percent bracket again. The second point I think is important to make, they try to pay for their substitute with a tax increase. Now, what they will tell us is it is a tax increase on rich people, individuals making over 500 grand, couples making over $1 million. What they will not tell us, Mr. Speaker, is that half of those filers are small businesses. Half of those people are subchapter S corporations, partnerships, small businesses. Mr. Speaker, small businesses create 70 percent of our jobs. Before the tax cuts that just passed last July, in this country we were taxing small businesses at a higher tax rate than we taxed the largest corporations of America. We finally now are in a fair, level playing field where we tax small businesses at the same tax rate that we tax large corporations. But they want to undo that. They want small businesses, small mom-and-pop businesses who bring in revenues of $1 million or more, who maybe have 2 employees, 10 employees, 50 employees, to pay a higher tax rate than IBM, than Exxon, than Global Crossing, or WorldCom. That is wrong. I think that is unjust and unfair, yet they want to return to the days of taxing small businesses at higher tax rates than large corporations. The third point is the way that they structure their Alternative Minimum Tax relief. Now, this is an issue where I think and hope we can get good bipartisanship support to fix this problem. We hear from both sides of the aisle that AMT is a problem and we have to fix it. Just last week we passed a bill to make sure that no new people fell into the trap of the AMT while we figure out at the Treasury Department and here in Congress how to really fix this mess, and I hope that we really do have bipartisan support to fix this mess. But the way they structure it in this bill means that taxpayers are going to have to calculate their taxes three times in order to navigate their way out of the Alternative Minimum Tax. The Alternative Minimum Tax brings a lot of complexity to the Tax Code for taxpayers. This substitute makes it more complex, more difficult to comply with. That is not the right direction, so I urge a no vote on this substitute. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. I will not go through tit for tat on all of that. Only to say that now that our Chairman Greenspan was invoked, he also said in that same speech that the first thing we should do is make these tax cuts permanent because they really help achieve the economic recovery we have underway right now. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the majority whip.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and for bringing attention to this issue. I want to make three points. Number one, we are hearing all of this hue and cry against allowing people to roll their flexible spending accounts $500 a year over into the next year. There is a reason why it is important to allow a person to roll their money over from one year to the next: We are not getting the kind of consumer activity and consumer reforms we want in health care when we deny an employee the ability to keep the money in their account from one year to the next. What ends up happening with the flexible spending account is when there is a balance at the end of the year, the employee goes and buys a couple pairs of eyeglasses, gets their teeth cleaned a couple of times, more money is spent and it props up health care inflation. What this reform does, it lets the employee know this is their money. More importantly, what this bill does and what the Rangel substitute denies is the ability to roll over $500 from their flexible spending account into a health savings account. They say this health savings account is a new tax shelter. Mr. Speaker, what a health savings account does is it lets people spend money on health care tax free. We can deduct the cost of health insurance on corporate tax rates when corporations pay for health care for their employees; why cannot employees and individuals deduct the cost of their health care expenditures on their income taxes? That is what HSAs do. Take a look at what health savings accounts have already produced, only having been in law since January 1; 37 percent of all health savings accounts sold went to people who previously were uninsured; 18 percent of those people had preexisting conditions, people who had sicker risk profiles. And 47 years old was the median age of a person who bought health savings accounts. So to the critics that said only wealthy, only young, only insured people would be buying HSAs, all of that is being proven untrue with the results that are taking place today in the marketplace. But more importantly is the fact that the Mercer Study just did a survey and they noted that 73 percent of all firms in America who offer their employees health insurance are considering giving an additional option of health insurance through a health savings account by 2006. By denying your employees the ability to take the money that is in their flexible spending account, which is controlled by the employer, and put it in their own account, which goes to the employee, is simply saying you are not going to let the employers give this money to the employee and be part of the employee's property. It is very important that we allow the employees to keep this money and use this money for their own health insurance and to do so tax free so we end the bias in the Tax Code right now that is against giving people the ability to spend money on health care on a tax-free basis. This is how we get the employee and the consumer back into the business of buying health care. I urge rejection of the Rangel substitute and adoption of the base bill.

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

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Is the gentleman opposed to rolling over the FSA money into an HSA?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. The vote we are faced with, the Rangel substitute, is denying people the ability to keep this money. It denies people the ability to put their FSA money into an HSA.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, this week our nation lost a man of honor, courage and kindness. Private First Class Sean Schneider was killed in Iraq on Monday when a bomb hit his convoy. Sean grew up in Janesville, Wisconsin, and graduated from Craig High School--the same school I graduated from. Sean liked to hunt, canoe, and tinker with cars and motorcycles. His high school teachers talk about what a caring individual he was and how he was the kind of student you respected. At the same time, he was an independent young man who knew what he wanted to do with his life. Sean joined the Army in 2002 with a strong desire to serve and protect his country. In doing so, he made that incredible commitment that our military men and women and our veterans throughout history have made: he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and put his life on the line to preserve our rights and freedoms. It is because of Sean and people like him that our country remains free today. America owes him and his family a tremendous debt that can never be repaid. What we must do is commit to always remembering his life and the sacrifice he made on our behalf. And we must be grateful for every one of our veterans who has stood up, like Sean did, for our country and the cause of freedom. Sean Schneider led an inspiring life and touched so many people's lives along the way. Our thoughts and prayers are with his many loved ones--especially his wife, his parents and his siblings--during this most difficult of times.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I want to speak today and rise in support of the Republican Study Committee budget because it is a wonderful budget. I also commend the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) for doing an excellent job. There are two things that these budgets have in common that the other budgets that came to the floor do not have in common: Number one, these budgets get us to a balance quickly, and they do so without raising taxes by holding the line on spending. Specifically, the Study Committee budget cuts the budget in half in 3 years, and it does so by making sure that not only do we never let tax increases occur over the next decade, but also by reducing spending. This is where our priorities need to lie. The other budgets which have been brought to the floor say they are going to balance the budget in a fairly quick time. How do they do it? They raise taxes. They are trying to make sure that the tax relief that was put out to the American people this year, that is helping encourage this economic recovery that is well under way, goes away. We cannot afford to pull the rug out from under this economic recovery. These tax relief measures that passed, that help get recovery under way, need to stay in law. The Study Committee budget cuts spending, gets the deficit cut in half in 3 years, and makes sure that every tax cut that the American worker, the American economy, receives stays in place. I encourage Members to vote for the Study Committee budget, and I thank the Committee on the Budget itself for doing an excellent job of producing a good, lean budget, both of which are leaner than the budget the President brought to Congress. This is a good day for us because finally we are getting a handle on the spending in Washington. Let us pass these budgets and move on to getting this job done.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, it is with profound sadness that I rise today to recognize the life of Samuel Amasa Peer of Beloit, Wisconsin, who passed away on March 7, 2004, at 79 years of age. Sam was a courageous veteran of the Second World War, and his hard work, diligence and willingness to face the most difficult of problems have inspired those who knew him. He will be greatly missed by his family and loved ones, and I ask my colleagues to join me in sharing my thoughts and prayers with them during this difficult time. I am honored to pay tribute to this outstanding individual and would like to read before the Congress the eloquent eulogy given by his grandson, Adam Peer. Eulogy of Samuel Amasa Peer, March 13, 2004 My grandfather like all of us was complex, understood only by his Creator. Early on he learned that there was little he could expect from his own parents. Born during the midst of the Great Depression, he was thrust into manhood when duty called him to care for and protect his younger siblings. It is hard for me to imagine the world he came into. When he answered his second call to duty aboard the USS West Virginia, a question of whether a free world would survive was very real and very unknown. The hardship that was born into and the war that tempered him during his youth is what exemplified him as a self-made American in the very truest sense of the term. And he took great pride in that. Much of what he did to do his part in making the world safe for democracy will be lost to antiquity. He always kept the most essential parts of himself so private and well-guarded that it put limits on the things he could talk about, even to those that most desperately needing his acknowledgment and love. But, the unspoken gifts he leaves all of us are very real. I have never met someone more diligent and hard-working than my grandfather, and that lives on in my father. My grandfather was so proud of the man you became. I have never met someone who expresses what they feel so passionately and with greater conviction, and that lives on in my sister. The same passion for right over wrong and freedom over oppression burns in her heart. And I hope I never lose his optimism for the future; he never met a problem that couldn't be solved. Today, as another member of the ``greatest generation'' passes from this life to the next, we inherit what they have instilled in us and the unfinished tasks now left to younger hands. It is now our charge to leave this world a better place than we found it, and like my grandfather and his generation, inspire another generation to great things.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. And that was done without raising taxes?

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. There is more money coming into the Federal Government because more people are working and paying taxes.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. That is right. One of the problems we have in this particular body, in the House Chamber, unlike the other body, is all the budget points of order that seek to protect our budget, to enforce our budget, are easily waived before they even get to the floor. We have a Committee on Rules that sets the parameters of debate, the rules for the kinds of amendments that will be considered here. And the Committee on Rules, they can waive budget points of order. Therefore, if the Budget Enforcement Act of 1974 has a number in it that we miss and hit, and we break our budget, we are supposed to be able to have a point of order that defeats legislation coming to the floor that breaks our budget. All it takes is a Committee on Rules to waive that point of order before it even gets to the floor and we pass a rule with a majority vote without even having to vote on whether or not we are going to break that point of order. So the rules are so easily circumvented here on the floor that what we are doing is, we are making sure that these points of order are still maintained as points that Members individually can bring up. They cannot be waived in the Committee on Rules. They take a two-thirds vote. This is our preference in our particular legislation in order to waive these budget points of order. Members of Congress need to be empowered with the rules so that they can raise the awareness that we are breaking our budget and they can force a vote to make sure we conform with the budget, and it takes two- thirds to break that.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Yes, I would like to ask the gentleman a few questions about his bill as well. I thank the gentleman for the mike. He has given me a lot of time to talk about ours. Our bill is what we call The Family Budget Protection Act. Number one, our bill does change the rules of the House so that you cannot waive these budget points of order, meaning you cannot just break the spending caps and not even have a vote on whether we did that or not on the floor of Congress. First, we make a binding budget so it is signed into law by the President. Second, if Congress is going to break the budget, it takes a two- thirds vote in order to break that budget. If we do not vote that two- thirds, then we have an obligation to reduce spending to bring it back into conformity with the budget. If we do not do that, an across-the- board spending cut comes into play. But also the games that are played in the appropriations process, putting nongermane spending items in the bills where they should not be, we tighten up what we call the germaneness standards so we cannot put those kinds of things in appropriations bills. It is important that we are honest with the American people in how we spend their money. It is important that we make sure we set a budget and stick to it. And it is also important that we have a budget process that is at least neutral toward higher taxes and higher spending. The 30-year anniversary of the 1974 Budget Act paints one very clear picture, and that is the rules that run the budgeting in Congress are clearly biased toward higher taxing and higher spending. And they tie both hands behind your back if your goal is to bring sense to the budget system, bring fiscal discipline and hold the line on taxes. What we are seeking to achieve in our legislation is simply to make the rules at least neutral toward taxing and spending, not biased for higher taxing and spending. And that is something that we all have to work together on. What I am very encouraged about year, and this is my sixth year in Congress; I have been working on this ever since I got here. What I am especially encouraged about is the new coalition that we have been able to form. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) has been a leader in this new coalition to fix this budget process, and only by linking arms and building a team can we get these kinds of things passed. So I would like for the gentleman to tell me some of his ideas about what he hopes to achieve in this budget process, which are all part of the broader principles that we signed on o and how exactly does the gentleman's bill work.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. That is correct. And that is why some of the other forms that we are calling for, which is automatically, they just assume that we are going to keep raising spending. One of the things we see around here is a lot of Members of Congress come to the floor and say we are cutting spending on programs, when actually what is occurring, if at all, is reducing the rate of growth of programs. What we believe is we should go back to zero-based budgeting, and we can go back to not baseline budgeting, but a zero-based budgeting whereby a dollar extra for a program the next year is an increase in spending. We do not want to have a baseline that constantly inflates and puts spending on auto pilot for all parts of our government. We want to make sure that we are more frugal with our constituents' dollars and that an extra dollar in an extra year is an extra dollar of spending, not a reduction in spending.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. We do. That is a very important point that the gentleman from Illinois raises. If my colleague recalls, the line-item veto was knocked down by the Supreme Court a few years ago, for good reason, which was it is anticonstitutional, it was unconstitutional for Congress to delegate its lawmaking power to the executive branch; and the Supreme Court aptly knocked down that line-item veto law. So what we have come up with in place of it is the ability for the executive, the President of the United States, when he receives these big spending bills, to pull out pieces of spending, pork barrel spending and through an expedited procedure send those pieces of spending, those pork barrel projects back to Congress for an up-or-down vote on each of these procedures, each of these pork barrel projects. We have a procedure here where the President can make sure that he gets that vote. We cannot stonewall, we cannot filibuster it; we have to have a vote on this wasteful spending that the President can take out of these bills and send back to the Congress so we have another up-or- down vote to make sure that we have another chance, a redundant system to go after this wasteful spending. It accomplishes the same thing that a line-item veto does, but it retains the constitutional authority of the lawmaking body and the legislative branch that the Constitution and the Supreme Court calls for.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. That is right. I applaud that. One of the things that we have to keep in mind is that the demographics of America are changing. And as the baby boomers begin to retire, we have to take into account the fact that we have 40 million retirees today; when the boomers are fully retired, we will have 80 million retirees. And so many of our programs are geared towards senior citizens, namely, Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid as well. So we have a tremendous fiscal pressure staring us in the face. In order to prepare for those moments, not only do we need to reform these programs so we can improve them and make sure they are solvent, but we have to be able to pass a budget that we can stick to and enforce to get us to that solvency date, to make these programs viable for the baby boomers and for our generation, the generation afterwards.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, that is exactly right. We have a tight majority, and it is very easy for the leadership to come up with a good budget and good enforcement around that budget; but all it takes is a majority vote on the floor of the House to defeat that, and that often happens, that is often the case. Having that higher vote threshold makes it much more difficult for Congress to defeat its own budgets. Having a legally-binding budget, which automatically kicks in spending cuts across the board, forces Congress to act. And if Congress chooses not to act, then the across-the-board spending cut comes in. If two-thirds of the Members of Congress do not want that to happen, then they can make sure that that does not happen. But that is a much higher threshold. Among the other tricks that we seek to limit here is not only do we want to tightly define what an emergency is, but we want to raise the vote threshold on emergencies to a two-thirds vote, so that that too is a protected procedure, not another game that can be used to get around the budget spending caps that we have. But also, we want to set aside money for emergencies. We often have emergencies in this country that need quick attention by Congress. That is why we are proposing to set up a rainy day fund. Several State legislatures and State governments do the same thing. Congress also should set money aside to budget for the inevitable emergencies that occur every single year. Clearly, we are not going to be able to plan for every emergency. We spent $40 billion, as we needed to, after 9-11 to address that emergency. That was a lot of money; clearly, more than we have for our average tornado or natural disaster. But we can still try and budget for the inevitable emergencies we will incur here this year. Another thing that really happens that is a big problem in part of our appropriation process is in addition to the fact that the appropriations bills can form huge bills where they put seven to 10 appropriations bills in one giant omnibus bill, they can tack in spending items that have nothing to do with the issue at hand. Let us take, for example, one spending item that we voted against just this last December, $50 million for a rain forest museum in Iowa City. They were going to build a rain forest under a glass bubble for $50 million. That was tucked inside of an omnibus appropriations bill in the part that went to Labor and Health and Human Services. A $50 million rain forest museum in the middle of Iowa has nothing to do with health, human services, or labor, the Labor Department. However, it was stuck into that portion of the bill. Now, if we had the ability which, in this case, we did not in the House, to go to the floor, pass an amendment to defeat that $50 million from going to that rain forest project, we could do that. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and I could bring an amendment to the floor saying, we should not be putting $50 million into a boondoggle rain forest museum in Iowa; let us pass an amendment to defeat that. We could pass that amendment. But by the rules of this institution, by the laws of the 1974 Budget Act, that $50 million would have to be respent somewhere else in the Federal Government. It could not be saved. So that is another thing we want to fix. Another huge, glaring glitch in the budget process is we want to be able to come to the floor of Congress, identify wasteful spending, make sure that this kind of pork does not happen again and not only defeat the pork, not only get these projects not funded, but save the money so we can use it to reduce taxes or to reduce deficits or reduce debt. That is another reform we put inside of our bill and inside the coalition of principles that we have all agreed to subscribe ourselves too.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I apologize, Madam Chair. I simply wanted to recognize the fact that we have a group of Special Operations Forces in the gallery that just came back from Iraq. And I simply want to say to those, and I realize we have rules, that we are very proud of what you have done for our country, and we want to salute you for your sacrifice to our Nation and to thank you for making us a safer and more secure world and country. Thank you for what you have done for us. Will I be admonished for that? Thank you, Madam Chair, for your indulgence. I simply want to conclude by saying, I thank the gentleman for his leadership in this because he has been one of the linchpin people in Congress to bring together this coalition. You cannot have a handful of fiscal conservatives to try to change rules that have not been changed for 30 years. It takes a lot of people from a broad coalition to do this. There are a lot of people who have been in Congress for decades, longer than the gentleman and I have been living in some cases. A lot of people like the way things are done today. They like the current rules. It makes it easier to filter power through your committee, to filter power through this institution. But these rules have really accomplished one thing. The budgets we set for the Federal Government every year we pass a budget resolution are very easily and very quickly circumvented. They do not stick. They do not count, and they do not work. If we can fix our budget process, bring common sense back to it, real legal enforcement measures so that the budget is easy to enforce, we can accomplish these goals of not only balancing the budget, making sure huge tax increases do not hit the American people, but prepare our entitlement programs for that baby boom retirement without having to resort to deep benefit cuts or huge tax increases. We have to avoid the kind of malaise and troubles that other countries like those in Europe have fallen into where they have to keep taxing and taxing and taxing their people with payroll taxes and business taxes and value added taxes, and they have chronic unemployment of 9 to 12 percent. We do not want to go down that road. We have to prepare to make sure we do not go down that road as these demographics confront us with the retirement of the baby boomers. If we are going to confront that, if we are going to pass legislation to do that, we have to budget for it. And we have to have a budget that is enforceable. The current rules make that nearly impossible. That is why you have this great coalition in Congress that is serious about doing this this year to enforce these rules. I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) for his leadership in bringing a whole host of Members of Congress to the table to take this issue seriously. I look forward to working with my colleague from Illinois to working on this as soon as this budget resolution is done, to move a bill through the Committee on the Budget, and to get it to the House floor and to fight those interests who like the status quo. I think we can prevail. I know we can prevail and I sure hope we do. And it is only with this kind of coalition that the gentleman has helped assemble that will give us a chance of prevailing.

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. One of the things, and I notice that there are some gentlemen coming in that I want to recognize when they all get in the room, that are in the gallery, that I think is very fitting for the House to recognize, but before I get to that, because I see some of them are still coming in, I think it is very important for them to recognize, and for those who are listening to this debate, we do not have the tools that we need to cut wasteful spending in Congress. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. That is right. I also think it is very important to recognize that a lot of Members have worked on this issue. It is one thing to pass a budget under the current rules and talk about the great accomplishments we have in it; they are good accomplishments. We are bringing a good budget resolution to the floor tomorrow, freezing domestic spending, getting to a balanced budget even faster than the President proposed, and he gave us a lean budget, making sure that we are not going to have huge tax increases hitting the American family just as the economic recovery is under way. But the point of all this is, the current budget system, it is so easy to circumvent these budget rules, to circumvent the budget. So even though we are bringing what we think is a pretty good budget to the floor, actually a very good budget to the floor this week, we can easily circumvent it next month. That is why we need to have a budget process that is honest, that has integrity, that is clear, that is transparent, that is honest with the American people, that has honest accounting, that makes sure that you cannot have these bills that we get a day before we vote on them, that are this thick, and have so many little programs tucked into them that are pork barrel projects that raise the total of spending for the Federal Government, but waste a lot of money and also have nothing to do with the issue at hand that we are trying to legislate on.