John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, for purpose of closing, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, like Mr. Ryan, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the staff on both sides: Tom Kahn, Sarah Abernathy, Ellen Balis, Arthur Burris, Linda Bywaters, Barbara Chow, Marsha Douglass, Stephen Elmore, Chuck Fant, Jason Freihage, Jose Guillen, Jennifer Hanson- Kilbride, Dick Magee, Sheila McDowell, Diana Meredith, Gail Millar, Morna Miller, Namrata Mujumdar, Kimberly Overbeek, Kitty Richards, Diane Rogers, Scott Russell, Marcus Stephens, Naomi Stern, Lisa Venus, Greg Waring, Andrea Weathers, and interns Les Braswell and Tina Shah. We have had a fast track on which to bring this resolution out of committee onto the floor to passage. Without their assistance, long nights, weekends, you name it, we certainly could not have done it. We certainly could not have done it without the presentation we put on the last 2 days. To them, I am deeply indebted for all of their help, both sides of the aisle, my staff in particular, which I think is one of the best committee staffs of any committee on the Hill in either House. If I had a chart of my choice, I would have a counterpart to Mr. Ryan's chart, which said, can we afford the Democrats' tax? It would say, can our children afford the Republicans' debt tax? Because the legacy of this administration, 8 years, is nearly $5 trillion in additional debt, a phenomenal increase in debt that will have to be borne by our children. When I say that our first objective in taking on this budget was to move it to balance, that's not some economic goal. That's not some green eyeshade objective. That's because I think we are morally wrong in leaving this mountain of debt to our children and our grandchildren. If I had a chart, it would say just that, because I would assign the blame, the primary blame, to our Republican colleagues for the last 7 years. We have brought to this floor a budget resolution, the base bill on which we will vote. After we vote on the Ryan amendment, we will vote on the base bill. I would ask for a vote against the Ryan amendment and for the base bill, H. Con. Res. 312, which is the Democratic-reported budget resolution. We set as our first objective balancing the budget within a reasonably foreseeable period of time. The day we chose was 2012, and we hit that day. In fact, by our calculations, using CBO numbers, we will have a surplus that year under certain assumptions of $178 billion. That surplus will grow as time moves on; and by the year 2018, we will have accumulated $1.4 billion in surpluses. Now, I know they will be dissipated and used for other purposes, but I am suggesting here and have been suggesting that is one of the ways that we will pay for the tax cuts, particularly the middle-income tax cuts to which we have explicitly committed ourselves. That is one way we will make certain that they are cared for and extended. Secondly, even though we are committed to balancing the budget, we are also morally committed to doing other things that shouldn't be held up or put aside while we try to bring our books in order, one of which is the education of our children. The President's budget basically flat funds education for the next 5 years. I am proud to say that our budget provides $7.3 billion, $7.1 billion more than the President requested in his budget for the education of our children. And watch out for education when they begin to, if you adopt the Ryan resolution, when they begin to distribute these undistributed, unallocated cuts, because education is right there in the bore sights. Secondly, veterans health care. Of all of the promises government makes, the promises we make to our veterans ought to be upheld. And right now we have an increasing caseload. Therefore, we are proposing $3.6 billion over and above current services in order to pay for the additional case loads. CHIP, children's health insurance. I am proud to claim a little paternity there. I was involved in 1997 when we created the program in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Now we are saying that we can balance our budget and still balance our priorities by seeing that our children, all of our children who don't have health insurance, can get health insurance. We provide for that. We provide for that in this budget resolution. Finally, we provide for innovation, competitiveness, energy, research, things that will keep our economy on a competitive edge. For all of these reasons, we think we have brought to the floor a good budget resolution which is worthy of the support of not just the Democrats on this side, but Republicans as well. It moves us toward balance, and it has balanced priorities. It is good for America and good for our economy. I, therefore, request a vote in favor of the Spratt resolution, H. Con. Res. 312, which is the base bill and against the Ryan resolution which, if it were adopted, and I don't think it will be, but were it to be adopted, it would displace our bill. Vote for the base bill, H. Con. Res. 312, and vote to do these things that are so important to our economy, our country, our families, and our children. This is a good bill and I commend it to you for your support today. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the majority leader of the House, Mr. Hoyer, the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes. We have heard throughout this debate the charge repeatedly that we are raising taxes by as much as any tax increase since the history of time. The charge won't really bear itself out. But let me just turn to third parties. Don't take it from me, let me turn to third parties who have a tremendous interest in the Federal budget and in the deficit in particular. None is more respected or more truly nonpartisan than the Concord Coalition, and here is what the Concord Coalition says: ``Allowing some of the tax cuts to expire would not be the result of Congress' raising taxes. It would be the result of sunsets that were included when those tax cuts were originally enacted to avoid the level of fiscal scrutiny that PAYGO is designed to ensure.'' Now, I have a chart here which is a replica of our famous eye chart to test your visual acuity. I am not sure whether you can see it, but the bottom line is instructive. We will reach surplus, starting from a CBO baseline, our budget will take us to surplus by the year 2012. That surplus will continue throughout time, 2012, 2013. And if you total that surplus up between 2012 and 2018, the total amount you get is $1.4 trillion. Out of that $1.4 trillion in surpluses, a lot of money can be derived if we so choose to offset tax cuts. And toward that end, we have pledged ourselves as specifically and explicitly as we possibly can in the budget resolution before you in commitment to the middle-income tax relief. And anyone who has any doubt of this should come and read this paragraph in our budget resolution itself, not in the report, it is in the budget resolution itself, which says the following: ``It is the policy of this resolution to minimize the fiscal burdens on middle-income families and children and grandchildren, to provide immediate relief for tens of millions of middle-income families who would otherwise be subject to the AMT, the alternative minimum tax,'' and, by the way, we provide a 1-year patch. Talk about tax cuts, we have got a tax cut, and it is offset in our bill. To extend the child tax credit we commit ourselves; to extend the marriage penalty relief, we commit ourselves; to eliminate estate taxes on all but a small fraction of estates, we are committed to that; to extend the research and experimentation tax credit, we are committed to that; to extend the deduction for State and local sales taxes; to extend the deduction for small business expenses; to enact a tax credit for schools. This resolution assumes that the cost of enacting these policies is offset by reforms within the Internal Revenue Code that promote a fairer distribution of taxes across families and generations and economic efficiency and higher rates of tax compliance. And we put money in the bill for program integrity, for the IRS to bear down and try to close the tax gap. When you take what we can reap from doing that, it may not be as great as it would seem since the tax gap is estimated to be $500 billion, when you add to that the $1.4 trillion in surpluses per our projection of our budget, you have a lot to work with, not just for tax relief, but for other things as well. Debt retirement, the retirement of the baby boomers, all of these things will be demanding. That is why we put this decision off until a later time. It is not pressing now. It doesn't have to be committed to now. The tax cuts don't expire until December 31, 2010. In the interim, nobody's taxes are going up because of what is done here on the House floor today, and nobody's taxes are going down, because it doesn't work that way. Over time, we think that we have got a partial solution here. If we can simply adhere to the budget that we are proposing in House Concurrent Resolution 312, we believe that we can produce surpluses along this bottom line, a substantial portion of which can be used to offset tax cuts. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. SPRATT. Could the Chair please inform us of the time allotted to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), how much remains available.

Mr. SPRATT. I yield to the gentleman the balance of his time.

Mr. SPRATT. That was one amendment that was agreed to in the markup, and I think it would behoove us all, the gentlelady particularly, if we get together and see if we couldn't move the legislation. That would be great.

Mr. SPRATT. I yield to the gentlewoman 1 additional minute.

Mr. SPRATT. Does the gentlewoman require further time?

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time to close.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington, Dr. McDermott. (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I can return all the compliments that Mr. Ryan paid to me. He's a pleasure to work with, and I have great respect for him. But there's one thing he didn't mention at all in his presentation all afternoon and that is his budget substitute. And I think one of the reasons he didn't do it is that it won't bear scrutiny. If you look at the Ryan substitute, the Republican minority substitute, you'll find, if you look very closely and know where to look, something called function 920. Now, function 920 is the catch- all. When you can't assign some expenditure or revenue raiser somewhere else, you put it in function 920. It means really we haven't yet completed the job. When you look at 920 in this case, the minority has assigned $817 billion in undefined savings or at least $405 billion in discretionary spending cuts which are undistributed. They haven't been assigned to the Veterans Administration or to the Defense Department or to the Transportation Department. They are undistributed cuts, $405 billion. I've never seen in all my years in the Budget Committee, anything that has a function 920, this catch-all in cuts of $405 billion. But in addition to that, it calls for $412 billion in mandatory savings. Now, we don't know for sure where mandatory savings are coming from, which programs are in jeopardy. But when Ways and Means is directed to reconcile $253 billion over 5 years, the Energy and Commerce Committee is directed to reconcile $116 billion over 5 years, we know the resolution has Medicare and Medicaid in its bore sights and the likely cuts are substantial. $368 billion. We've never done anything that approaches that magnitude at Medicaid and Medicare cost reduction. Indeed, during the Gingrich era, Republicans were pushing something of that size. It never got off the ground, and it wouldn't here either, let me tell you. So that's unrealistic. And the 405 is unrealistic because the work hasn't been done. And then finally Mr. Ryan calls for, in his resolution, $1.2 trillion in tax cuts over the next 5 years. If you extend these tax cuts out, and you consider what he's doing, he wants to extend all the expiring tax cuts and, on top of that, also repeal the alternative minimum tax, just repeal it. The likely impact on revenues is about $2.5 trillion over 10 years, which blows a big hole in the bottom of the budget. And I don't think that's realistic either. It certainly isn't realistic if we're in earnest about seeking a budget that will balance. And so here, buried in the budget resolution, which he's not mentioned all afternoon, are three major problems with his budget resolution. He hasn't done his work. He hasn't distributed the cuts. And I'll tell you what that does. When you have $405 billion in function 920 undistributed, you can say to the veterans who come to you, we've got $1 billion covered for you. You can say to others, with plausible deniability, oh, you won't be cut, you won't be cut. But in truth, $405 billion is 20 percent of nondefense discretionary spending. That's where the cuts are going to fall every year at 20 percent. I don't believe it's going to happen. I don't think therefore that what he's presented is a valid, reasonable, defensible alternative to the budget resolution, and it strikes me as passing strange that we haven't discussed it all afternoon. Now one final shot across the bow, one final statement about the mantra we've heard all afternoon. We do not propose to implement, in this budget resolution, any tax cuts whatsoever. We're laying down the policy as clearly as we know how in title V on middle-income tax relief, and specifying very clearly and pledging ourselves very, very committedly to the enactment, preservation and extension of these tax cuts. That's the policy of this budget resolution. Everyone should bear it in mind.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I have sat here all afternoon, and last week through the markup, listening to this mantra about tax increases, all of which is a fabricated argument, and could not and cannot avoid the conclusion that to some extent this is a red herring. It's a way of distracting attention from the real problems at hand, a way of avoiding discussion of a $236-billion surplus, which is where our economy and our budget stood in the year 2000, the year before Mr. Bush came to office, the $4 trillion in debt added by the Bush administration over the last 7 years, over median family income which has fallen under the Bush administration, avoiding discussion about a debt-burdened economy, which is losing steam near a recession and a dollar, a mighty dollar, which is plummeting, avoiding all of that so that we can talk about something that is not going to happen. First of all, we made it as clear as we possibly could that we have endorsed, embraced and pledged to see continued the middle-income tax cuts which are included in the 2001-2003 tax cuts. They add up for the renewal over a 5-year period of time to $230 billion. If we follow our budget resolutions we have laid out, we will have a surplus in 2012 of $178 billion. By 2018 the cumulative surfaces will be at $1.4 trillion. If we choose then, and we are not making the decision now, but if we choose then that will offset the extension of most of the taxes, most of the tax cuts that were adopted in 2001 and 2003. We have put that in black and white, title V policy, policy on middle income tax relief, and we have laid out from item A through item H the different tax cuts that we support and are pledged or seeing renewed and extended. We can't make it any clearer than this. Let me say something else for anybody listening wondering whether or not his taxes are about to shoot up and whether he should go cash in some stocks and bonds and get ready for this huge tax increase, it's not coming. Even if we adopted something that called for it to happen, it would have to go through Ways and Means. It would have to go through Senate Finance. It's a long way from ever being passed. We simply say in our budget resolution, as we get ready for 2010, let's see if we can't have a conservative budget that will move us toward surplus so that some of that surplus, at least, can be used to offset some of these tax cuts. Let's see if we can't put some money into program integrity with the Internal Revenue Service and shrink the tax gap so we can use some of the money there, raise tax revenues without raising tax rates, use some of the money thus gained to offset some of these tax cuts when they come up for renewal. Go through the code as we did in 1986, give it a good closet cleaning. It needs a scrub down as an accretion of the deductions and credits and exemptions and preferences, all of these things. If we muster our efforts, if we marshal our efforts, we can do and lay the basis for the renewal of many of these tax cuts in 2010. But we primarily delayed the decision about those tax cuts in 2010 on the basis that we need to know more. What will be the state of the economy? Will we still be in two different theaters, Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting a war that is costing $12 billion a month? Will we still have an enormous deficit or will we be in surplus? Better that we determine it than guess at it now. We are simply saying we would lay the basis. First of all, we would lay down the principle that we would protect these middle income tax cuts. Second, we will put the budget in place to begin generating surpluses so that they can afford the renewal of some of these tax cuts. That can be done in this budget resolution. We are not pushing the biggest tax increase in American history. I don't know even where the numbers arrived from in the first place. I don't think it's supportable, but it is totally fantastic. It's an argument that is a complete red herring and a complete deviation from what we are all about today. We should be talking about the savings rate in this country, about what deficits are doing to our economy, our country, and our standing in the world. There is plenty to talk about that is relevant. This subject is not because it's not about something that is about to happen. Mr. Chairman, I now yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Madam Chairman, I yield 17 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd).

Mr. SPRATT. I can assure the gentlelady that the programs that are of concern to her from the Community Development Block Grant, the Social Services Block Grant and the Community Services Block Grant are all accommodated in this budget resolution, and we definitely oppose certainly the repeal of the Social Services Block Grant. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 17 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. If the gentleman wants to yield, I will gladly respond to his question. The gentleman keeps throwing these rhetorical questions.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. SPRATT. Madam Chairman, I yield 14 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. SPRATT. Madam Chairman, I yield myself 14 minutes. Madam Chairman, today we take up the budget resolution. Passing it, like many things in this House, is never easy, and sometimes contentious. But it is crucially important if we care about fiscal soundness and the future of our country. Our country faces right now a host of different challenges: the specter of recession, a crunch in the credit markets, rising unemployment, declining family income, constant inflation in the cost of health care, aging infrastructure, and a porous safety net. And that is not to mention the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, costing us close to $200 billion this year, and even more dearly in human lives and wounded. The President's budget for 2009 does little to turn this tide. In fact, the policies of the last 7 years have created some of these problems and compounded others. Eight short years ago, in 2000, our budget was in surplus, big-time surplus. In that year, we had a surplus of $236 billion. Having worked for years to bring the budget to this status, we warned the President and our colleagues across the aisle not to bet it all on a blue-sky forecast; but it was to no avail. The President's economists looked out 10 years and saw nothing but surpluses, $5.6 trillion in all. We worried that if these rosy projections didn't pan out, we would be right back where we had been, deep in deficit. Well, the President told the country, in effect, that we could have it all, guns, butter and tax cuts, too, and never mind the deficits. I'll have to admit it looked as though we were sitting on an island of surpluses, but, in truth, we were surrounded by a sea of debt, of long-term unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare, coming due just over the horizon. Seven years later, under this administration's policies, those surpluses are history. They're gone, vanished, replaced with record deficits and mounting debt. This one chart here which shows in tabular form the increase in the debt over the last 8 years, says it as simply as we can on one piece of paper. When the President came to office, the debt of this country was $5.7 trillion. When he leaves in a few months, it will probably be close to $10 trillion, more than $4 trillion in debt accumulation on the watch of the Bush administration. The budget we take up today is no grand solution, I'll grant you that, but it moves us in the right direction. It restores fiscal responsibility, but not to the exclusion of other values that we hold dear such as our children's education and their good health care. And that's why, right off the bat, we part company with the President's budget and with Mr. Ryan's substitute. We think Medicare is one of our country's crowning achievements, so we reject his cuts that would emasculate Medicare, in the President's budget, $556 billion over 10 years, and we reject his cuts in Medicaid, $118 billion over 10 years. The Ryan substitute over 5 years would cut Medicare by $253 billion by our calculation, and Medicaid by $116 billion. We can't vote for that. We would not wipe out the Social Services Block Grant or cripple the Community Services Block Grants as the President proposes, because we have seen in our own communities the roles they play. They hold up the safety net in an economy where it's sorely needed. And with fuel prices at record highs, the last thing we would slash is LIHEAP and low-income home weatherization. These are minimum benefits for Americans with maximum needs. Ten years ago when we first ran a surplus, we resolved in both Houses to use some of that surplus each year to double the resources of the National Institutes of Health, the NIH, over a period of 5 years. We reached that goal in a bipartisan way, only to backslide year by year in this administration. In our budget this year we stop the backsliding at NIH, and we restore the President's cuts at the equally important Centers For Disease Control. Our budget targets other resources to strengthen our economy and our society. We invest more in innovation, more in energy, more in infrastructure, and we provide $7.1 billion more than the President for education. To move our country one step closer to health care for all, we facilitate up to $50 billion to expand SCHIP, the children's health insurance program, consistent with PAYGO, requiring that the costs be fully offset. We also accommodate fiscally responsible relief from the alternative minimum tax in order to shelter those middle-income taxpayers for whom it was never intended. To make America safe, we fully fund defense, and we keep our promises to those who have fought for our defense, providing $3.6 billion above current services for veterans health care. Now Mr. Ryan puts another billion on top of that in his budget, but he also puts in function 920, this is budget esoterica, but he puts in function 920 a call for $400 billion in undistributed cuts. One of those cuts would likely be that apparent increase in veterans health care. Although we fix the AMT for another year, providing a tax cut of $70 billion to middle-income Americans, our Republican colleagues will accuse us of raising taxes. You've already heard it. The fact is, our budget doesn't raise taxes by one penny. But don't take my word for it. Stop by the manager's table right here on the House floor and read the letters that we've received from groups like the Concord Coalition, or look at the posters that we just posted here. Here's what the Concord Coalition says: ``Allowing some or all of the tax cuts to expire would not be the result of Congress raising taxes; it would be the result of sunsets that were included when these tax cuts were originally enacted to avoid the level of fiscal scrutiny that PAYGO is designed to ensure.'' That's what the Concord Coalition has to say about our resolution. If you want to see more, turn to section 501 in our budget resolution, title 5, section 501, and we enumerate, from item A through H, child tax credit, marital penalty relief, the 10 percent bracket, estate taxes, extension of research experimentation tax credit, extension of the State and local sales tax deduction, extension of the deduction for small business expenses and it goes on. These are the tax cuts that we embrace and commit ourselves to seeing renewed when they do eventually expire. We believe that tax relief can come in a deficit-neutral tax bill in some cases, and we offer the AMT as an example. On more than one occasion, high-ranking officials in the Bush administration have testified before our committee, and when they're asked about the AMT and its impact on middle-income taxpayers, they've insisted that they could fix the AMT with changes in the Tax Code so that there would be no net loss of revenues. For example, in February 2006 Josh Bolten was the director of OMB. He told our committee that the AMT could be corrected in the context of overall deficit-neutral tax reform, his words. In February 2007, his successor, Rob Portman, told the Budget Committee, ``Our budget assumes it will have a revenue-neutral correction to the AMT.'' The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel, has taken the same stance, but Mr. Rangel has delivered. He's put a revenue- neutral bill on the table to kindle the debate. The Bush administration asserts it too has a plan, but has failed to follow through by disclosing any plan of its own. One of the first steps that we took in the 110th Congress was to restore the pay-as-you-go rules that had helped us in the 1990s turn record deficits into record surpluses. This resolution fully complies with the PAYGO rule. Partly because we've held mandatory spending in check with PAYGO and, at the same time, kept domestic discretionary spending close to the rate of inflation, this budget returns to surplus in 2012. Our bottom line beats the President's budget going away. Between 2009 and 2013, our net deficits are $262 billion. Over the same period the President's net deficits are $674 billion. And using CBO's latest forecast, our budget should be in surplus by 2012 in the amount of $178 billion. And from 2012 through 2018 our cumulative surplus should reach $1.4 trillion, all told. Now we could have used the lion's share of those surpluses to offset the revenues lost to renewal of expiring tax cuts, and surpluses of $1.4 trillion would indeed offset a huge amount of revenues forgone. We chose instead to leave those decisions to a time closer to December 31, 2010, when the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire. But when the time is right, if those surpluses materialize, they can be used to offset the renewal of numerous expiring tax cuts, disproving our opponents' claim that we don't intend to renew and extend any of the expiring cuts. In our resolution we also provide $940 million for program integrity, much of it going to the Internal Revenue Service for audits and compliance. The Commissioner told us not so many months ago that there's a huge tax gap, maybe $500 billion, between taxes owed and taxes paid, the so-called tax gap. If we can close that gap just a bit, we can raise tax revenues without raising tax rates. These funds can likewise be used as offsets. So there are many ways to look at tax cuts in the code. And what we are saying here is that we should use the next several years, before the tax cuts expire, to do all of the above so that we will have the revenues to renew many of these tax cuts and restructure the AMT in keeping with PAYGO principles. That's simply what we are proposing. Our budget parallels the President's budget with respect to national defense. It funds the basic defense budget at the levels the President requested for 5 years, but does not include supplemental funds beyond the $700 billion sought by the President. The President's budget for 2009 does include a $70 billion item which the Pentagon calls a placeholder. To compare our budget to the President's budget, apples to apples, our resolution includes a $70 billion placeholder equal to the President's request for overseas deployments and activities in theaters that include Afghanistan and Iraq. This budget resolution is not an authorization bill. It's not an appropriations bill, and therefore, it cannot prescribe how much should be spent for these activities or specify where the funds should be spent. Those decisions are left to the authorization and appropriation process, in committee and on this floor. These funds, however, can be used for whatever purpose the Congress eventually chooses in authorizing and appropriating legislation. When we set out to do this budget, our overriding objective, Madam Chairman, was a balanced budget, because we're appalled at the amount of debt being left our children, and at our stature in the world as the greatest debtor nation. But we want more than arithmetic balance; we want our priorities balanced; we want a budget that does more for our children's education and their health care as well, a budget that makes our workers more competitive and our scientists more innovative. We want to revive America, restore our fiscal soundness, reclaim our future. This budget is just one step, but it's one step in the right direction. Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 12\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Madam Speaker, I send to the desk a privileged concurrent resolution and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, before we resolve into the Committee of the Whole, I ask unanimous consent that Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks, and submit matters relevant to consideration of H. Con. Res. 312, Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2009.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Madam Speaker, under section 314(d) of S. Con. Res. 21, the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for fiscal year 2008, I hereby submit for printing in the Congressional Record a revision to the budget allocations and aggregates for certain House committees for fiscal year 2008 and the period of 2008 through 2012. This revision represents an adjustment to certain House committee budget allocation and aggregates for the purposes of sections 302 and 311 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as amended, and in response to consideration of H.R. 1424 (Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act). Corresponding tables are attached. Under section 211 of S. Con. Res. 21, this adjustment to the budget allocations and aggregates applies while the measure is under consideration. The adjustments will take effect upon enactment of the measure. For purposes of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as amended, a revised allocation made under section 211 of S. Con. Res. 21 is to be considered as an allocation included in the resolution. DIRECT SPENDING LEGISLATION--AUTHORIZING COMMITTEE 302(a) ALLOCATIONS FOR RESOLUTION CHANGES [Fiscal years, in millions of dollars] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2007 2008 2008-2012 total House Committee ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BA Outlays BA Outlays BA Outlays -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Current allocation: Energy and Commerce........................... -1 -1 1,571 1,567 2,285 2,272 Ways and Means................................ 0 0 2,830 4,029 -1,814 -1,814 Change in Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act (H.R. 1424): Energy and Commerce........................... 0 0 0 0 -840 -840 Ways and Means................................ 0 0 0 0 -360 -360