Chris Van Hollen

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, we had a discussion yesterday and today about different approaches to the budget, and we've had a discussion about the Budget Committee budget, the Ryan budget, that was on the floor and will be voted on later. That budget, of course, is an uncompromising budget. If you look at this budget, it's even worse. And on top of that, this budget has even more gimmicks than the earlier budget that we talked about. So what are those gimmicks? Well, first of all, this budget says it comes into balance in 4 years. Look, if you want a race to a fake balance, obviously you should vote for this one over the Republican caucus budget. But the reality is, it gets to that balance by keeping the savings from ObamaCare, which our Republican colleagues say they want to eliminate, that they want to repeal. You don't have to take my word for it. The Heritage Foundation did a quick action alert on this budget. Here is what they say: ``Another failing of this RSC budget is that, like the committee budget''--in other words like the principal Republican budget--``it keeps revenues near the levels reached with ObamaCare tax hikes even though it repeals the health care bill's spending provisions.'' So let's just be really clear what that means for the American people. They are repealing the spending provisions. That means they are getting rid of all the benefits in the Affordable Care Act, including the provision to make sure that your child can stay on your insurance policy until they are age 26 so a family is not bankrupted by an accident or some disease that their child gets. It means the provisions that make sure people can't get denied coverage because of preexisting conditions, that is gone. So they get rid of all that, but they keep the ObamaCare taxes. That is what the Heritage Foundation says. Guess what? They also keep the savings from the Affordable Care Act in the Medicare area that we achieve by ending the overpayments to some of the insurance companies and other changes in the incentive structure. We did it without hitting beneficiaries. They have railed against that in the past, but it is right here in their budget. And here is the catch: they say their budget gets a surplus in just 4 years. Well, the surplus is $22 billion, they claim. But here is how much of it comes from the Affordable Care Act, from ObamaCare. They have got a little under $100 billion in revenue that year coming in, and then they have got Medicare savings. So not close to balance in 4 years without those provisions, which, as the Heritage Foundation points out, are in there. And do you know what? Even at the 10-year window, even at the end of the 10-year window, they claim to have a $246 billion surplus, and yet they wouldn't get there without the savings from the Affordable Care Act, from ObamaCare. That's a hoax. To come to the floor and say you will have a balanced budget in 4 years or 10 years, but guess what, you are going to repeal ObamaCare, your budget doesn't work when you do that. That just doesn't add up. Now, they have another big sort of gimmick in this one that is not in the other Republican budget that has to do with taxes. So the problem with the main Republican budget is that it will provide tax breaks to very wealthy people and help finance those tax breaks by bringing down those rates by raising the tax burden on middle-income people. As we discussed earlier, we actually put that question to the test in the Budget Committee. We offered an amendment that says: Well, when you do tax reform, don't make it a Trojan horse for raising middle class taxes to finance tax breaks for the wealthy. Protect the American middle class from tax increases. A simple amendment. Every Republican on the committee voted ``no.'' So that is their problem with the main Republican budget. This one has another problem. It creates two tax systems and says: Taxpayer, you get to choose. And then it assumes that they are going to choose the one that is worst for them. Because if they choose the one that is better for the taxpayer, from the taxpayer's perspective they don't have enough revenue in their budget to come to balance. Now, look, the American people are smart. If you give them two choices, obviously people are going to add them up, and they are going to pick the tax return where they pay less. And if the American people are as smart as I think they are, they will blow another hole in this RSC budget. So I am not even beginning to talk about the fact that they, once again, more than double the sequester cuts to places like NIH and places where we do scientific research, that they slash our investment in infrastructure. They do all that. They do even more of that than the other Republican budget, but it has the same fundamental gimmick with respect to ObamaCare. And then on top of that, it has this other tax gimmick in it. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I will just ask our colleagues to take a look at the latest analysis put forward by our own Congressional Budget Office, the professionals, the referees here. What they tell us is that half of the deficit in this year is as a result of the fact that millions of Americans are still looking for work. Three-quarters of the projected deficit next year is for the very reason, which is why we get to the heart of the issue, by going after the jobs deficit and then reducing the deficit in a balanced manner over a long period of time. The issue isn't whether we reduce our deficits dramatically; it is how we do it. We call for a balanced approach that, yes, asks the very wealthy people to get rid of some of their special interest tax breaks which our Republican colleagues concede they have, but get rid of them in part to reduce the deficit. Our colleagues refuse to take one penny from closing tax loopholes--not one--to help reduce the deficit. They'll only do that to help finance tax breaks for higher-income individuals. So, Mr. Chairman, we focus right now on jobs, growing the economy, and a balanced approach to deficit reduction. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield an additional 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, the only comparison between these budgets we're debating and what's going on in Europe is that the Republican budget proposes the same European-style austerity approach that many European countries tried, and as a result, they've seen their economies slip back into recession. We want to avoid slowing down economic growth in this country, which is why we're really glad that the gentleman from South Carolina brought this particular budget proposal to the floor of the House, and we hope he will vote for it. With that, I yield 2 minutes to a terrific member of the Budget Committee, the gentlelady from Florida (Ms. Castor).

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I actually had been prepared to come to the floor of this House and say this was a refreshing moment, that this was going to be a moment of bipartisanship. I commend the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Mulvaney) for finally offering a balanced plan to reduce our long-term deficit and a plan that will make sure our economy grows rather than offering a plan that results in over 750,000 fewer American jobs by the end of this year, and I hope that the gentleman will demonstrate his sincerity in the support of his own bill by voting for it. We will be able to tell whether this is simply some kind of stunt or a genuine effort. Mr. Chairman, let me say, with respect to the comments about the President's budget, I think everyone in this country knows that this Congress was here until January 2 of this year, trying to work out a compromise to avoid going over the fiscal cliff, and until we'd resolved that, the President had no idea how much revenue would be available for the budget. I think most families recognize that you need to know how much revenue is available as you put together a budget, number one. Number two, we've been lurching from one manufactured crisis to another. The sequester. You need to know how the sequester is going to turn out before you know how much money is going to be available for government agencies. Finally, when the President has to put together a budget, it's not like the budgets Members of Congress put together in which you have one amount for all of defense or just one amount for the function for all of health care and all of education. The President actually has to allocate that money among different agencies. That's part of the process. So the President will be submitting a budget now that we know what the revenue stream is, now that we have some idea as to where we are in terms of those other issues. I'm glad the gentleman brought forward this alternative, because it is the Senate Democratic proposal for the most part. Just for the record, he has left some stuff out, but it's close enough for negotiation and discussion purposes here. What this measure does is, number one, replaces the sequester. It replaces the sequester with a balanced approach to reducing our long- term deficit so that you avoid the job losses that will result from the sequester. Our referees, our umpires--the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office--has told us, if we allow that sequester to remain in place, you will have 750,000 fewer Americans working at the end of this year. We also know that you'll have 2 million fewer jobs next year. So it's a good thing that the gentleman brought to the floor a proposal to replace the sequester. After all, in comments last year, the Republican leader, Mr. Cantor, called for a plan to replace the sequester, so we support that. The gentleman talks about the Senate proposal on taxes. What he doesn't tell you is what the Senate proposal does. Like the House Democratic proposal, it proposes to balance the budget through a combination of cuts but also cuts to tax expenditures. These are the special preferences and deductions in the Tax Code. We say, yes, we should eliminate some of those tax preferences for very high-income individuals. Our colleagues tell us there are about $4 trillion worth of those that mostly go to high-income individuals. We say, okay, let's close some of those tax breaks of about $1 trillion over 10 years to help reduce the deficit. What's different between the Republican plan and this plan that our colleague has brought up is that they propose to provide tax cuts for very wealthy people, financed by increasing the tax burden on middle-income people. We put that question to the test in the Budget Committee just the other day. We said, if your plan doesn't propose to give folks at the top a big tax break--because you do in your budget drop it from 39 percent to 25 percent. So a millionaire sees more than a third cut in his rate right off the bat. So we said, well, if it's not your intention to finance that by increasing middle class taxes, you should support this amendment. It was called the Protect the American Middle Class from Tax Increases, and it was very simple. It said, as part of tax reform, don't raise taxes on middle-income people to finance your tax breaks for folks at the very top. Every Republican voted ``no.'' So, yes, this plan that the gentleman has brought forward today, apparently under sort of a mock bipartisanship, will reduce the deficit in a balanced way. It calls for shared responsibility, and it certainly does not give folks at the very top a tax break financed by middle- income taxpayers like the Republican proposal does. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond to a couple of things that were just said. The first is that when President Obama was sworn in--in fact, before he even put his hand on the Bible a little more than 4 years ago, we were losing over 700,000 jobs every month. The economy was actually spiraling downward at a faster rate than it was at the time of the Great Depression. And thanks to the resilience of the American people and the emergency actions taken by the President and others, we stopped the free fall, we turned the corner and there have been 36 consecutive months of private sector job growth, more than 6.4 million jobs created. We didn't get any help from our Republican colleagues when we had to make tough decisions to prevent the total collapse of the economy. Now that we've seen some momentum in the job market, we have a Republican budget that's going to put the brakes on that growth. That's according to the Congressional Budget Office. By the way, their budget includes the assumption of those continued sequestration levels into the next year. Let's talk about China for a minute. I got a letter the other day from the CEO of a major biotech company. Here's what he said. He said that over the last couple of years because of the reduction in our national investment in science and research, he laid off 1,000 people. And because of the continuing sequester, they've imposed a hiring freeze right now. Those are jobs that now will not be created that would have been otherwise if we hadn't had the Republican approach to the sequester. You know the real kick? I heard Mr. Duffy talking about China. They're hiring people in China. Not because of lower Chinese wages, but because China has decided to make science and health care funding a national priority. In other words, the Chinese are copying the secrets to our success, things that help our economy grow, things that are slashed in the Republican budget. Did I say ``slashed''? Yeah. Because they cut that portion of the budget by more than two times the sequester. That's a fact. If we're talking about competing with the Chinese or the Indians or the Europeans or anybody else who is out there, one of our global competitors, let's not allow them to borrow the secrets of our success while we're ignoring them here at home. I now yield 2 minutes to a terrific new Member of the Budget Committee, someone who has been focused on and leading a lot of our anti-poverty efforts, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield the gentleman another 30 seconds.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, let me just say a word about the health care provided in the Affordable Care Act. That means that you can stay on your parents' policy until you are 26, so if you have a terrible accident the family is not bankrupted. That means that if you have preexisting conditions, you are not denied coverage by the insurance companies. We keep hearing, ``repeal all those benefits and some day we will get around replacing them.'' We have heard that for 3 years. There is nothing in this budget about replacing. I think the majority leader asked the right question: Which budget grows the economy? And I would just like to read from what the majority leader said on the floor of this House last year about the sequester. Here is what Mr. Cantor said: Under the sequester, unemployment would soar from its current level up to 9 percent, setting back any progress the economy has made. Then he cites a study showing that 200,000 Virginian jobs are on the line. Well, guess what? The Republican plan leaves in place the deep sequester cuts. That is why by the end of this year we will see 750,000 fewer jobs, including a lot fewer jobs in Virginia, as Mr. Cantor acknowledged. Why in the world we would want to do that when we have people struggling to find work, I don't know. Because in the Democratic budget, we replace the sequester so that we save those jobs. In fact, we invest more in jobs going forward. On the tax issue--here is a headline from the other day in The Washington Post--a nonpartisan group did a study: ``GOP Tax Cuts Would Benefit Very Wealthy.'' And that is the bottom line. Tax breaks for the folks at the very top--all those loopholes we talked about closing--not one loophole closure to help reduce the deficit in a balanced way. I would now like to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee, who has been working on these issues and working for working families, Mr. Cohen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlelady.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, let's be very clear. If you give States one-third of the amount of money that they are currently getting from Medicaid and ask them to do the same job, which is what this budget would do just 10 years from now, and increasingly down that path, you will, as the nonpartisan, independent Congressional Budget Office said ``reduce access to care.'' That's the bottom line. With respect to the voucher program, premium support, again, I don't really care what label you attach to it; the impact is the same. If you want to achieve the out-year budget savings that our colleagues claim to achieve, you've got to put a cap on that amount, which is what their plan would do and which makes it entirely different than the plan we have for Members of Congress and Federal employees, and the plan that most people in the private sector have as well. As this red line shows, the amount of support you would get would drop dramatically relative to rising health care costs, and that's why we don't call it premium support because it doesn't provide support. I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield myself such time as I may consume. The President has been crystal clear. His top priority is to grow the economy, to put more Americans back to work, to strengthen the middle class, to have rising middle class wages and upward mobility in this country. By attacking the jobs deficit, we can also bring down the budget deficit because we know from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that more than half of our deficit this year is due to the fact that you still have a lot of people out of work who are looking for work, which is why it's so counterproductive to adopt the approach that our Republican colleagues do. By not replacing the sequester, the Congressional Budget Office tells us we will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs just by the end of this calendar year, and those jobs are the most important things to be available to help strengthen the middle class and lift people out of poverty. But in lifting people out of poverty, it's also important to provide a little bit of support that they can stand on as they climb that ladder of opportunity. Unfortunately, this budget cuts into a lot of those legs on that stool of support, and nobody understands this issue better than our colleague. So she may respond, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield the gentlelady another 30 seconds.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, under our budget proposal, the deficit is dropping rapidly, but we also address the jobs deficit so that we make sure more people get back to work. With respect to the Medicare trust fund, I would just point out the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, extended the life of the hospital trust fund by 8 years. And if Republicans did what they said they want to do, which is repeal it, they would shorten the life of the trust fund to 2016. But even though they don't want to tell us, they apparently have kept that in. I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut who has worked so hard to make sure that college is affordable to students in this country, Mr. Courtney.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentlelady.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentlelady.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Vermont, who's been very focused on these budget issues, Mr. Welch.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I now yield 2 minutes to another terrific new member of the Budget Committee, the gentlelady from New Mexico (Ms. Lujan Grisham).

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. It's extraordinary how many times we have to point out that the Republican budget before us today contains the Medicare savings that were first demagogued last fall during the Presidential campaign. We hear them attacked here on the floor of the House by our Republican colleagues, and yet they're in the Republican budget. In fact, they're in this Republican budget. And what's more, their budget wouldn't balance without them, which is why they cannot have it both ways and claim their budget is in balance and they're getting rid of ObamaCare. Now, while they're keeping the savings, they are getting rid of all the important benefits in the Affordable Care Act that will provide more affordable health care, which will make sure people can't be denied coverage because of preexisting conditions, will make sure that kids can stay on their parents' insurance policy until they're age 26. For 3 years in a row, we've had a bill from our Republican colleagues called Repeal and Replace: repeal ObamaCare, but replace it with something else that provides affordable care. Three years. We've never seen replace. There is no replace. You can look through the Republican budget. There's no replace. Just like for 3 years they tell us they've got a tax reform plan that's going to magically provide these big tax cuts for people and not hit middle-income taxpayers. Not one piece of paper out of the Ways and Means Committee in 3 years. So, Mr. Chairman, it's a little tiresome to continue to hear people criticize savings that we achieve without touching beneficiaries, which our colleagues include in their budget and which extended the life of the Medicare trust fund by more than 8 years. I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to somebody who knows a lot about the importance of Medicare and Social Security, the gentlelady from Illinois, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Ms. Schakowsky.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I just want to respond to a few of the comments from the chairman with respect to Medicare and health care costs. As we indicated earlier, we've seen a dramatic slowing in the per capita interest in health care cost. That's a good thing. That's, in part, we believe, a result of changes in the Affordable Care Act and, as a result of that, the so-called Independent Advisory Board that our colleagues misleadingly refer to as a bunch of bureaucrats won't even have any job to do for at least 10 years, probably longer. Now, if health care costs per capita start rising more quickly, then their task--and this is a group of health experts and others--their task is to propose a way to reduce those health care costs, and they're specifically instructed not to have a negative impact on beneficiaries. And by the way, it specifically says, if Congress has a better way to do it, go for it. That's what the law says. We think that that's a better approach than handing everything over to insurance companies. And the Republican plan to give seniors a voucher, premium support--I don't care what you call it, it's bad news because seniors will be getting this thing, but the value of that thing doesn't keep up with the rising health care costs. Now, the chairman mentioned prescription drug part D. It came in under projected cost. One reason was you had more generic drugs on the entire market, not just the Medicare market. But the other, major reason was, guess what? There were 25 percent fewer people enrolled in part D. So you had fewer participants and so, obviously, it costs less. Twenty-five percent. Now, it's simply wrong to say that the Republican voucher plan for Medicare is like part D prescription drug, or like the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan, which we've heard about many times before, because the difference is, and it goes to the core of this issue, both those plans, part D and the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan, have provisions that ensure that the premium that is provided by the government, or Medicare, keeps up on a percentage basis with rising health care costs. That's why it's called premium support, and that's why the Republican plan is not premium support because it does not keep up with rising health care costs, if they're going to claim the savings it makes. And here's a chart that illustrates this. This is current Medicare. Seniors are putting in a certain amount, and they're guaranteed a certain percentage of support from Medicare. Here's the plan for Federal employees and Members of Congress: Members of Congress and Federal employees put in around 25 percent and the program picks up the other 75 percent. And as costs go up, the Federal Government still picks up 75 percent. Here's what happens with a voucher program where the value of what you get doesn't keep up with the percentage rise in health care costs. You, the beneficiary, the senior, pay more and more. And that's the only way it can work if you're at the same time going to show that congressional budget chart that shows all that spending out into the future. The only way you can bring that down under the plan is to cap the value of premiums. And that's not premium support; that's a voucher. And that's the end of the Medicare guarantee. I now yield 2 minutes to a great new member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. We've had a good and healthy debate today. I want to go back to the question that was posed by the Republican leader, Mr. Cantor: Which of these budgets does more to help the economy? Which budget helps put more people back to work? Well, we know that the austerity approach taken in the Republican budget will result in 750,000 fewer Americans working by the end of this year and 2 million fewer Americans working next year, compared to the alternative that the Democrats are proposing, which would replace the sequester. So you achieve the same amount of deficit reduction, but you don't do it in a way that results in slowing down economic growth in this country this year, next year, or the year beyond. We tackle the budget deficit by dealing with the jobs deficit right now and then taking a balanced approach into the future. Let's talk about taxes. The Republican budget will give another windfall tax break to the very wealthiest people in this country. In order to make up the revenue lost, they will inevitably have to increase the tax burden on middle-income taxpayers unless they're going to put their budget out of balance. Now, just to safeguard against that, we offered an amendment that said, when you do tax reform, don't raise taxes on middle-income families. Every Republican on the Budget Committee voted against that. We can address our priorities and reduce the deficit in a smart, consistent way without violating our commitments to seniors, without reopening the prescription drug doughnut hole so people with high drug costs will have to shell out lots more--thousands over the period of this budget. We can do it without making the interest rate on student loans double this July. We can do it without cutting our investment in transportation by 15 percent when we have all these unmet needs and 15 percent employment in the construction industry. We know we can do all those things and reduce our deficit the smart way because we do it in the House Democratic budget, which dramatically drops the deficit so that it's growing much slower than the economy, stabilizes the debt at 70 percent of GDP, and, yes, balances the budget the same time the Republican budget last year balanced. What a conversion to hit this political target this year after all the talk last year. And the reason--and the fundamental difference here--is that, by trying to drive to that political target, they end up balancing the budget on the backs of everybody else--commitments to seniors, investment in our economy, investment in the future. At the end of the day--and we showed the numbers earlier, Mr. Chairman. They can't have it both ways. They can't say their budget balances in 10 years and at the same time they repeal ObamaCare, because the $715 million in savings from the Affordable Care Act, from ObamaCare, is embedded right in their budget. The trillion dollars in revenue from that they say they're going to pull out of the air. But if we repealed ObamaCare today, it would be out of balance by over $500 billion. So let's focus on the task at hand, put people back to work. Let's have a Tax Code that makes sense for the middle class. And let's keep our commitment to seniors and grow this economy. Mr. Chairman, I ask that people reject the lopsided Republican plan and adopt the balanced approach presented by the Democratic Caucus. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I think Mr. Ribble made some very, very important points for all of us in this debate, and that is: the reason you see spending rising in both budgets is primarily because we have so many more baby boomers becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security. In fact, what this chart shows is that, over the 10-year window, you are going to see about a 33 percent increase in the number of people eligible for Medicare and about a 30 percent increase in the number of people who are eligible for Social Security. So what we say in our budget is that, if we are going to meet our commitments to these seniors but also reduce our budget deficit, we have to do it in a balanced way. Because if we meet these commitments and at the same time are trying to reduce our deficit, one way to do it is the way the Republican budget does: to more than double the sequester cut in all the areas that are important to growing our economy, our infrastructure investment, our kids' education, science and research. They also cut Medicaid, which affects a lot of those seniors on Medicare. About 20 percent of those seniors are also on Medicaid. But it is at the end of that 10-year window that our Republican colleagues then move to their voucher plan, premium support--I don't care what you call it. The only way you are going to achieve any savings compared to the baseline number, CBO baseline that the chairman showed you, the only way you are going to do it is if you are capping the amount you are going to get so that seniors have to eat the costs and take the risks of rising health care. There is a better way to address that issue, and that is the way we approach it in our budget. And that is to build on the kind of reforms that we made in the Affordable Care Act in ObamaCare, which have helped and contributed to reducing the rapid rise in per capita health care costs and which, as I pointed out earlier, our Republican colleagues included in their own budget. So, yes, we have to deal with these drivers of costs, including health care. But the way we propose to do it is not by transferring or offloading those rising health care costs on the backs of the seniors, but by moving Medicare away from a strictly fee-for-service system toward one where we reward the value of care over the volume of care. And that has achieved significant savings, and it has done so without any negative impact to Medicare beneficiaries. So very different approaches to this issue. Mr. Ribble pointed out there is spending going up that is to meet these commitments. But if you don't take a balanced approach like we do, you can only address those issues by undermining other very important national priorities, priorities that have always had bipartisan support in the past. I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas, a member of the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Green.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, just to be clear in terms of the Democratic proposals, if you take our budget proposal here together with the work that we have done over the last couple of years, which reduces spending by over $1.5 trillion, $700 billion in revenue, take that all together, means $4 trillion in deficit reduction over that amount, over the period of the window, and we do it in a balanced way. We don't do it the same time we are providing windfall tax breaks to folks at the very top. We don't do it on the backs of other important priorities. We do it by growing the economy and asking for shared responsibility, so we have shared prosperity in this country. I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia, a member of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Johnson.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time remains on each side?