Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I certainly agree with my friend from Massachusetts that folks ought to know what they are talking about before they come and vote on amendments. In fact, I think folks ought to know what they talk about when they even come down and talk about amendments. I think that ought to be part of the thing. There is no point of order to stipulate that, but I believe it is an important provision. I serve on the Transportation Committee, Mr. Speaker. So I have a vested interest in this. I have kind of a pride of authorship. We worked very hard on this. In my friend from Massachusetts' opening statement, he thanked the chairman and the ranking member of the full committee and of the subcommittee. They call them the Big Four on that committee, Mr. Speaker, the Big Four. If you can get the Big Four to have an agreement, then you feel like you can get your amendment across the finish line because being a committee chairman means something. Among the many amendments that we considered in committee were truck weight amendments, Mr. Speaker. I know this because I serve on that committee. Did you know, today, Mr. Speaker, that we have first responder vehicles--fire trucks, for example--that are prohibited from getting on Federal highways because of this system? If you are in a crisis--if you are in a first responder crisis--because of the wisdom of the Federal Government, the wisdom of this body, we have said: Do you know what? You probably shouldn't get on the fastest and most direct route to respond to the crisis. We really need you to stay on the local roads. No interstate travel for you. That is just nonsense. That is absolute nonsense. Good news, Mr. Speaker. We have folks here in this body who care about ferreting out the nonsense and putting a stop to it. So we considered that amendment in committee, and we passed that amendment in committee. If we pass this rule today, Mr. Speaker, we can change the law of the land to make that difference for people. This is a new day in terms of House leadership, Mr. Speaker. It is a new day. I am going to be interested to see whether we spend more time litigating the past or planning for the future. I am about looking forward. I am optimistic about tomorrow. I know it is going to be better than yesterday no matter how good yesterday was. This is the opportunity we have here together. Unanimous out of committee. Voiced out of the Rules Committee. This is the bill. I don't want anybody to be confused. There is no civil rights legislation in this bill today. This is a transportation bill. I don't want anybody to be confused. We are not rolling back anything for anyone here today. This is a bipartisan--even better, nonpartisan-- transportation funding bill. I don't want anybody to be confused today. This is something that Democrats failed to get done when they ran the show, and it is something Republicans failed to get done when they ran the show. Now we are all here together, getting it done. I think that is worth celebrating. I urge all of my colleagues to pass this rule so we can get to it and then support the underlying bill as well. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. It is easy on a big bill like this to get confused about what is in it and what is not in it. I would refer folks to transport.house.gov. That is not just for Members of Congress, Mr. Speaker. Anybody across the country can access that. What you are going to find--and, again, what is an extraordinary success story that we have on the floor today--are all of these national priorities that we share. The bill refocuses funding on national priorities. It gets us back to the core of the original highway trust fund. It reforms the program, again, in a bipartisan-- even nonpartisan--way to get the dollars on the ground faster to make a difference in people's lives. Time is money, Mr. Speaker, whether you are shipping goods or whether you are sitting in traffic. It promotes innovation to bring some new ideas into the transportation infrastructure. We are getting ready for next generation roads, and that language is here: roads and bridges, public transportation, driver safety, truck and bus safety, hazardous materials. It is all in here. There are those bills in Congress where the more you read them, the more you think: ``Man, what were those guys thinking?'' This is one of those bills where the more you read it, you think: ``How in the world did those guys get it done?'' This is a success story, Mr. Speaker. It is worthy of all of my colleagues' support. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the return to regular order and all of the amendments that we are going to consider today, it is not lost on me that just here in the Rules Committee debate, my friend from Massachusetts was able to talk about truck size and weight for longer than regular order would have allowed the proponent of an amendment to talk about that. Under the 5-minute rule, which is what we have here to conduct these issues, it is hard to grapple with some of these big issues in an amendment process. Some of these issues, as my friend from Massachusetts suggested, should be hashed out in committee, where there is no time limit, where we can work on these, where we can consider all of the studies, where we can go through all of the work. There is a role for the Rules Committee to pick and choose amendments, those that have been considered enough, those that can be considered in a short period of time, and those that need to remain in committee and be hashed out there. As we grapple with what regular order means, I hope my colleagues will come down on the side of reserving the biggest of these issues for committee work and the more minor changes for here on the floor of the House. While I prefer to agree with my friend from Massachusetts, Mr. Speaker, I have to disagree with him about the track record we put together in this body over the last 4\1/2\ years. I came to Congress at the exact same time that John Boehner became Speaker of the House. My first experience here in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, was when John Boehner brought H.R. 1 to the floor. It turns out the Democratic Congress had not finished the budgeting process the year before. So here we were. We were in the middle of the fiscal year. No budget had been passed. No appropriations bills had been passed. This brand- new Congress comes in, the biggest freshman class in American history. It was an exciting, exciting time, Mr. Speaker, as you will recall. One of the first bills out of the gate was a bill to fund $3.5 trillion worth of Federal Government. All these new Members here have all been sent with a mandate from their constituents back home. While history would have suggested that a Speaker would have closed down that process, said this is too important to put before the entire House, what Speaker John Boehner said is: Bring the bill to the floor and we will debate it for as long as it takes. Mr. Speaker, do you remember that? It was all night long, day in, day out, until we finished the job. Every Member on this floor had their voice. We can't always do that, Mr. Speaker. There is not enough daylight or darkness in the year to do that with every bill that comes to the floor of the House. But I cannot let it be said that Speaker Boehner presided over the most closed Congress in history. In fact, the opposite is true. If you track down my Democratic friends, they will tell you they offered more amendments in a John Boehner Speakership than they ever had a chance to offer in a Speaker Pelosi Speakership. I am not faulting the previous Speaker, Mr. Speaker. I am only saying that openness is something you have to believe because it is hard. It is complicated. I listened to my friend from Massachusetts. He said: I want an open process. I just want to defeat all the amendments I don't like that come to the floor of the House. Sometimes that is just the way it is. Sometimes you have to come down here to the floor of the House, you have to have the difficult debate, and you have to win on the merits. Mr. Speaker, we did ask the Department of Transportation to consider truck weights. We absolutely did. And we passed it in a bipartisan way. It was signed by the President of the United States. The date the report was due back to this Congress was last year. Last year is when this body spoke and said: You have to have this study back to us by the winter of 2014. The Department of Transportation said: Whatever. Whatever. We are working on it. It is really hard. I know Congress told us to. I know they are the boss. But whatever. We will get there. Here we are a year later and we still don't have the report, Mr. Speaker. Don't let it be said that we are succeeding here at the Federal level. What does my friend from Wisconsin (Mr. Ribble) do? This is radical. I want to redescribe the radical amendment that my friend from Massachusetts just spoke about. The radical idea that my friend from Wisconsin has is: Let's let the State governments decide for themselves about what the truck weights should be on Federal highways in their system. I don't dispute for a moment that there are going to be States that say: This is too dangerous. We don't want heavier trucks on our road. I don't doubt that for a minute. But don't you doubt for a minute, Mr. Speaker, that there will be States that say: Today we allow those heavier trucks on our small two- lane curvy roads through north Georgia. If you really care about families that have been harmed by truck accidents, then you want those trucks off of those dangerous two-lane roads and you want them on the finest highway system known to man: the United States interstate system. I trust States to make those decisions, Mr. Speaker. Don't think for a moment--don't think for a moment--that the collective wisdom of 435 people in this body is a good substitute for folks who sit back home in the great State of Georgia. I promise you, our judgment, the way we love on one another in Georgia is superior to anything this body could craft. That is the radical idea from my friend from Wisconsin (Mr. Ribble). Let States decide. Let the local people who have to deal with the consequences of action or inaction--let them decide. It feels right to me, Mr. Speaker. That is what is wonderful about this body. We are going to make these amendments in order. We are going to bring them to the floor of the House. We are going to have the debate. And then, lo and behold, at the end of the process, you are going to have to stick your card in the slot and vote ``yes'' or ``no.'' Mr. Speaker, this is the way it is supposed to be. I don't want a body where we all agree on everything all the time. I want a body where we are able to talk about those things that divide us and where we are able to unite around those things that unite us. One of those things, Mr. Speaker, is what my friend from Massachusetts said. We have been in a short-term extension process for far too long. It has been a short-term extension process that has gone through both Republican and Democratic leaderships, Mr. Speaker. This is not a partisan problem. This is an American problem. Today the Transportation Committee has crafted an American solution that, if we pass this rule, we will be able to consider. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 507 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, that is 35 amendments now. There are 35 amendments made in order by this rule. We will still go back at 3 o'clock this afternoon to find even more. That is the collaborative process that I am representing on the floor here today. With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge strong support for the amendment, I urge strong support for the rule, and I urge strong support for the underlying resolution.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this is one of those days where I don't think it is a rare moment of agreement; I think it is a typical moment of agreement. There are issues that divide us, and there are issues that unite us. Focusing on America's infrastructure is one of those issues that unites us. I agreed with my friend from Massachusetts, Mr. Speaker, when he said he hoped in the new administration here in this House that we focused on fairness and respect. I think that is absolutely right. I think that is what the American people ask of us back home. I don't particularly think that suggesting that there are folks in this body who are moving amendments to the floor based on the bidding of special interests moves us in the direction of respect. In fact, I think it moves us in the opposite direction, Mr. Speaker. I don't think suggesting there are those in this body who care about the individual safety of families in our district and those who don't moves us in the direction of fairness or respect, Mr. Speaker. I think it moves us in the opposite direction. That is the challenge that our new Speaker has. We are trying to get to regular order, trying to have all the voices heard, Mr. Speaker, but you have seen the complexity of that just here today. On the one hand, you have heard a passionate speech for why we shouldn't be considering trucking amendments in a trucking bill; that there couldn't possibly be enough time to discuss trucking while dealing with trucks, why we shouldn't possibly have an opportunity to bring experts together who have just passed a trucking bill to deal with more trucking issues. On the other hand, you heard a very passionate plea of why we should bring a Judiciary Committee legislative bill into the transportation bill. This bipartisan bill, this bill that has been worked out, this bill that has succeeded where Congress after Congress after Congress has failed, you have heard a very passionate pitch to say, you know what, let's take that transportation bill and let's drop in a giant judiciary issue on top of it because that is regular order. It is not regular order. I don't dispute that there is frustration in this body for the pace at which legislation moves. I share it. Mr. Speaker, I instigate it for Pete's sake. I came here in the class of 2010. I want to get things done. As soon as we come together and get this done, by golly, we can go back to poking or kicking or talking or whatever it is that folks need to get done, but that is not this bill. This bill is a success. This process is a success. The openness of this process is something that we can all be proud of. It doesn't just happen because Chairman Sessions and Ranking Member Slaughter come together in the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker. It happens because Chairman Shuster and Ranking Member DeFazio came together in the Transportation Committee. This is one of those moments that brings us together, not as a body, but as a nation, getting about the business that our constituents sent us here to do. Amendment Offered by Mr. Woodall

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer an amendment to the resolution.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I am excited to be here today, and I am saddened by some of the shrillness of the conversation. This is the first reconciliation package that I have seen in the 4\1/2\ years that I have been elected to this body. In fact, more than half the Members of this institution have never seen a reconciliation bill come to the floor of this House. Why? Because Congress hasn't functioned in a way where the House and the Senate have been able to come together to do this. That is happening this year for the first time. We ought to be celebrating that. To hear this described as a partisan exercise--and I understand folks have a lot of grievances, and this may just be the day that folks are going to air all of their grievances. But to describe this as a partisan exercise misses the point that the only bipartisanship in this entire conversation is around trying to reject the damaging provisions of the President's healthcare bill. After all, when this was jammed through using the reconciliation process, it was jammed through in a partisan fashion. The bipartisan vote was a vote ``no.'' When we tried to deal with the slush fund that was going for all sorts of programs that America would reject, the bipartisan vote was the vote to abolish it, as this bill does today. The bipartisan vote was to delay the individual mandate, as this bill abolishes today. The bipartisan vote was to delay the employer mandate, as this bill does today. I understand that there is a lot that divides us in this body and in this Nation, but this is a day for celebration. I applaud the chairman for what he has been able to do. He has been able to do what no other chairman has been able to do in the 4\1/2\ years I have been in this institution, and that is bring the House and the Senate together around a budget for the United States of America. I am proud of what we have done, we have done together. If this has to be a day of airing of the grievances, let it be a day of airing of the grievances, but let it not be said that it is a partisan exercise. The bipartisanship exists in this reconciliation package. I hope we come together on it today.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, if I could say to my friend from Michigan, I think there is a lot of wisdom in what he had to say. My friend has been here, Mr. Speaker, since 1965, I believe. I can't remember if he was elected in 1964 and began service in 1965. He has seen a lot of failures and a lot of successes in this institution. Reconciliation exists for one reason and one reason only, and that is to do the really hard things that we can't get done in other times. I would say to my friend, Mr. Speaker, that the die has been cast on reconciliation for 2015. But as a member of the Budget Committee, I will commit to you that we are going to come back, and we are going to get a conferenced balanced budget next year as well. I hear that drumbeat beginning around this institution: What is it that we can get done together? I hope we get this done. Make no mistake, I believe this is good underlying legislation. But the past, well, three decades now since 1980, as I think of the big reconciliation measures that have gone through have been things that have changed America for the better forever, and I am grateful to the gentleman for reminding us all of the power of this tool. Mr. Speaker, 61 times we have had a vote on the President's healthcare bill, that is true. But it is because there are real problems there--again, nine times of which the President has agreed with us about those real problems. The folks who crafted the President's healthcare bill were smart. I don't have any concerns about the funding that my friend from New York has, Mr. Speaker, because the bill has funding buried in it in such a way we don't have any access to it from this institution. That is why we passed 4\1/2\ years' worth of legislation here without getting our arms around that funding. What we are talking about here, Mr. Speaker, are budget deficits. What we are talking about here is an opportunity to move the needle on mandatory spending. What we are talking about here is about $81 billion in static scored money, closer to 130 in dynamically scored money, moving the needle on the budget, as Admiral Mullen, then the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, encouraged us to do. I don't know where the vote is going to come out, Mr. Speaker. I feel pretty good about it. I feel pretty good about it because it is good underlying policy. I feel pretty good about it because we did this the right way. We started in the Budget Committee. We conferenced it with the Senate. We then sent those reconciliation instructions out to the Energy and Commerce Committee, the Education and Labor Committee, and the Ways and Means Committee. Each committee did its work, sent that work back to the Budget Committee, and we then brought all that legislation together. Mr. Speaker, if you want a textbook case of how it is supposed to work around here, this is it. Now, as a fellow who has been disappointed many times in 4\1/2\ years in this institution, I am just going to tell my colleagues that if any of my new colleagues believe they are going to have it their way every day of the week, the answer is no. I was disabused of that notion in week one. But what we can do is bring the collective wisdom of the body together, the collective wisdom of the body and the collective wisdom from our committee structures, and this bill does that. There is only one way to get to this bill, though, Mr. Speaker, and that is to pass this rule today, House Resolution 483, and I encourage my colleagues to do that. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I say to my friend from Connecticut that the point that he made was made very well by the gentleman from Oklahoma last night while we were in the Rules Committee. You only get to use this procedure once--actually, you can use it three times; but for a variety of different reasons, it is only going to come together for us once this year--and you have to choose how to do that. I am thrilled--thrilled--that the story that the gentleman from Connecticut tells is of success for his constituents back home in Connecticut. I think that is fabulous. I think that is fabulous. Mr. Speaker, I don't get to tell as many of those stories. I tell stories of folks who had plans that they liked, and those plans were outlawed by their government. I tell stories about folks who have doctors that they had had relationships with for decades, who were promised that if they liked their doctor they could keep their doctor, who lost access to their doctor because their government told them ``no more for you.'' I tell stories of the small businesses in the district that were doing the right thing by providing health care for their employees who have now been priced out of that marketplace. They are not required by law to do it, but rates have gone up so much they can't do it themselves--not because of our efforts to provide health care to people, but because of our efforts to tell people what kind of health care is good for them and what kind isn't. Mr. Speaker, you may not know, the chairman of the Budget Committee is Georgia Congressman Dr. Tom Price. Dr. Tom Price, in H.R. 2300, has a replacement plan. Dr. Tom Price wants to see preexisting conditions out of the marketplace. Dr. Tom Price, in H.R. 2300, wants to see individuals able to move their policies from business to business, from place to place. Mr. Speaker, it is a doctor-patient relationship. It is not a Federal Government-patient relationship. It is not a Federal HHS, Health and Human Services-patient relationship, and it is not an insurance company-doctor relationship. It is about me and my physician, you and your physician, our families and our family physician, 320 million Americans at a time. We have it right here in this institution. We have replacement options right here. Do not let it be said that in the name of trying to bring sanity to our Federal spending, in the name of trying to fix the errors that were created in the Affordable Care Act, do not let it be said that any Member wants to trample on the healthcare opportunities that families have back home. Our goal is to expand those opportunities, not to contract them. I celebrate what has happened in Connecticut. I only wish that folks in Connecticut, New York, and elsewhere would support us in Georgia with the challenges that we are having and help us get back to that very personal doctor-patient relationship that we believe is the right of every American. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I confess. I was sitting over here going through my papers. I was afraid I had come down here on the wrong bill here today, listening to my friend describe it. I tell you that, if you listen to that description and you believe it, you ought to vote ``no.'' But it is just not true. It is just not true. In fact, I will go line by line just a little bit. You will not find a CBO document over there that says House Resolution 483 is going to take health care away from 16 million Americans. We are not going to find it. In fact, you won't find a CBO document that says the underlying bill of H.R. 3762 is going to take health care away from anybody because such a document does not exist. CBO did say that the President's healthcare bill would provide health care for 16 million Americans. Yet, the President has joined with this House and that Senate nine times so far to repeal errant provisions of that healthcare bill, and that is what we are going to do here in this legislation today. You won't find any language that suggests that House Resolution 483 is going to deal with preexisting conditions to set back preexisting conditions coverage in any way whatsoever, nor will you find any paper that suggests the underlying bill, H.R. 3672, is going to set back the conversation on preexisting conditions. Why? Because the President led on the issue of preexisting conditions, Mr. Speaker, much like a great Georgia speaker of this House, Newt Gingrich, and Bill Clinton got together and did in 1996. They got together and outlawed all preexisting conditions for federally regulated plans. What President Obama did in his healthcare bill has said: Well, as States haven't done it on their own, we are going to do it for all State-regulated plans, too. This bill doesn't dial that back one iota, not one bit. The President, I believe, won that debate in America. I don't think we are ever going to revisit that debate. I think that is a success story for families with preexisting conditions and, again, something else we ought to be celebrating here today, Mr. Speaker, not holding our heads low about. Mr. Speaker, when the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tells you that the greatest threat to America's national security is our budget deficit--and, at the time that I arrived here in Congress, Mr. Speaker, in 2010, America was running its largest budget deficit in American history, three times the size that they are today--I tell you a bill like this that goes after those deficit numbers is a critically important bill. It is the business that my constituents back home sent me to be about here in this institution. Now, of course, in the 4\1/2\ years that the folks in the Seventh District have lent me their voting card, Mr. Speaker, we have brought budget deficits down each and every year--each and every year--year after year after year after year. But that has been primarily on that discretionary one-third of the pie I talked about, Mr. Speaker. There is so much more work to be done, and reconciliation is the tool we use to get around the filibuster, to allow the people's will to be done with simple majorities on both sides of the Hill. Good news. If you don't believe what is in the underlying bill is good for America, you can vote ``no,'' and if 51 percent of your colleagues agree with you, this bill will not go forward. But that is not going to happen because this is good policy. And good news, Mr. Speaker. When it goes over to the Senate, if the Senate does not believe this is good policy for America and 51 Senators vote against it, this bill will not go to the President's desk. But that is not going to happen because there is good policy in the underlying bill. This will go to the President's desk. As the President sits today, Mr. Speaker, contemplating vetoing the National Defense Authorization Act--in fact, that may be happening even as we are standing here now, that bill that provides authorized funding for all of our troops--I can't possibly predict what he will do when this bill arrives on his desk. But what my friend from New York fails to mention every time she mentions that 61 times in this House we have dealt with trying to clean up the messes that the Affordable Care Act has created is that 9 of those times the President agreed with us. It is just so critically important, Mr. Speaker. We get wrapped around the partisan axle in this body in ways that are tremendously discouraging to me, as if it is always an us against them proposition. It is not. It is just a proposition about us--about us--320 million of us. And nine times so far, Mr. Speaker, just in the short time that I have been in Congress, the House, the Senate, and the President have gotten together and said the Affordable Care Act is broken and together we can begin to fix it. I believe this is going to be one of those opportunities as well, Mr. Speaker. It is going to be a tremendous vote, I hope, on passing this rule, which will allow us to begin debate. Pass that underlying resolution. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I firmly believe there is more that unites us than that divides us not just in this Chamber, but in this Nation. As I have listened to my colleague from New York talk about some of the priorities that America has, I think she is spot on. I think she is spot on. I am missing votes in the Transportation Committee right now where we are moving that long-term transportation bill so that I can be down here on the floor moving this reconciliation bill. Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of rust in the gears around here. There is a lot of rust in the gears. It has been since the 1990s that Congress--House and Senate combined--have sent all the appropriations bills to the President before the end of the fiscal year. It has been since the 1990s. Newt Gingrich ran this institution the last time we did that. Bill Clinton was in the White House the last time we did that. There is a lot of rust in the gears that has accumulated under both Republican and Democratic leadership in this place. But this year we passed more appropriations bills earlier in the fiscal year than at any point since 1974. This year we are moving the first long-term highway bill that we have seen in almost a decade. This year we have conferenced a balanced budget for America for the first time in a decade and a half. That is not just a notch to put on the belt of America to say this is what we have done. This is an opportunity to move this budget reconciliation bill. Mr. Speaker, I do. I am saddened that reconciliation is a word that folks have to go and look up and learn, but it is the only way--the only way--in divided government that the people's voice can be heard. There is no other procedure in the United States Congress that allows 51 percent of America to prevail. There is no other ability in the United States Congress for the majority of Americans who have lent their power to Washington to express their views and change the law of the land, save this one. Mr. Speaker, budget deficits have gone down each and every year since Speaker John Boehner stood right there where you are standing today and Nancy Pelosi handed him the gavel--every year--from record high levels now to the lowest budget deficit in the Obama administration, and we have an opportunity today to do more. I have heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, talk about those things that we can do together, and I agree. I agree. I have heard my colleagues on the other side talk about their priorities in terms of raising the debt limit and not seeing the government shut down. I halfway agree. I don't want to see the government shut down either. We avoided a government shutdown 2 weeks ago and got a little thank you note from a young lady who was in the office. She said: Dear Congressman, It was good to see you today. Thank you for not letting the American History museum close down while my family was in Washington. There are real impacts to that. But the fact is the reason we are having the conversation is not because anybody wants to shut the government down. It is because folks want to borrow more money. Mortgaging our children's future to the tune of $18 trillion apparently is not mortgaging it enough. We are going to be back and make it $19 trillion or $19.5 trillion. Mr. Speaker, we are not talking about a debt limit that is coming around today. We are talking about one that came around in the spring. The government has just been borrowing and borrowing and borrowing even beyond that debt limit, and they are borrowing because we are spending too much. Mr. Speaker, look at the tax rolls right now. Do you realize, as we are standing here today, not only is America collecting more in constant dollars--not static dollars, but constant dollars adjusted for inflation--we are collecting more money than at any time in American history, any time. Per capita in this country, Americans are paying more in taxes than they have ever paid in the history of the Republic, not in inflated 2015 dollars, but in constant dollars adjusted for inflation. The real impact on American families is greater today in taxes than ever before. Mr. Speaker, the problem is not that we don't raise enough money. The problem is that we spend too much money. I can't count the number of good pieces of legislation that have gone to the Senate and failed not on their merits, but because a Democratic filibuster would not even allow the bill to be debated. With this rule and with this underlying bill, we allow the people's voice to be heard, we allow the American majority's voice to be heard, and we have an opportunity to put a bill that will make a difference for American families on the President's desk for the very first time. I encourage all of my colleagues' strong support of the rule. Upon passage of that rule, Mr. Speaker, I encourage their strong support for the underlying reconciliation measure. We have an opportunity today together to make a difference.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I want to start with the end of what our Reading Clerk read before I get to the excitement in the beginning. At the end, what you heard was some blanket authority to consider what I will call housekeeping measures here in the House, and not because Republicans say so, not because Democrats say so, but because Republicans and Democrats come together, consult with one another, and try to find those issues on which we agree to bring forward. I sit on the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker. The best thing that happens in this institution is when a bill comes through the Rules Committee, because my colleague Ms. Slaughter and I always make it better. We always make it better. But we include authority to avoid the Rules Committee for some of these issues that are going to come to the floor fast and furious. Here we are, at the end of a cycle. We are in a leadership change here in the House. You don't know what might happen. What the Rules Committee did last night was to create a pathway to allow the House to continue its business at a moment's notice, and I am glad that we included that provision in here. We also include same-day consideration authority. Mr. Speaker, one of the things that happened when the big freshman class that I was elected with in 2010 came is we said, for Pete's sakes, we need time to read the bills. We need to follow the rules and make sure that all Members have a chance to get deep into the information and legislation. That persists still today. We have a process today that allows Members to get involved in that legislation. But we still have those emergency times here in this Chamber where something has to happen in a hurry. Whether we are talking about borrowing authority, spending authority, whether we are talking about something for our troops, something for our veterans, things still happen on a moment's notice. What we have included in here is the ability to bring things more quickly to the floor here in the next short period of time. That is important from a housekeeping perspective, Mr. Speaker, but that is not what is important about this rule today. What is important about this rule today is that 4\1/2\ years ago, the people of the great State of Georgia, its Seventh District, sent me to Congress. I was placed on the Budget Committee in this Congress, the Budget Committee, the committee that writes the framework by which the entire $3.5 trillion Federal Government is funded. We got together and we worked hard here in the House, Mr. Speaker, and we produced a budget, but the Senate did nothing. I came back that second year, 2012. We worked hard here in the House. Together, we produced a budget, but the Senate did nothing. We came back again 2013, worked hard here in the House, produced a budget, but the Senate produced nothing. Mr. Speaker, what we are here today to do--what we are here today to do--is made possible for one reason, and one reason only. That is because, for the first time since 2001, Republicans and Democrats came together in the House; Republicans and Democrats came together in the Senate. We passed a budget; they passed a budget. We conferenced a budget, and America has a balanced budget which it lives under for the first time in 15 years--for the first time in 15 years. Now, what does that mean? It is not all that exciting to read the budget, Mr. Speaker. I recommend it to you if you haven't gotten into the details. I recommend it to anybody who hasn't gotten into the details. But that is not what is exciting. It is not the numbers in the budget that are exciting. What is exciting is that, because we came together, not because we had our ideas and they had their ideas, but because we came together, we have triggered a process called reconciliation. Now, I am saddened that reconciliation is now in the lexicon of the American people. It is not an important word that folks need to know except for the fact that it gives us access to do things on their behalf that we wouldn't have been able to do before. I am so pleased that the Secretary of the Senate sent that message over right before we got up to say that the Senate has just acted on two pieces of House legislation. One of those, enacted with no amendments, is going to be on its way to the President's desk. One, done with amendments, we are going to have to consider that again. So often we do such good work, the 435 of us together in this Chamber, and it does not get past a Senate filibuster. Mr. Speaker, the filibuster is designed to protect the rights of the minority. Republicans use it when they are in the minority; Democrats use it when they are in the minority; but it prevents the people's business from moving forward. Not so today. Not so today. Because we got together in the House with a budget and the Senate with a budget, because we brought a budget together, we are now in the process of reconciliation, which allows us to have the people's will be done. Fifty-one votes in the Senate now will move legislation forward, as it relates to balancing the budget. You remember, Admiral Mullen, he said, Mr. Speaker, the greatest threat to American national security wasn't a military threat. He said it was our Federal budget deficit. We have done such an amazing job collaboratively in this Chamber working on the one-third of the budget pie called discretionary spending. That is the spending that we have to work on here every year. What we have failed to do together is work on the two-thirds of the pie called mandatory spending, where the real growth in those budget programs occurs. But that failure ends today. With the passage of this rule, we will move to consider the first reconciliation package that has come to Congress in the 4\1/2\ years that I have been here, made possible by the first balanced budget agreement that Congress has come to since 2001. Mr. Speaker, this is why--this is why--I came to Congress, and we are doing it together here today. Let me tell you what is in this bill. I have seen it described in the press as a complete and total repeal of the President's healthcare bill. That is nonsense. I would support such an effort if we could bring such an effort to the floor, but that is not what this bill is today. What this bill is today is a group of commonsense, budget- saving, spending-reprioritizing measures. I will give you an example. There is a medical excise tax that the President's healthcare law put into effect. It is 2.3 percent. It is an excise tax, a gross receipts tax on all medical innovation in this country as it relates to devices. We all know the power to tax is the power to destroy. There is not one Member in this Chamber who supports destroying medical innovation, not one--not one. But, back at the time when the Congressional Budget Office said the President's healthcare bill was going to cost $1 trillion, the President said: I am not going to spend a penny more than $1 trillion. I am going to make sure it is paid for. He was out there looking hard for money. Turns out, medical innovation was a place he could look. We all see now, in retrospect, that was a terrible idea, much like the other nine bills that we have passed here in this House, that they have passed in the Senate, that the President has signed into law to repeal various unworkable parts of the President's healthcare bill. This is just yet another. We can do this together here today, made possible by this first budget agreement that we have had since 2001. The Cadillac tax it is called, Mr. Speaker, another provision that this bill will repeal. It is a Cadillac tax, Mr. Speaker. As we all know, Cadillac is a fine American automobile. You get in a Cadillac, you feel good. We call it the Cadillac tax because it is on healthcare plans that are too good--too good. Turns out, Mr. Speaker, there are some labor unions in this country that are taking too good of care of their members. Turns out there are some businesses in this country that are looking after the healthcare needs of their employees too much. We want to keep that down. The last thing we want in this country, apparently, is folks having health care that is too good. I tell people all the time, Mr. Speaker, I can make everybody in this country poor; I just can't pass a law to make everybody rich. We are so good at dumbing down the system for everybody. Well, that is what this Cadillac tax was designed to do. The labor unions don't like it. Employers don't like it. We all know it is not the right thing to do, and in a bipartisan way we have introduced legislation to repeal it. This bill, this rule, gives us an opportunity to actually send that to the President's desk. Mr. Speaker, I won't go on and on about all the good things that are in this bill. I am sure my colleague from New York is going to highlight a lot of those herself, and I don't want to steal all the thunder. But we are here because 435 of us came together here, 100 came together there, and America is operating under a conferenced budget, and not just a budget, but a balanced budget for the first time since 2001. A lot of disappointment has come out of Washington, D.C., Mr. Speaker, but we are here on the floor today talking about one of those things we get to celebrate, one of those successes on behalf of the families back home, that we have done together. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 483 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, October 13, 2015, and that the order of the House of January 6, 2015, regarding morning-hour debate not apply on that day.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the recognition. I appreciate you staying on the floor with me today. It has been a week of inside-the-beltway activity. I can't find a single Member of Congress on this floor--and I have been talking to a lot of them--who ran for Congress because they thought the most important job we were going to have was picking our House leadership. It is an important responsibility. It is an important job, Mr. Speaker. I can't tell you how difficult it is to lead 435 leaders. It is not a shortage of leaders we have here. Sometimes it is a shortage of good followers we have here. But nobody ran for Congress for that. You ran for Congress because we had serious business that the American people asked us to be about, and most of that business is not inside leadership conversations. It is about the American economy. It is about feeding one's family. It is about having a predictable future for one's children. It is about opportunity. I want to begin, Mr. Speaker, with three of the challenges that are out in front of us. The reason good leadership in this institution is important is because we have serious challenges. When I got here in 2011, we elected John Boehner Speaker of the House because John Boehner said we can do amazing things in divided government. We don't have to sit back and wait until we control all branches of government as Republicans. The Democrats don't have to sit back and wait until they control everything, Mr. Speaker. We can do amazing things together, and that is exactly what he did. And we did it around finding those things on which Americans agree. I have up here the looming insolvencies for our major social safety net programs, Mr. Speaker. Social Security Disability Insurance reaches insolvency next year, next year. It is not 20 years from now, not 10 years from now. It is next year. If you are an American and you are counting on Social Security Disability Insurance to provide for you and your family because you have paid into it faithfully your entire career--forbid the thought something has happened to you, now you must rely on it--we have a cash flow situation next year leading to insolvency. That is the smallest of our concerns, Mr. Speaker. We go next to Medicare, insolvent in 2030. Medicare. Social Security, insolvent in 2035. Social Security and Medicare, as you know, Mr. Speaker, are funded by payroll taxes. Payroll taxes are that FICA line on our pay stubs. It is the largest tax, at 15.3 percent of every worker's paycheck in this country. It is the largest tax that most American families pay. I want you to think about that. Here we are talking about earning the American people's trust. Here we are talking about delivering for the American people on their priorities. The largest tax that most Americans pay goes to fund two programs that we know with certainty, as we sit here today, aren't going to survive in their current configuration. The cash flow just won't allow it. But, Mr. Speaker, I am not here to preach doom and gloom. I am here to preach opportunity. I am preaching opportunity because I work with 434 other people here who also believe that, if we work together, we can do amazing things for the American people. I have got a chart here, Mr. Speaker. You can't see it from your perch. But it is the projected economic growth rates in this country. Again, I am trying to distinguish what is happening in terms of a leadership discussion here from what is happening in a broader leadership discussion about America. And what I show here is that year after year after year for the past--I have 3 years represented here on the screen, Mr. Speaker, but it goes back 5 years. Every year the Congressional Budget Office--that group of economists that help us to craft the numbers in a bipartisan way--every year the Congressional Budget Office reports that their anticipated economic growth for America is lower in this year than it was the year before. And it was lower last year than the year before that. And it was lower that year than the year before that. When we fail to succeed together, Mr. Speaker, it is not an academic conversation. When we succeed in the wrong way, it is not an oops moment. It has a real impact on economic growth in this country. These may be colors on a chart, Mr. Speaker, but what they represent are jobs for families. What they represent are manufacturers who decided to stay in America or leave America. What they represent are entrepreneurs who either succeeded in their business or who were crushed by regulatory burdens. These decisions we make have consequences, Mr. Speaker. I have an interest rate chart here. You can't tell, but what you would see if you could see it, Mr. Speaker, is that we are borrowing money today at the lowest interest rate in American history. It is virtually free. It is virtually free today because we have the best of all the worst economies on the planet. Folks are interested in buying our debt. Right now there are stories in The Wall Street Journal about the Germans dumping our debt, about the Chinese dumping our debt. But because markets are frightened around the globe, there is more demand than there are folks selling. I put the interest rates up, Mr. Speaker, because I am talking about solving big problems today. We are going to talk about big problems. We are going to talk about solutions that we have come to here in this body. But too often, when we talk about balancing the budget, it sounds like it is a numbers game. The only numbers game balancing the budget is the numbers game 320 million because that is how many Americans live in this country and are counting on us to succeed for them. When we borrow money, we end up paying interest on that money. I am so weary of the political ecochamber, Mr. Speaker, that tells the story of the folks on the left who say, ``I want every program in America to succeed, and, in fact, I want to spend even more on it'' or the folks on the right who say, ``I will never ever raise your taxes. You don't have to pay for those programs that you want.'' Because both sides are wrong. What I have here, Mr. Speaker, is a chart of the interest that we are paying on our national debt today. Now, we will talk about the interest we are going to be paying 10 years from now if we don't solve the problem. But this red line represents the interest we are paying on our national debt today: $229 billion this year. Balancing the budget is not an academic conversation. Balancing the budget is the difference between spending $229 billion on interest on the debt versus other American priorities. You can't see it, Mr. Speaker, but education is represented by this blue line. I want you to see that. The Federal Government spends more money in interest on our national debt. Even though we borrowed that money at the lowest interest rates in American history, teaser rates, we spend more in interest on our national debt than we spend on education for our children. We are trying to pass a transportation bill right now, Mr. Speaker. We are trying to put people back to work in America building roads so that we will have the best infrastructure in the world, so that we will move goods and services to market better than any other nation in the world, so that we can have our people moving from place to place, creating jobs and economic activity better than anyplace else in the world. We spend half. Half of what we spend on interest payments this year we will spend on transportation, Mr. Speaker. We spend the same amount on interest payments in 2015 that we will spend on education and transportation combined. I want you to think about that, Mr. Speaker. We could double the spending on education in this country, as my friends on the left propose to do. We could double spending on transportation in this country, as my friends on the left propose to do, if we would balance the budget and get out of the interest payment business, as my friends on the right propose to do. This is a common goal. This is a shared focus. This is not something that divides us. This is something that unites us. Environment and natural resources: $41 billion is being spent by the Federal Government this year. We spend five times more than that on interest payments. Science, space, and technology, Mr. Speaker: Who is going to have that next manned mission to space? Who is going to be the first to have a human being on Mars? What are we going to learn out beyond the stars? We spend one-tenth the amount of our interest payments on that priority. Energy policy: How many times have we heard the refrain ``an all-of- the-above energy policy. Let's find next-generation energy solutions. Let's focus on wind and solar and fuel cells''? I don't dispute any of that. I dispute the commitment that we have to it when we spend 23 times more on interest payments than we spend on all energy policy combined. When I am talking about balancing the budget, Mr. Speaker, when I am talking about making tough choices, I am not talking about an academic conversation about making the numbers balance. I am talking about a reordering of American priorities, where we would rather spend money on our children, on our roads, on our environment, on exploration, on next-generation energy, than we would paying back debts of the past. We are going to make good on our debts. But we can control whether or not we are paying those debts down or whether we are running those debts up. Interest that we pay on our national debt isn't a number on a ledger. It is a category that pushes out so many other American priorities. That is this year, Mr. Speaker. This chart represents this year. If you fast-forward 10 years, under current law, we will be spending more on our national debt than we spend on national security. I don't mean paying back our debt, Mr. Speaker. I mean we will be spending more in interest payments on our national debt than we will be spending protecting the national security of the United States of America. That is why the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, said the largest threat to America's national security is rising debt, because our debt and the accompanying interest payments are squeezing out so many other American priorities. Mr. Speaker, folks don't understand how the American budget works. I put a pie chart up here that captures that. We are going to get into some pretty serious debates here on the floor of this House in the next couple of months, primarily about something that we call discretionary spending. Discretionary spending I have represented up here, Mr. Speaker, by blue pie slices on the pie chart. Defense and nondefense spending are the two big categories, which means defense and almost everything else you think of as the Federal Government. Those are the decisions--these in blue, Mr. Speaker--that you and I have to make every year. That distinguishes it from these decisions in red. Social Security spending, Medicare spending, Medicaid spending, interest on the national debt, other mandatory programs. These programs in red, Mr. Speaker, as you know, we won't revisit those this year. Yes. The Constitution requires that every dollar appropriated from the Treasury be appropriated from the House. But the House, in 1935, decided that some of these dollars needed to go out the door, and they are still going out the door today. We can't change it without passing a new bill in the House, a new bill in the Senate, and a new bill that the President signs. We spend all of our time in this body, Mr. Speaker, arguing about nibbling around the edges on the blue categories of the chart, which is the small third of the pie. The real challenge in balancing the budget lies in these red slices of the pie, and I am going to tell you why. What I have charted here is a look at revenues in this country as a percent of GDP. So often we measure our success against the size of the economy. What are we spending relative to the size of the economy? Because if our population grows, if the economy grows, of course our tax base will grow. And so, too, in many cases will our expenses grow. So we chart these things against the size of the economy. This red line represents our historic revenues going back to 1965: all of the taxes through the Nixon administration, into the Ford administration, Carter administration, Reagan administration, all the way through to today. In fact, we chart it out into 2045. When you see this line go flat on revenues, Mr. Speaker, it is because we are just predicting they are level as a percent of the economy. But what I have also charted are the spending priorities that were in the red slice of the pie shown earlier, the mandatory spending slices of the pie. This blue line represents Medicaid and other Federal healthcare expenditures, like the President's Affordable Care Act. This green line represents Medicare, created in 1965. It used to be nonexistent. Now it is a very large slice of the pie. Again, it represents some of the largest taxes that the American people pay. This light section here represents Social Security, Mr. Speaker, and this blue line represents net interest. Mr. Speaker, if you could see it out on the end of this chart, what you would see is Medicaid spending is growing quickly, but on a predictable line. Medicare spending is growing quickly, but on a predictable line. Social Security spending is almost flat, Mr. Speaker, even though it is a big part of the pie. What is growing is interest payments. And when the blue line crosses the red line, that is where these four programs--interest on the national debt, Social Security payments, Medicare payments, and Medicaid payments--where those programs alone consume every single penny in any tax paid by any American. This is out about 10 years from now, Mr. Speaker. About 10 years from now every single penny that every single American pays in taxes will be consumed by these four programs. These programs will be insolvent because there is no more money. Every other priority will have been squeezed out of the budget. And ``by every other priority,'' Mr. Speaker, I mean we are cutting transportation to zero, we are putting education to zero, we are cutting national parks to zero, we are cutting national security to zero. This is not an academic conversation about balancing the budget. It is a national security conversation because we need to fund that priority. It is an education conversation because we need to fund that priority. It is an environment and parks conversation because we need to fund that priority. These mandatory spending programs threaten to consume every single penny of Federal revenue. Just to be clear, Mr. Speaker, in case there is any confusion, some folks say: Well, Rob, why don't you just raise more revenue? Let's just raise taxes on the American people, then we will have enough money to make that happen. Mr. Speaker, what I am showing you in this chart is, no, that won't solve the problem. This green line, I go from 2006 out to 2044 here, Mr. Speaker, and this green line represents historical revenue. When we hit this big economic downturn over the past 5 years, Mr. Speaker, revenues collapsed. It turns out if the American people can't find a job, the American people can't pay any taxes. That is pretty common sense. I say to my friends on the left, Mr. Speaker, if you want more taxes in the tax base, create more jobs. If folks have jobs, they can pay. When we ran out of jobs, we ran out of money, yet we spent even more because American families were hurting in that period of time. Well, I graphed this out to 2044, Mr. Speaker, and what you see is, under current law--this red line represents current law--if we add no new programs, if we don't spend any additional dollars, we just follow the current law, make no new promises to the American people, the spending required by current law more than doubles current revenues. So we are not talking about raising somebody's taxes a percent or two. We are talking about doubling everyone's taxes all across this country in every category. And when we do that, Mr. Speaker, that will solve the problem until about 2030, and then that won't be enough to fund it either. Taxes are not the problem. Our problem is that we are not raising enough money. Our problem is that current law is spending too much money, and we have got to come together to fix it. Well, now I get to the good news part of the presentation, Mr. Speaker. I am talking about bad news and the debt is squeezing out every other funding priority in America. I am talking about bad news that the major social programs of this Nation are fiscally insolvent. I am talking about bad news because there is just no way to tax the American people at a high enough rate to fund those priorities. The good news is we have come together in this body to work on the spending side together. Look at this, Mr. Speaker. It is unbelievable. Folks sometimes ask me back home, Mr. Speaker, they say: Rob, why do you take so many charts down to the House floor? Why are you down there talking about this? Do you know what my answer is? Because no one believes me. No one believes me. If you go home, Mr. Speaker--and I challenge you to do this. Go home and tell your constituents that when the big class of 2010 got here, when Republicans took over the House in 2011 and so we had divided government--again, as John Boehner always says, you can do big things in divided government. When Republicans took over the House, President Obama was leading the White House, we were spending $3.6 trillion as a nation--3.6 trillion. Now, the baby boomers began to retire in this window, so 10,000, Mr. Speaker, 10,000 men and women every day who had been paying Medicare and Social Security taxes their entire lives began applying for the benefits that they had earned through that lifetime of work. So we have Social Security and Medicare spending, two of the biggest categories of Federal spending, growing exponentially because of all these new applicants to the program, all these folks coming to cash in on their benefits. And what happened in divided government? We came together in this body in what is the best vote I have taken in 4\1/2\ years with a voting card, and we passed the Budget Control Act. I didn't get everything I wanted. My Republican colleagues didn't get everything they wanted; my Democratic friends didn't get everything they wanted; and the President didn't get everything he wanted; but we made a step forward for America, and we cut total Federal spending. We changed our priorities, Mr. Speaker. We began to look and see what was essential Federal spending and what was just kind of nice to do? What did we have to do to meet the promises we made to America, and where were those dollars that we weren't getting as much utility out of? So total Federal spending--not funny, Washington, D.C., math with inflation-adjusted dollars--total dollar bills going out the door from the Federal Government dropped from 2011 to 2012. I had never seen it before in my lifetime, Mr. Speaker, never seen it before in my lifetime. But we weren't done, because when you put 435 minds together in here, you really can do some neat things, Mr. Speaker. In divided government where we all have skin in the game, where we are all trying to accomplish a goal, you can do some amazing things. So from 2012 to 2013, still with 10,000 men and women a day applying for new Social Security and Medicare benefits that they had earned, we cut total Federal spending again--again, not funny Washington, D.C., math, but reprioritizing what those goals were the American people sent us here to achieve and trying to achieve those goals, not because it is a mathematical exercise, but because if we don't, interest on our national debt is going to squeeze out all of the other priorities that we share as a nation. Mr. Speaker, 2 years in a row, while the population was growing, while the economy was struggling, and while seniors were retiring at a record pace, we came together and reprioritized Federal spending to unburden the next generation. Mr. Speaker, we couldn't do that alone as Republicans, and we couldn't have done that alone as Democrats. We could only do that working together, and we did, 2 years in a row, first time, Mr. Speaker, in anybody's lifetime on this floor. I have charted it a different way, Mr. Speaker, because we spend so much time beating up on each other as if we are failures. I tell folks back home that Congress has about a 12 percent approval rating, and we seem to use that entire 12 percent approval rating to tell everybody how awful we are: Oh, it is just terrible; folks can't get along; they all hate each other; everybody is on the take; and Washington is a giant cesspool. Please send me back for 2 more years. Where does that come from? What kind of sense does that make. We have had a lot of conscientious people on the floor of the House, Mr. Speaker, who leave their families and who leave their communities to come here on a mission that their constituents sent them to do, and in every category--I have charted three things here, Mr. Speaker. I have charted what we call discretionary spending, that is what most people think of as government: parks, courts, environment, transportation, and national security. All of those things that you think of as government, if you are on the green line in discretionary spending. This red line is the mandatory spending. That is the interest on the national debt: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Those mandatory programs, dollars go out the door every year. This blue line is total spending across the whole government, Mr. Speaker. What I have shown here--and again, these are not inflation- adjusted dollars; these are actual dollar bills going out the door-- this dotted line in each category represents where the spending was going, where the Congressional Budget Office--again, it is a nonpartisan group of economists here--predicted the Federal Government was going to go when John Boehner took over as Speaker in 2011, before we had divided government, before we were able to come together and do big things. The solid line represents what is actually happening with Federal spending, what is actually happening. What you see, Mr. Speaker, is that even on the mandatory spending programs, we are getting reductions over what was anticipated. Certainly on the discretionary spending programs we are getting reductions over what was anticipated. In total Federal spending, we are getting reductions. Folks think nothing is happening here. They say: Rob, for Pete's sake, you have to go and you have to balance the budget. You have to make these things happen. I can't make everybody agree with me on everything. Put me and two or three other Members together, Mr. Speaker, give us all the powers of government, and we could probably solve this in a week or two. But there are 435 of us, and that is not all of us. That is just here. We have another 100 folks across the way in the Senate. Do you know what they say about the Senate, Mr. Speaker? They say the difference between a Senator and God is that God knows He is not a Senator. You have heard that one, haven't you? The power that is on the other side of the Hill has to be reckoned with, too, not to mention folks down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But we all got together, 100 of them, 435 of us, and 1 President at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and we bent the lines on spending. Now, is spending still going up, Mr. Speaker? It is. What you see here is that we have curtailed it inside our current window. It is the outyears where the rise really begins. Why is it rising? Look here. Discretionary spending, these are all of those priorities we talked about earlier, that is going down in kind of a flat line going out over the 10-year horizon. It is mandatory spending that is still going up. Even with the changes we have made, it is still going up. When we talk about what the problem is with spending in this country and we talk about what the challenge is with balancing the budget, it is not that we are spending a little money here or a little money there on education or transportation or the courts or the parks or even national defense. The problem is that you have promised me--I am in my forties, Mr. Speaker. You have promised me Social Security and Medicare benefits that you can't possibly live up to. There is no cash flow model that leaves enough money in the trust funds for me to access it when I retire, and you need to be honest with me and tell me that today while I have another 30 years to prepare for it. They did a survey of young people, Mr. Speaker. More young people in America, more millennials believe that they would see a UFO in their lifetime than see a Social Security check in their lifetime. Now, I have just told you this is the largest tax that most Americans pay, and we have so broken the trust with the American people as a spending body here in government that young people who are paying that giant FICA tax, the largest FICA tax in American history, they don't believe they will ever see a penny from it. We have made these changes together, Mr. Speaker. We can do better. We can make more. But the arguments that the American people are going to hear--and this is critically important. The arguments that the American people are going to hear over the next 4 months are going to be about $1 billion here and $1 billion there when we have a $100 trillion problem. The arguments that folks are going to hear over the next 4 months, Mr. Speaker, are all going to be focused on this sliver down here in the green area. This body is going to become consumed with nibbling around the edges on discretionary spending on which we have already succeeded. We have already begun the process of redefining those priorities. Where we haven't done enough is on mandatory spending. I have got to find a way, Mr. Speaker, we have got to find a way to come together to do the heavy lifting that is mandatory spending. No one is going to go to any senior in America and tell them that we are going to pull the rug out from under them now that they have already retired. Nobody is going to do that. Nobody is proposing that. Nobody is talking about that. And if you are a senior citizen in America, Mr. Speaker, rest assured that the only thing anyone is working on here is making sure the trust funds survive to pay you those benefits that have been promised. When we are talking about making changes, we are talking about making changes to my generation and younger folks to connect the reality, which is we can't afford those promises with the reality that I am still paying those taxes and redefining that relationship, Mr. Speaker, in a way that America can keep the promises. I don't mind delivering bad news to folks. You have to pay for what you want in this country. If you want more benefits, we will have to raise your taxes. If you want fewer benefits, we can cut your taxes. Right now, we are providing more benefits without raising taxes. We won't raise taxes on each other. We will raise taxes on our children and grandchildren instead. We won't cut benefits for each other. We cut benefits for our children and grandchildren instead. There is a better way forward, but we are going to find it together. Again, I put the charts up, Mr. Speaker, because folks won't believe it. These are actual dollars, not inflation-adjusted dollars. This chart represents the dollars that we have control over in this body, the dollars that we have to get together and decide on every year. Again, two-thirds of the budget goes out the door whether this body shows up for work or not. It is on autopilot. The dollars that go out the door because we show up for work we have been reprioritizing, reallocating, and refocusing every single year. The result of that is a more effective and more efficient Federal Government to accomplish the priorities the American people have sent us here to accomplish, and we are borrowing less from our children and our grandchildren. It is a morality issue, Mr. Speaker. These are our Federal deficits. This is the money that we are borrowing from our children and our grandchildren. When George Bush was leaving office, and if he were here on the floor of the House today, Mr. Speaker, he would tell you, it was no source of pride for him as he was leaving office that he ran up the single largest deficit in American history. It was a Republican in the White House, it was Democrats running Capitol Hill, but together, in divided government, they came together and ran up the single largest annual deficit in American history. This one, Mr. Speaker, you can't see it, this little bitty one that is almost too small to read on the chart, this was once the largest deficit in American history. Then we left divided government. We went to unified government where one party controlled everything, and we went to this deficit for 1 year and this deficit for the next year and this deficit for the next year, deficits, Mr. Speaker, two and three times larger than the deficit that George Bush set as the highest annual deficit in American history. Mr. Speaker, those were dark economic times for the country. Everybody has hindsight that is 20/20. No, I wouldn't have supported that spending had I been here at that time. I wasn't in Congress at that time. But those deficits are a reality. Those dollars have been borrowed. That money is now being repaid with interest every day of the week. I take that back. No, it is not. We don't repay a penny of our debt. I don't know if we have ever had that conversation. We don't repay a penny. Let's be clear. We pay interest on our national debt. We just keep borrowing. When a principal payment comes due, we borrow more money from someone else to pay back the interest and principal that we borrowed from somebody years ago. We don't pay back a penny. We just borrow more and more and more. These represent increasing borrowing amounts. Well, Mr. Speaker, this is the first budget that that class of 2010 got to work on together. This is the second. This is the third. This is the fourth. This is where we are right now. We are making progress together. We are doing this together not as a mathematical exercise, but as a moral imperative not to borrow and mortgage the future of our children and our grandchildren. We are headed in the right direction, but we have to do more. I don't want to look like I am patting us on the back, Mr. Speaker. The challenge is enormous. And, yes, we are grappling with it. But, look, this chart represents historical deficits back again as a percent of GDP. These other charts I showed you were in actual dollars going out the door. We use percent of GDP so we can kind of compare apples to apples because a dollar going out the door in 1942 would have been more money going out the door today. So we do it as a percent of the economy to try to make it be comparable. We go back here to 1965, Mr. Speaker. We borrow, borrow, borrow, borrow, borrow. Throughout all the 1980s we borrowed. Do you remember those conversations in the 1980s, Mr. Speaker, where folks thought Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill and Congress were going to borrow us into oblivion? We thought the 1980s were the dark days of Federal spending because we were running up deficits that were so large. Here those are, Mr. Speaker, these, what looked like high points then, but turned out to be low points by more recent history standards. These are those 1980 deficits. These are the early Clinton deficits. These surpluses are the successes that Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton had together, again, divided government producing results. We went back to unified government here with not-so-good results. We went to divided government. Now we are getting back on track. But if you look at--and I project it another 10 years out, Mr. Speaker. If we do nothing, deficits begin to rise again. Under current law, if we do nothing, deficits begin to rise again. Yes, we have come together on the Budget Control Act and we have done amazing things. We have come together to end what was called the sustainable growth rate. They call it the doc fix. I don't know why they call it that. It was a patient fix. It was this gimmick in law that was undermining healthcare security for all seniors. We came together and we fixed that. We made changes to the Medicare program that both solved a current problem and prevented future problems. Reinvesting more money in the trust fund, putting off those deficits, we can do those things together. But we have got to start now, Mr. Speaker. Again, we are going to talk over the next 4 months about $1 billion here and $1 billion there. I want to talk about $1 trillion here and $1 trillion there. This chart, Mr. Speaker, represents the nature of our challenge. If we want to get back to what I would call Federal debt levels that are historically normal, if it is okay to confess that, yes, we have a chart that says: As America, let's not have debt that is incredibly high. Let's just have debt that is kind of an average high. That is what we are going to define as success, just an average high debt, average dangerous debt. We are going to define that as success. And to get to that point, Mr. Speaker, if we start today, we are going to have to deal with about 1.1 percent of GDP. That is going to be the size of the change. We are going to have to deal with about 1 percent of the size of the entire economy. What is that going to be? A 1 percent increase in taxes? A 1 percent reduction in spending? No. It is much larger than that. GDP is the entire American economy. Federal spending and Federal taxes are just a very small part of that. When we talk about moving the needle on 1 percent of GDP, we are talking about big, big dollars. It is a huge challenge, huge challenge, if we started today. The tale I am telling, Mr. Speaker, is, if we wait 5 years, the challenge gets 30 percent harder. It is a huge challenge today. Some would argue it is an insurmountable challenge today. If we fail to address it today, Mr. Speaker, it will be 30 percent harder just 5 years down the road. Mr. Speaker, wait 10 years down the road and it is almost twice as hard. It is almost twice as hard to conquer 10 years down the road. We don't talk about Social Security going bankrupt in 2035 because we are trying to be alarmists. We talk about it going bankrupt in 2035 because the time to solve that is today. We talk about Medicare going bankrupt in 2030 not to be alarmists, but because the time to solve that is today. These funding challenges that we have are hard today. They are twice as hard tomorrow. We have got to find the courage today to come together and make these changes. Now, that is to keep things as they are. If what you want to do is to make things better, you see, the challenge is even harder. If what you want to do is begin to pay some debt back, the challenges are even larger. I am not setting my sights on the big line, Mr. Speaker. I am trying to focus on the little line because success begets success. When we came together and solved the Budget Control Act, we were then able to come together and solve the Medicare challenge. When we came together and solved the Medicare challenge, we were then able to come together and solve our defense challenge. One time and one time and one time and one time. When you wake up 365 days later, you find out you have really gotten some work done. There are a lot of numbers on this chart, Mr. Speaker, and I will send you a copy of it. But we are talking about a 14 percent revenue increase or a 13 percent spending increase today, today, to begin this process. The size of our challenge today, the challenge that I said was easy, the challenge that I said we could achieve together, the challenge that I said divided government gave us an opportunity to be successful at, that is a 14 percent revenue increase, 14 percent tax hike today, or a 13 percent spending cut today. And then we are going to need to do it again next year and again next year and again the year after that. This is the easy challenge, Mr. Speaker. We have come together to create the largest deficit reduction package in the history of the country. Republicans, Democrats, Congress, the White House, we did it. We have time to do it again. I know there is an election year coming. I know folks want to focus on who is going to win in November. I know folks want Democrats to try to take over Congress or Republicans to try to take over the White House. I know that is the national conversation. But whichever side of that battle you pick, wouldn't your candidate be advantaged if Republicans and Democrats had been successful for the American people on yet another big challenge? There is only one way forward, and it is hard. There is only one way forward, and it is together. Please let us not burn bridges quibbling over $1 billion here and $1 billion there over the next 4 months. One billion dollars is a lot of money, a lot of money. But our problems are trillion-dollar problems, and I want us to join together to solve them because I know that we can. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.