Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to say to my friend, whose leadership in this House I value, that he had an opportunity in that joint select committee, that supercommittee, an opportunity that I know he wishes that we had been able to come together on and we were not able to come together on. What we have now is not a division amongst ourselves; it is a reflection of the fact that we actually have different opinions. Allowing different budgets to come to the floor is going to allow us to flush out those opinions. I wish, thinking about bipartisan cooperation as we have had in years past, there would have been a Republican-Democratic substitute that would have gotten to balance as well, making those tough decisions. But instead, what we are left with are Democratic budgets that never balance and Republican budgets that achieve balance, all while ignoring the challenge that we have to deal with sequester long term. I appreciate the gentleman's leadership on trying to deal with the sequester. I, too, wish we had had it.

Mr. WOODALL. I thank my friend. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. I am happy to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friend from New York that I have no further requests for time, and I would ask my friend if she has further requests for time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am not sure if I was clear when I got started, and I apologize if I was not. We are going to vote on every idea that folks have. We are going to vote on every budget that was introduced. If you have a plan about how to better run this Nation, you don't need to complain about somebody else's vision; you are allowed to bring your own vision to the floor. Mr. Speaker, we all care about men and women back home in our districts. What you can see on this chart is the interest spending alone under current law in year 2025. That is the 10th year of the budget window, almost a trillion dollars in interest alone. When we hear about what the spending priorities are that each Member of this Chamber has, we have to ask ourselves, so what are you doing to balance the budget so that interest doesn't consume it all? As you can see, Mr. Speaker, under current law, if we don't make necessary changes, we are going to be spending more on interest alone on the national debt than we are on all defense issues combined. We are going to be spending more on interest on the national debt than we spend on Medicaid, our largest health care program, to help those constituents in need in our district. If you care about folks who are in need in your district, you care about balancing the budget, because we all know that in a debt crisis, the folks who get hurt the most are the folks who are most dependent on government services. Mr. Speaker, in this great festival of democracy that is the budget process, we have a budget before us today that purports to balance in 6 years. The Republican Study Committee has introduced that budget. We are going to have a vote on it today. We have the budget that came out of the House Committee on the Budget. It purports to balance in 10 years. We are going to have votes on budgets in this process, Mr. Speaker, that anticipate balancing never--never. The President's budget, for example, Mr. Speaker, the President's budget projects $2 trillion in new taxes--$2 trillion in new taxes--and never balances. It doesn't balance next year; it doesn't balance 10 years from now; it doesn't balance 20 years from now. It balances never. Every time we borrow a dollar from our children or our grandchildren, we are promising, we are committing either an additional dollar in taxes on those same children and grandchildren plus interest in the future or an additional dollar in benefit cuts. Mr. Speaker, we ought to have this robust debate about our spending priorities, but it ought to start from the position that we have an obligation to pay for the bills that we are running up today. I say to my friends, these are not small things that we are arguing about. I want to talk to you about how do we invest more in transportation. I want to talk to you about how do we invest more lifting people up from that bottom rung of the ladder to the next rung of the ladder, to the next rung of the ladder. I want to talk about how to invest in America, but every time we vote for a budget that doesn't balance, we threaten that future. We have more in interest payments on the national debt than on all national security combined. I don't know that we are going to find that agreement today, Mr. Speaker, but if we pass this rule, again, we will be able to begin that process where all of the ideas will be debated. I just encourage my friends, when each budget comes to the floor, ask this question: Do we plan for balance ever? Do we anticipate ending the added burden on our children ever? Do we anticipate mortgaging our children's future for as far as the eye can see, or do we anticipate taking responsibility? We have got a lot of budgets to choose from, a lot of opportunities to take responsibility for. Mr. Speaker, I encourage my friends to support this rule so that we will be able to bring those bills to the floor. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say to my friend, that is what is so wonderful about this process. The days for pointing out who is so wrong and their ideas are so bad are left for a campaign season. This is the day where you bring your ideas to the floor of the House, and every single idea that was offered is going to be considered. Mr. Speaker, that doesn't happen by accident. At this time it is my great pleasure to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions), the chairman of the Rules Committee and an outspoken advocate for trying to bring these ideas to the floor, without whom we would not be able to be here today.

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, 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. Mr. Speaker, I was looking around to see if folks were getting goosebumps as the Reading Clerk was reading the rule. I was. I think that if folks were honest with themselves, they would be getting some goosebumps, too, because we don't always have the most open of processes around here. It is hard. We have 435 of us. We all represent different districts, constituents that often have different hopes and dreams, different challenges that they face. It is not easy to craft a process that allows every Member of this institution to have a voice. It is particularly not easy to allow every Member of this institution to have a voice on something as important as the budget of the United States of America. That is big, $3.8 trillion worth of big. And yet what you just heard from the Reading Clerk, Mr. Speaker, is that if we pass this rule, this rule that my colleagues and I on the Committee on Rules sorted out yesterday, if we pass this rule, we will begin the process that will allow a debate on every single budget submitted by every single Member of this House. Now, Mr. Speaker, I have written those budgets in the past. That is not an easy job. There is a reason we are not going to consider 435 budgets. It is a big, big job. But more than being big in that it requires hundreds and hundreds of hours, it is big in that it requires you to put your money where your mouth is. That is not a task that folks often step up to the microphone to take on in this town, Mr. Speaker, but today we have budgets from the Progressive Caucus; we have budgets from the Democratic minority on the Committee on the Budget; we have budgets from the Republican Study Committee; we have budgets from the House Committee on the Budget and more. Every group that decided that they didn't run for this job to make campaign speeches but they ran for this job to make a difference has a chance to put their money where their mouth is. My friends in the Progressive Caucus, Mr. Speaker, if we pass this rule, we will be allowed to vote on a Progressive Caucus budget. My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that their budget proposes increasing taxes by almost $7 trillion--$7 trillion. I don't support that kind of tax increase, but by golly, we ought to have a conversation about it. There are folks who are down here who are willing to recommend it. We should be willing to count the votes and see if it wins or whether it loses. I sit on the House Committee on the Budget as well as the Committee on Rules, Mr. Speaker. Our budget doesn't raise taxes at all, at least not the tax rates. We believe if you implement a responsible budget, we are going to see the economic engine of America begin to churn once again. We believe revenues are going to rise because it turns out, if you don't make any money, you can't pay any taxes. If you get the economy going, tax revenues begin to take care of themselves. Reduce about $5.5 trillion in spending, that is what the House Committee on the Budget proposes. I don't know where the votes are going to shake out, Mr. Speaker, and I am excited to find out. So often you come to the House floor, it has been pre-scripted: The votes have been counted; the process has been closed; it is just more of a show up and vote to give it some finality. But not so today. If we can come together as a Committee on Rules and pass this rule, if we can come together as a body and begin this debate, I don't know which budget is going to pass at the end of the day, but I know this: I know America will be the better for us having a process that includes absolutely every voice in this Chamber, and I know that our chances of turning this budget process, this collection of hopes and dreams that are in a document into the law of the land to make a difference in the lives of families in each of our districts back home, the chances of that happening will be much, much greater. Mr. Speaker, I have got lots to say about the budgets we have introduced, I have lots to say about the numbers that are behind those budgets, but I don't want to slow down what I know is going to be a bipartisan day and a bipartisan budget week. So, with that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. If I could engage my friend from California, I understand why he doesn't like one of the Republican budgets that is here. But this rule also makes in order every single Democratic substitute budget that was offered. I would ask my friend why it is that he opposes this rule since it allows everyone's ideas to be considered. I am happy to yield to my friend.

Mr. WOODALL. 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 163 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WOODALL. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. I yield myself an additional 15 seconds, and I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. WOODALL. As the gentleman knows--and, again, I thank the gentleman--I have introduced the only bill in Congress that abolishes every single corporate tax break in the Tax Code. I would welcome support and enthusiastic cosponsorship from any of my colleagues on the other side the aisle. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I sure do appreciate that, and I appreciate you being down here with us. I enjoy this time of the evening. It is a little quieter on Capitol Hill. Folks are coming and going, but I always learn something that I wouldn't have learned otherwise. For all the differences that we have here, when you talk to each other 15, 20 seconds at a time, those differences get accented. When you listen to one another for an hour at a time, it is easier to find those strains that bind us together. I hope that I am able to touch on some of those topics tonight myself, Mr. Speaker. I have got the House budget on my mind. It is budget week. I don't know if everybody else is as excited about it as I am. This is budget week in Washington, D.C. I just finished a hearing in the Committee on Rules, and we had folks come up and testify about all of their different budget ideas. What it means for it to be budget week is that we just voted in the Committee on Rules to make every single budget that any Member of this body, whether they be the most liberal Democrat, the most conservative Republican, or anywhere in between, north, south, east, and west, youngest to oldest, any Member of this body that has an idea about how to grapple with the budgetary challenges that face this Nation, Mr. Speaker, their idea is going to get a vote on the floor of the House this week--this week. Now, it is heavy duty writing a budget, Mr. Speaker. I serve on the House Committee on the Budget. One of the reasons it is so hard, and you can't see it, Mr. Speaker, but I have here a pie chart of the spending in the United States of America. Now, you and I go through bill after bill, day after day, month after month of talking about appropriations bills. But as you know, Mr. Speaker, appropriations bills, they just deal with what I have shown here in the blue areas, the kind of nondefense discretionary spending and defense spending. Candidly, that is what everybody thinks of as being the budget. They think of transportation, roads, bridges; they think of the environment, parks; they think of the judiciary; they think of law enforcement; they think of all of these components of government. Well, the truth is, all of those things, Mr. Speaker, we have to jam into this little bitty piece of the pie, these two blue pieces of the pie, the things that Congress focuses on every year in the appropriations cycle. This red piece of the pie is all of that spending that is on autopilot. Now, I have read the Constitution, just as you have, Mr. Speaker. It says that all spending is going to originate in the U.S. House of Representatives. Well, you have been here 3 months already and you have not gotten a vote on this spending at all. I have been here 4 years, and I haven't gotten a vote on this spending at all. This is spending--all of this that is represented in red--trillions of dollars a year, because some of our colleagues in the House 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 40 years ago, even 80 years ago, voted ``yes'' to turn on an autopilot spending bill. That bill is still on autopilot and still spending today. Our opportunity to grapple with this red area, Mr. Speaker--this that they call mandatory spending--is by outlining a strategy in a budget. Now, Mr. Speaker, for 4 years, I have had the voting card of the Seventh District of Georgia. It is an honor to carry that card every day. And for 4 years, we have been doing Budget Committee work in this institution that should make every American proud. It should make every American proud. But as you know, Mr. Speaker--as I think most Americans know--the Senate has not quite been as fortunate. They have been stymied over there, trying to pass a budget. Now we have a new American Senate that is working side-by-side with the House, because if the House can pass a budget and if the Senate can pass a budget and if we can come together and reconcile those differences, we will have a governing document that begins to allow us to deal not just with the small blue part of the budget, Mr. Speaker, but the entire budget--$3.5 trillion in FY 2014. Why is that so important? It is important, Mr. Speaker, because we have borrowed $18 trillion from our children and our grandchildren. Now, I say it over and over and over again. I am going to say it again tonight. It is immoral. It is immoral, and it is not even intellectually defensible. If you are from the part of the Congress that doesn't want to raise taxes--and I am in that part of the Congress--don't pretend that borrowing a dollar today so that you don't have to raise taxes is failing to raise taxes. It is not. If you borrow a dollar today, someone is going to have to raise taxes sometime in the future. They are going to have to pay that dollar back, plus interest. A vote to borrow money is a vote to raise taxes. It is just not a vote to raise taxes on you. It is a vote to raise taxes on the next generation. Conversely, if you are in the part of this Congress that likes to spend money--I am not in the part of this Congress that likes to spend money--I want to shrink the size and scope of government, I want to make it more accountable, more effective, more efficient, but it is hard to do with $3.5 trillion. I want to shrink the size and scope of government, but if you are on the side of this Congress that wants to grow spending, a vote to grow spending without paying for it today--a vote to borrow--is a vote to cut spending on someone else years from now. We have seen it in all of the countries around the planet, Mr. Speaker, that are struggling with economic collapse. When government has to shrink, when austerity measures kick in, the people that pay the price are not the wealthy in society. The people who pay the price are those who are most dependent on government benefits. A vote to spend money today that we don't have--a vote to borrow today--is a vote to cut the benefits of our children and our grandchildren, who will need it more than we do today. So, whether you are focusing on balanced budgets from a tax perspective or whether you are focusing on them from a spending perspective, Mr. Speaker, we should be able to come together and decide that grappling with those issues--putting forward a plan to deal with those issues--is better than hiding our head in the sand. This is why. What I have graphed here, Mr. Speaker, with the red line is traditional revenues. It is tax revenues in this country--take all the taxes that we bring in together. I charted them as a percent of GDP, gross domestic product. What that means, Mr. Speaker, this looks like a level line but, of course, the economy continues to grow. And every time the economy grows, tax revenues grow. And so this is level as a percent of the size of our economy, but it is a growing number of taxes every year--again, up to $3.5 trillion now and $3.8 trillion for FY 2016. Well, these blue lines represent spending on those mandatory spending programs I just talked about: those programs that are on autopilot, those programs that we don't deal with in this institution every year, those programs that escape the collaborative scrutiny of this body. Here is what you see. This chart goes back to 1965, Mr. Speaker. Back in 1965, interest on the national debt was a small part of our economic pie. Social Security was a large part of our economic pie, but smaller than it is today. Medicare was a very small part. Medicaid was a very small part. What you see on this chart, Mr. Speaker, is that they grow larger and larger and larger. Now, that is not larger and larger and larger in terms of actual dollars. They are growing larger and larger and larger in terms of actual dollars, but this chart is reflecting them growing larger and larger and larger as a percent of everything the United States produces. And what you see, Mr. Speaker, is that even though all the tax revenue we have been able to squeeze out of this country, whether it was a Republican as President or a Democrat as President, whether it was Republicans running the country or Democrats running the country, America was unwilling to contribute more than about 17 to 18 percent of GDP in tax revenues. Well, Mr. Speaker, if you go out to the end of our budget window here, which is about 2025, you will see that, based on current law, current spending, spending just rising at that rate of inflation as required by current law, the combination of Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and interest on the national debt will consume every penny that the Federal Government raises--every penny. I showed you on this chart earlier, Mr. Speaker, what Congress deals with here in blue--defense and nondefense--which most people think of as the government. That is only about a third of the pie. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the national debt--those mandatory spending programs--is where most of the money is being spent today. That wasn't true 30 years ago. Back in the 1960s, 40 years ago, Mr. Speaker, I would say about a third of government spending was what we will call these income support programs--these direct spending programs on behalf of citizens. About two-thirds of what we spent was investment in America. We were building things: the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control. We were building things. We were defeating the evil empire. National security was a larger piece of the pie in those days. Two- thirds of the budget was an investment in America. But today, Mr. Speaker, those numbers have exactly inverted. We spend about one-third on investment in national security and two-thirds on income support programs. By 2025, Mr. Speaker, those programs threaten to consume every penny the Federal Government has. Look out there at the end of this window, Mr. Speaker. We are not talking about raising taxes a little. We are talking about just to fund these programs--no parks, no courts, no judges, no prisons, no roads, no environmental regulations; nothing except Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, interest on the national debt--we would have to increase taxes almost 50 percent just to pay for those programs. That is not sustainable. Everyone in this Chamber knows it is not sustainable. And my frustration, Mr. Speaker--and I hope you haven't found the same one quite yet--is that we all know what the truth is, but we don't all want to admit what the truth is. There is no question that we can't pay for these programs. There is no question that Social Security is headed towards bankruptcy. Who is doing anything to solve it? Social Security Disability is going to go bankrupt 18 months from now in the year 2016. Social Security Disability Insurance--that trust fund that is available for folks who have been stricken with disabilities and can no longer work--runs out of money. Everyone in this Chamber knows it. That is not Rob Woodall, conservative Republican, predicting that. That is the Social Security Disability Insurance trustees--the nonpartisan trustees--telling us that we are going to run out of money. The nonpartisan trustees of the Medicare Program are going to tell us it is going to run out of money. The nonpartisan trustees of the Social Security retirement program tell us it is going to run out of money. Where are the reform proposals from this institution? It is hard, Mr. Speaker. We all know what the truth is, but folks don't want to admit it. I am going to bring us back to budget week. What I love about this week, Mr. Speaker, is that we focus on those big problems, those big drivers of spending, those social safety net programs that are so essential to so many Americans. This is the week we lay out our plans to save them. This is the week where we talk about doing the heavy lifting that we don't talk about the rest of the year. I want the courage that we show in this week, Mr. Speaker, I want the ideas that we discuss this week to be the outline by which we live the rest of the year. I always hope for that. I don't always get that. I am hoping for that again this year. Let's talk about the plan, Mr. Speaker, that came out of the House Budget Committee. Now, the House Budget Committee is a fabulous group of people. If you have not gotten a chance, Mr. Speaker, it is budget.house.gov. It is completely transparent. You can see anything you want to see about the House-passed budget and our deliberations. We just had a markup last week, Mr. Speaker. We started about 10:30 in the morning. We finished just a little after midnight that day. We came back the next day and went for about an hour more. We discussed every single amendment that anyone had to offer, Mr. Speaker. We talked about the big ideas. We talked about unemployment. We talked about job creation. We talked about job training. We talked about national security. We got deep into every single issue that matters to families back home in my district--every single one--and back home in your district, Mr. Speaker. And this is the plan we have laid out. What I have charted here, Mr. Speaker, is the path of debt. The path of debt runs from back in World War II, where we had to borrow about 100 percent of the size of our economy. Granted, the economy was much smaller then, but as a percentage of the size of our economy--that is the way the economists take a look at what we do to make sure that we are still on good financial footing--100 percent of the size of our economy to defeat the Nazis to win World War II. Mr. Speaker, we are almost back at those same high levels today. You see it represented here by the dark blue line. We are almost back there today. Do we have severe economic challenges today? Of course, we do. Is the world a dangerous place today? Of course, it is. Are we united as a nation and fighting those challenges the way we were fighting World War II? Of course, we are not. Of course, we are not. But by engaging in this degree of borrowing when we are not facing an international challenge of the size of winning World War II, we are trading away our opportunities to face that challenge should it arise in the future. We are borrowing today, Mr. Speaker, for consumption when we borrowed in 1945 for investment. We are borrowing today to pay the current bills of just running the Nation when we borrowed in 1945 to defeat evil. What are we going to do when we are forced to confront evil of that magnitude again? I am not sure, because we have traded away, through borrowing and spending on today's consumption, the opportunity to spend big to win those global challenges. So look at beyond the dark blue line, Mr. Speaker. This is what you are going to see there. The red line of debt, which you see rises far above World War II level borrowing--in fact, double World War II level borrowing--that red line is what happens if we close the doors of the Congress today. If we turn out the lights and never pass a new law, if we turn out the lights and never make a new promise, if we turn out the lights and promise not to spend one more penny than that that is already required by the laws on the books--and the White House does the very same thing, turns out the lights--that red line represents the level of borrowing necessary simply to keep today's promises. No new promises. Today's promises. I laid out the future that we are trading away. I laid out the opportunities to react to crises that we are trading away. I laid out the burden that this is putting on future generations. That is just where we are today. If we do nothing and let current law continue, the problem doesn't just get worst. It gets twice as bad. But, Mr. Speaker, I am tired of hearing folks complain about what happens here and there. I am tired of hearing folks say, I know what all the problems are, but I don't have any solutions to offer. I just want to tell you who to blame for your woes. I don't want to be responsible for providing solutions. Nonsense, nonsense--this body is not filled with men and women, Madam Speaker, who came here to find blame. This body is filled with people who came to solve problems. Blue line, problem solved--that blue line, that light blue line, Madam Speaker, represents the House Budget Committee mark. If this institution passes the budget for FY16, for the next 10-year window, if they pass the budget that we worked out in that Budget Committee, we don't just avoid the economic catastrophe that is represented by current law, we reverse the trend. Madam Speaker, it is hard. Golly, I want to be able to tell children and grandchildren across this country that we are balancing the budget tomorrow. We are not. We are not. We can't. Unless you want to raise taxes right through the roof and crush working American families, unless you want to cut spending right to the floor and crush our opportunities at national security, you can't balance the budget tomorrow. The problem is too big. We laid out a 10-year glide path. It doesn't put the tough decisions off for 10 years, but it begins making the tough decisions today, begins bending that curve of borrowing today. Madam Speaker, $4.7 trillion in interest is what we are projecting to spend in the 10-year window--$4.7 trillion on interest alone. Madam Speaker, the budget for the entire United States of America last year was only $3.5 trillion. We are only proposing, as a budget for next year, $3.8 trillion. Our interest payments, borrowing at the record-low teaser rates that we are borrowing at today--record-low rates--are going to see us pay $4.7 trillion in interest over the next 10 years. It is like taking 18 months off. Think about that. If our budget is about $3.8 trillion for FY16, $4.7 trillion, that is about a year and a quarter off. Again, turn out the lights, send everybody home--no more national security, no more schools, no more roads. That is what debt is costing us, a year and a quarter of productivity out of the next 10, and that is when we take these important steps to begin to curb it. Compare the difference in vision, Madam Speaker. This blue line represents our vision. The light blue line represents our solution to the red line, which represents current law. Madam Speaker, why is this so hard to do? Because this chart represents the President's vision--leadership is a two-way street. We need folks leading on both sides of the aisle. We need folks leading on both sides of the Congress. We need folks leading on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Leading often means taking something that you disagree on and selling the other guy on why you are right. For us, Madam Speaker, we take our balanced budget proposal. We take it to the other side of the aisle. We take it on the other side of the Capitol. We take it on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and we try to sell it. We believe that balancing the budget is the right thing to do. We believe that borrowing from our children and grandchildren is immoral. The President takes a different view, and I don't fault him for taking a different view. I question his math. I question the economic guidance that he is relying on. I don't question his motives. His view--which is represented by the deficit here in blue, our annual deficits are represented in red--represent the budget the President sent to Capitol Hill this year. Now, this budget is substantially similar to the budgets he has sent to Capitol Hill every year. If the President was standing here tonight, Madam Speaker, I don't think I would be mischaracterizing him if I say what he would tell you is he wants to freeze our debt as a percent of the size of our economy, and as long as our economy is rising then, he believes we can continue to let our debt rise. He calls that primary balance, when you lock in your debt as a static percent of GDP but continue to borrow forever-- forever. What I am showing you here on this chart, Madam Speaker, is our budget alternative, produced by the Budget Committee, to be voted on in the House tomorrow. What our budget does is take deficits for about $350 billion next year down to zero. I don't even know if you know this word down on the end, Madam Speaker. It says ``surplus''--no reason you should know it. We haven't seen one in your time on Capitol Hill. I would argue we haven't seen one in my lifetime. We talked about them happening in the nineties, but as you know, that was a little funny math there, the Social Security trust fund and other issues. It has been a long time since we have seen a surplus in our budget, but that is what our ideas produce. That is what our tough choices produce. That is what our commitment to solving problems produces. The President, on the other hand, raises taxes over $1 trillion, new taxes over $1 trillion, and continues to spend, so much so that in the years that we are balancing, Madam Speaker, the President is borrowing an additional $1 trillion a year. He would tell you that the reason he is borrowing it is because investment in America is important, and it is. He would tell you that the reason he is borrowing is because, if we don't invest in challenges today, we are not going to be able to reap the benefits of those challenges tomorrow, and he is right. We are not arguing in this institution, Madam Speaker, we are not debating in this institution, we are not grappling in this institution about the merit of investing in America. We all believe that we should. What we are talking about is whether or not we should pay for that investment. If we think it is a good idea, should we find the money for it today? Or do we just think it is enough of a good idea for our children to figure out how to pay for it or our grandchildren to figure out how to pay for it? But it is not so much of a good idea that you and I would actually burden ourselves with making the tough decision today--nonsense. I reject that vision. I reject the President's growing deficits out. I reject the President's budget that says: Not only am I not going to balance tomorrow, not only am I not going to balance in the next 10 years, I am not going to balance the budget ever. Now, that is not a small thing we are arguing about. This isn't just some sort of partisan sniping that happens between Republicans and Democrats. There is a fundamental disagreement about who we are as Americans, about what the role of Federal Government is. The House Budget Committee says: Let's try to balance this budget in the next 10 years. The time to stop burdening our children and our grandchildren with debt is now. The President says: I have spending priorities for America. Let's grow the amount of money we are borrowing every single year. Let's balance the budget never. I don't know if you get this in townhall meetings back home like I do, Madam Speaker, but folks say: Rob, why can't you guys just work this out? Why can't you get together, close the doors, work this out? We have serious problems. You need to solve the serious problems. Madam Speaker, I have got a President who is prioritizing balancing the budget never, and I have got a House Budget Committee that is prioritizing balancing the budget in the next 10 years. Those aren't small differences. The differences could not get much larger. I don't expect to sell everyone in this institution on the Budget Committee's ideas for balancing this budget, Madam Speaker. I am not going to get every vote in this Chamber. I am going to keep selling it, but I am not going to get every vote in this Chamber. I recognize that. What I am going to prioritize is selling folks in this Chamber on the fact that if we choose to borrow money, we are either taking it from the next generation's benefits, or we are taking it from the next generation's tax bill. The bill is going to come due. These deficits that the President proposes are going to come due. These deficits that we have already run are going to come due. It's either a benefit cut for the next generation or a tax increase for the next generation. There is no free lunch. Now, I don't purport to have all the answers, Madam Speaker, though we have got a pretty good blueprint here. What I do propose, though, is that we are going to be closer to finding the answers if we bring all of the ideas together. I see my friends from the Rules Committee sitting here in the corner tonight, Madam Speaker. They have been upstairs grinding through the paperwork. It was a little more complicated rule tonight than it ordinarily is because we took every single idea that any Member of this Chamber had about balancing the budget. If you wanted to write your budget, it is made in order for debate this week, budget week. I don't know which budget is going to win, Madam Speaker, though I have my preferences. What I do know is that if you are in the solutions business, you had your shot this week. If you are in the solutions business, you had a chance to put your money where your mouth is, literally, your money, all of our money, all taxpayer money, these budgets together, in a document. We are going to debate some doozies this week. We are going to debate some budgets that purport cutting spending virtually in half, and we are going to debate some budgets that virtually double taxation in this country. We will see where those chips fall. Madam Speaker, that didn't sound like the exciting thing that it is. That is what is so interesting to me about the work that goes on. Everybody is out in front of the cameras all day long, every day, talking about the issues that the pundits want to talk about. What our reading clerk just did here, in 15 uneventful seconds, is set into motion the most open, the most comprehensive, the most optimistic week of public policy debate this institution will see in 2015. I am honored to be just a small part of that. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Well, I appreciate my friend for yielding. I know my friend is well known in this body for his work on Medicaid and the effort to save that important health care program as well, and I thank him for that. Medicare is a great example. It is a great example. There is not a Member in this institution, Mr. Speaker, who believes that we have the money or could even find the money to pay for Medicare as it is structured today. It is not a question of, is it going to go bankrupt; it is a question of when is it going to go bankrupt. And that is not a Budget Committee member from the State of Georgia talking. Those are the Medicare trustees talking. The folks who are in charge of looking after the program year after year after year tell us that it is going to go under. What people in my district ask for, I will say to my friend from Indiana, is not a leg up, not something for nothing, not a free lunch. They just want to know what the rules are. And if you tell them what the rules are, they will rise to the occasion. I am in my forties. I know Medicare is not going to be there for me the way it is for my parents. I worry it won't be there at all for folks in my age bracket. What the Budget Committee has done in this budget is absolutely to protect Medicare. It has gone from something that might not be there for me--and certainly wouldn't be there for me in the way that my parents have known it--to a commitment that I can count on. Not I, the United States Congressman; I, as a 45-year-old citizen in America for whom payroll taxes--those taxes that pay for Medicare--have been the largest tax burden that 80 percent of American families have paid all of their lives. These dollars that you see here represent dollars that the President, in many cases, is frittering away on today's consumption but that we are reinvesting in Medicare to ensure that it survives for another day. And what it does, Mr. Speaker--I don't know how deeply you have dug into the Budget Committee Medicare proposal--it anticipates providing choice in the Medicare system the likes of which Medicare has never seen. I mean, America has seen that wildly successful Medicare Advantage program. Have you seen that, Mr. Speaker? I mean, it has been the source of attempts to slash over and over and over again by this administration for reasons that I cannot imagine because it is the most popular Medicare program in America, Medicare Advantage, which for the first time allowed taxpayers to make choices about how they were going to receive their Medicare benefits. What the gentleman from Indiana and our entire committee has put together in this budget is a pathway through that premium support program to let every Medicare beneficiary going forward, folks--even young people like me at 45, folks at 18--know that when they get to Medicare, not only will it still be there for them, but they will have a choice of plans to choose the one that works best for them.

Mr. WOODALL. What my friend says about people being able to rely on this budget, about the honesty and integrity in the budget, it really is contrasted with these deficit numbers that you see coming out of the White House, because there is not an honest broker in this room who would not tell you that if you continue to run these deficits, eventually you are going to hit the wall. You are going to have to pull the rug out from under current beneficiaries. That is what bankruptcy means. Mr. Speaker, that is what we mean when we say ``bankruptcy.'' We don't mean that Social Security goes away and Medicare goes away and you get zero. We mean you are still stuck on the program, but we are slashing your benefits in half overnight. That is immoral. It is immoral to make promises to people and not keep them. I don't want the gentleman from Indiana's job, Mr. Speaker. I don't want it. Being vice chairman of the Budget Committee is hard because you have to make tough decisions. And the decision that the Budget Committee made was we can be honest with folks who have not yet attained Medicare age that the program will not be there for them as it was for their parents if we make no changes. We can keep our commitment to older seniors--those folks on the program--to say, if we promise it to you, you are going to get it. Then we can bring in this new element of choice, again, for folks in my age bracket, to say, when you get to Medicare, we will have protected it, and you will have some personal decisionmaking in terms of how do you get the benefit package that best serves you, best serves your spouse, and best serves your family. I am so appreciative in a town where people dodge responsibility like it is the plague that the Budget Committee has said that we are either going to break promises tomorrow when we run out of money or we are going to be honest with people today about the state of the affairs that we are in: $400 billion deficits, $600 billion deficits, trillion- dollar deficits in the President's budget. And if you saw the chart that the vice chairman held up earlier, that pie chart of where America spends its money, interest that we are paying today dwarfs education spending, transportation spending, environmental spending, and the like. I thank the gentleman for his leadership.

Mr. WOODALL. I thank my friend, the vice chairman for yielding. I know the vice chairman won't brag about himself, Mr. Speaker. So let me brag about him just for a second. He got elected when I got elected 4 years ago. But when you think about what the American people have asked for from this Congress in terms of solving the problems that affect their lives, in terms of dealing with the issues that threaten economic prosperity, in terms of doing the heavy lifting that is required, they have cleared out more than half of this institution. Well, if you got elected in the class that the vice chairman and I were elected in 4 years ago, you are already in the top 50 percent of seniority in this institution. We talk about how folks come to Congress and stay forever. America has been turning people out on their ear left and right over these last 4 years, which has allowed folks like the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Rokita) to rise to these levels where they can lead on these issues. Mr. Speaker, as you know, the vice chairman didn't come from a legislative background. He came from a background as a shot-caller. He was the secretary of State in Indiana. He didn't have somebody else to blame when things went wrong. The buck stopped on his desk. Every single day, the buck stopped on his desk, exactly like it does for every father and every mother and every employer anywhere across this country. And when you now have filled this institution with folks who were shot-callers yesterday and now have been asked to find agreement among 435 of their colleagues, you get exciting results, exciting results. I am going to keep the chart that the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mooney) had up here, Mr. Speaker. The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Moolenaar) is a freshman. He sold himself short when he talked about the hard work to get this budget done, and you need look no further than this chart to see it. Mr. Speaker, I don't fault the President's work ethic. I think the President works hard to do what he thinks is best for this country. But there is not one family in America that believes you can borrow as much as you want to borrow, spend as much as you want to spend, and your family's economic future will be secure. They all know that is a path to disaster. This blue line represents the budget deficits in the President's budget, the budget that he just sent to Congress. It is his legal responsibility to do it. He did it. This is the plan that he laid out for America--deficits as far as the eye can see, borrowing not just for the next year or the next 10 years or the next 20 years or the next 30 years, but forever. The work that Mr. Moolenaar and Mr. Rokita have done isn't easy. It is unpleasant work. I don't know why you took the job, I will say to my friend from Indiana. It is an awful job to be vice chairman of the Budget Committee because your job is to do the things that haven't gotten done before. Your job is to do the things that were too hard for everybody else to do, and you have stepped into the breach to do it. This red line, Mr. Speaker, represents deficits under the budget that Mr. Rokita and Chairman Tom Price of Georgia are bringing to a markup in the Budget Committee tomorrow. They couldn't balance the budget in day one. There is a lot of sweat equity in this chart. They could not balance the budget in day one because the red ink is just too thick. You have got to do it in a responsible way. They made the tough decisions to cut deficits in half by year two, in half by year two and on out to budget surpluses by the time you get to the end of the 10- year window, a balanced budget for America. You can't see the sweat stains on this chart, Mr. Speaker. But there is sweat equity in this chart. We are not talking about, are you going to spend an extra million dollars here, an extra million dollars there. We are not talking about, are you going to prioritize environmental spending or national park spending. We are not talking about, are you going to prioritize transportation spending via roads or transportation spending via air. We are talking about, are you going to balance the budget ever. Or are you going to borrow from your children and your grandchildren as far as the eye can see? And I have news, Mr. Speaker. Every single one of these dollars and deficits you see in the President's budget represents a dollar of future tax increases or future benefit cuts. I want you to think about that. What Mr. Rokita and the Budget Committee have done is to put together a courageous package that says, We should pay for the bills today that we are incurring today. We should not sacrifice tomorrow's prosperity for today's indulgence. We should do the tough things when we can so that our children don't have to labor under those burdens. Every single one of these dollars that the President borrows and spends--and, I should add, this is with a $1 trillion tax increase; even with $1 trillion in new taxes, the President still is running these kinds of deficits--represents either a tax increase for your children and your grandchildren or a benefit cut for your children and your grandchildren. Those are the only two ways to get a dollar in this country. We should have the courage, if we want to spend money, to go find the money to spend. We should have the courage that if we want to cut benefits, to cut those benefits today, not 100 years from today. We should have the courage to do the difficult things that need to be done. And I am just grateful to the gentleman from Indiana and his leadership on the committee. What we are going to mark up--it will probably be a 12-hour markup tomorrow. I am so excited about it. I am so excited about it. What we are going to mark up is a budget that every Member of this Chamber can be proud of. And I will tell you a secret, Mr. Speaker. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag. I don't think it is too soon to break the news. But I have seen some patterns in the 4 years I have been here. My expectation is that, as hard as the Budget Committee has worked on this document, as much sweat equity has gone into doing the difficult things that need to be done, my guess is that they are going to allow any Member of this Chamber who wants to write a budget to offer their ideas and get a vote on those ideas too. We have seen it year after year after year. I suspect we are going to see it again. This isn't about trying to shut folks out of the process, Mr. Speaker. This is about trying to bring folks into the process. The kind of collaborative process the vice chairman of the committee has driven, along with Chairman Tom Price, is the difference between taking the responsibility on our shoulders, as parents, grandparents, legislators, citizens, or kicking that can down the road to the next generation. I just couldn't be more proud of the effort and the work product that my friend from Indiana has created.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, at this time, it is my great pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan), a member of the committee and a leader on transportation issues.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, while I appreciate the accolades of my friend from Massachusetts, the truth is I am not an expert on this bill. The Transportation Committee is staffed with those experts at a staff level and at an elected Member level. At this time, Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Denham), who has been a leader on the Transportation Committee, not looking for Republican solutions and not looking for Democratic solutions, but looking for commonsense solutions and then selling those to his colleagues on both sides.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, while we talk about agreements here on the floor, I think sometimes folks back home are concerned that we are agreeing on the little things, things that don't matter, that we are talking about renaming a post office. While that is important to that community and while that is important to the man or woman being honored, I would argue it doesn't necessarily advance the cause of freedom and democracy. I can't tell you with a straight face that what we are doing on passenger rail today is going to advance the cause of freedom and democracy. If you want to advance the cause of freedom and democracy, you needed to be here 2 hours ago when the Prime Minister came to deliver his message to the United States Congress. Freedom and democracy lived there. What we are advancing on this passenger rail bill, Mr. Speaker, is just common sense. It is just common sense. I don't want to get in the weeds of all the exciting things that go on in there, Mr. Speaker. I serve on the Transportation Committee. Of course it is exciting to me. Of course I am going to be involved in the minutia. I don't know that my other colleagues are quite as enthusiastic about that. I would encourage folks to go to transportation.house.gov, Mr. Speaker. The Transportation Committee, like all committees on Capitol Hill, has a Web page, and on that Web page you can get deep into the weeds. If you are a policy wonk like I am and you want to dig down into the minutia and find out what subparagraph (f) says about clause 2, you can absolutely do it. But there are some top line numbers there, too. And again, I want folks to have something to celebrate here. I want folks to be able to be enthusiastic about their representative body. I would argue, as the Prime Minister argued, that the greatest deliberative body, the greatest bastion of freedom on the planet, if you want to know what is going on, go to that Transportation Committee Web site. You are going to find--well, you are going to find all sorts of information. You will find something like this one-pager right here, whether you are a high school student who cares about passenger rail or whether you are a transportation engineer leading your local Department of Transportation, all of those details can be found there. I will give you one example. Could you believe--you come from a constituency much like I do, Mr. Speaker, but can you believe that in the United States of America today, in the era of sequester--in the era of sequester--that not one Member of this body would say isn't having an impact on our social safety net, where not one Member of this body wouldn't say isn't having an impact on our national security, in this era of sequester, Amtrak subsidizes food and beverage service--subsidizes food and beverage service. It is a loss-leading part of the transportation funding on Amtrak. I will just tell you, I have ridden Amtrak to New York a time or two. I didn't have any beverage service. It is not like my friends on Delta who will bring me a Coca-Cola product on my flight to Washington, D.C., here. You have to go down to the beverage car. Now, if you would like to bring your own lunch on Amtrak, you absolutely can. If your husband or wife wants to make you a sack at home, you can bring it on in and eat it right there on the train. Yet the American taxpayer, as we sit here right now--this isn't prospective. This is as we sit here right now. The American taxpayer is funding--subsidizing--food service for those men and women who happen to ride Amtrak every day. Again, for your and my constituencies, Mr. Speaker, that is worth nothing. That is worth nothing. But even for those constituencies that ride Amtrak to work every single day, don't you think in this time of budget cutting, of trying to end the $18 trillion of borrowing from our children and grandchildren, this time of trying to balance our national security needs with our social safety net needs, don't you think that one of the things we could agree on is we don't need to subsidize snack food for train riders? The truth is, Mr. Speaker, I say that like it is a rhetorical question, that I am going to start to get out my sharp stick and poke the other side. I am not. It happens to be one of the things that we agree on. How many years have you and I been in Congress, Mr. Speaker, trying to get rid of silly stuff that the Federal Government does? Well, for you and me, the answer is 4. For 4 years we have been working on trying to get rid of silly stuff that the Federal Government does; subsidizing Twinkies, part of that silly stuff. I am not picking on Twinkies. I have great respect for Twinkie eaters. But I don't want my tax dollars subsidizing that habit. Unanimously, on the Transportation Committee, Mr. Speaker, we have come together to say: I don't know why we didn't do this a long time ago, I don't know why the other previous Congress hadn't gotten it done, but the buck stops here. We are going to work together and do that. Where are those dollars going to go instead, Mr. Speaker? They are going to go to improving quality of service. Find me that constituent back home; find him in Atlanta; find him in Mississippi; find those constituents back home who wouldn't make that trade with their tax dollars every day of the week. We are doing it. We are doing it together, and we are doing it in a way I hope the Senate will act on it. If they can't take wisdom as we have defined it, I welcome a conference, and I hope we will be able to get this bill on the President's desk. All of these great ideas that we have come together, that we have done in a collaborative way, Republicans and Democrats on the committee, Republicans and Democrats here on the floor of the House, the seven amendments that we are going to be considering today, all of these things we have done collaboratively, Mr. Speaker, mean nothing--mean nothing--if they don't go to the President's desk for his signature. This is but a first step, but it is a proud first step. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 134.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I told a group of constituents just a moment ago--I don't know if I look a little wet up here. It is not perspiration from running back to the House floor. I feel obligated to tell my friends that. It is dripping a little bit outside, and that is the fastest way to get here from my office. But I was back in my office with constituents from AIPAC. Sixteen thousand men and women from AIPAC came into town this week to make their voice heard. Now, I couldn't find anybody who was here on paid vacation, and I couldn't find anyone else that had someone else foot the bill. What I saw was 16,000 people who put their money where their mouth is to come and petition the government, to come and try to make us better. I bring that up, Mr. Speaker, because what I told those men and women today of AIPAC was that there were grumpy faces on the floor of the House yesterday. I remember seeing a few. In fact, I might have been one. I will go ahead and confess, Mr. Speaker, I was one. We have some serious problems here, some serious challenges, and some serious disagreements. In the now almost 1 hour since the Prime Minister finished speaking, I have seen more smiles; I have seen more collegiality; and I have seen more Members enjoying each other and working together in just that 1 hour than I have seen in the entire month of February. I bring that up, Mr. Speaker, because the gentleman from Massachusetts and I have been working on rules for a long time together--a long time together--and I don't think it would offend the gentleman if I were to say that he and I often disagree about the way a rule ought to be crafted. We often disagree about the underlying legislation. Here we are on the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker, but we may spend an hour or 2 or 3, sometimes longer, debating the merits of the underlying legislation. So to come here 1 hour after that spectacular come-together-for-things-that-matter speech the Prime Minister just gave and to find agreement with my friend on the Rules Committee--not just on the rule but, I daresay, on the underlying bill--I hope it is a sign of things to come--not just a thing to come in the regular relationship between my friend from Massachusetts and me, because that relationship is strong, but a relationship across the board. We have passed and sent to the President lots of bills this Congress, Mr. Speaker. In fact, I think we have passed something like 40 bills out of the U.S. House of Representatives. I don't know if I went home and asked my constituency that they can name two. I think they would know the XL pipeline bill, because that is something everyone has been focused on. But I don't think, as a population, they could name two. I hope this is the start of a success that the Rules Committee is going to have together over the next 18 months. I hope this is going to be the start of the kinds of agreements that we can create together, Mr. Speaker. I thank my friend from Massachusetts for being part of, again, making today a little bit better than yesterday was. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.