[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 10 (Tuesday, January 24, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H143-H148]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1420
           EXPRESSING SENSE OF HOUSE REGARDING FEDERAL BUDGET

  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and 
agree to the resolution (H. Res. 516) expressing the sense of the House 
of Representatives that the passage of a fiscal year 2013 Federal 
budget is of national importance.
  The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
  The text of the resolution is as follows:

                              H. Res. 516

       Whereas the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 established 
     the modern budgeting process;
       Whereas the President is required to submit a budget to 
     Congress each year;
       Whereas the last time the House of Representatives passed a 
     budget was on April 15, 2011;
       Whereas the last time the Senate passed a budget was on 
     April 29, 2009; and
       Whereas people in the United States must routinely set 
     budgets for themselves, their businesses, and their families: 
     Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of 
     Representatives that the passage of a fiscal year 2013 
     Federal budget is of national importance.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) and the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) 
each will control 20 minutes.

[[Page H144]]

  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin.


                             General Leave

  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend 
their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 516 currently 
under consideration.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes at this 
time.
  We welcome the President to the House Chamber tonight, where he will 
address the American people to assess the state of the Union. This 
presents another opportunity for the President to chart a new course. I 
hope the President takes this opportunity to stop offering empty 
rhetoric and broken promises, to stop pushing policies that have proven 
to make matters worse, and to stop dividing Americans for political 
gain. I hope the President takes this opportunity to start working with 
us to get America back on track.
  Yet the administration has, time and again, turned hope into 
disappointment. The President and his party's leaders continue to duck 
from the most pressing fiscal and economic challenges facing our 
Nation. Exhibit A of this failure is the fact that today marks 1,000 
days without Senate Democrats passing a budget.
  Having failed to put forward a credible plan in 1,000 days, the 
President's party is committing America to a future of debt, doubt, and 
decline. Instead of dealing honestly with our biggest fiscal challenges 
and providing certainty to job creators, Senate Democrats have refused 
to meet their legal and moral obligations to propose and pass a budget.
  The President and his party's leaders refuse to account for their 
reckless spending spree. The lack of credible budget plans from the 
President and his party leaders raises the question: What are they 
hiding? Is it threats to economic security, health security, and 
national security that would result from their policy agenda? the job-
destroying tax hikes that they continue to insist upon? the 
bureaucratic rationing and denial of vital care for seniors that would 
result from their health care law? or the deep cuts to the military 
that would hollow out our national defense?
  Mr. Speaker, their policy preferences call for ever higher levels of 
government spending, higher taxes, a board of bureaucrats to cut 
Medicare, and a smaller military. It's understandable why they'd be 
afraid to try and fit that agenda on a spreadsheet, but that is no 
excuse for giving up on budgeting.
  This failure to budget stands in stark contrast to our efforts here 
in the House. As the law requires, we proposed and passed a budget 
resolution last spring. We honestly confronted our Nation's most 
difficult challenges, putting the budget on a path to balance and the 
country back on to a path to prosperity.
  We will keep working together to advance solutions this year, and we 
call upon our friends in the Senate to get serious about their duty to 
those they serve: Propose a budget; engage in debates; advance 
solutions.
  I thank Congressman Nugent for his leadership on this resolution, 
which expresses the sense of House that passage of a budget is of 
national importance.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield myself 15 seconds to say we must 
recommit ourselves to the American idea. We must apply our Nation's 
timely principles to the challenges of the day, and we will continue to 
advance bipartisan solutions and the principled reforms necessary to 
get our country back on track.
  With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  I appreciate, as always, the opportunity to exchange views with my 
good friend from Wisconsin, the chair of the Budget Committee, with 
whom I've been pleased to work with on some items. Occasionally, 
rarely, we're opposed, but this is one of those areas where I do have 
some concerns.
  When I hear my friend talk about empty rhetoric and broken promises, 
I am reminded of what the Republican agenda has been to this point in 
this Congress--debt, doubt, and decline. Debt, doubt, and decline. 
Well, I think that that's a pretty good assessment of what had been 
offered up by my good friends when they had an opportunity this last 
year to present their vision.
  Now they attempt to lay this off somehow on the Senate. And we all 
have had our frustrations with the other body. But the fact is, the 
problem that we face in terms of being able to work regular order, is 
that there has been a decision by the minority leader in the other 
body.
  The senior Senator from Kentucky, the Republican leader, has been 
very clear. His number one priority is not putting Americans back to 
work. It's not dealing with the challenges we face at home and abroad. 
It is to make sure that President Obama is not reelected. And when you 
start from that premise and radiate out, we have seen the Senate, which 
has never been, shall we say, nimble, has slowed to a crawl. We have 
seen an unprecedented effort to make even the most modest and mundane 
efforts over there require a supermajority.
  It's unprecedented. It is sad. The American people deserve better. 
But it is Republican obstruction that has twisted the rules of the 
Senate to make it nonfunctional.
  Debt, doubt, and decline. The Republican budget, notwithstanding all 
the pyrotechnics and the effort to spread doubt about whether or not 
the United States would honor its commitment, paying the national debt 
for debt that is already incurred, which occupied too much time this 
summer, an absolutely manufactured crisis, the Republican budget 
authored by my good friend from Wisconsin, itself, would have required 
increasing the debt ceiling.
  And when you talk about decline, my Republican friends have failed to 
move forward with meaningful job creation. We've had, languishing, a 
reauthorization for the Surface Transportation Act, which we've had to 
extend eight times. And, in fact, the Republican budget actions to this 
date are cutting back on investment in water, in transportation, things 
that would put Americans to work all across America.
  And as for bureaucratic rationing of health care, I'm surprised my 
good friend can say that with a straight face because, remember, his 
budget takes the half trillion dollars and accepts it. He doesn't 
unwind it. He doesn't change it. He accepts it. They count on it 
because they know that, in fact, there are opportunities for us to 
strengthen Medicare without ending the guarantee that two generations 
of senior citizens have relied upon to be able to have the Medicare 
payments when they need them.
  We have the opportunity to refine and reform Medicare, to provide 
better service for our seniors and eliminate unnecessary expenditures. 
There was a time when those agenda items, not the rhetoric, not 
vouchering this and slashing that, but what was required to move 
forward to actually reform Medicare, that has been bipartisan. It's 
been agreed to. It's being practiced by health care systems in 
Wisconsin, in Oregon. We know what to do. We have the opportunity to do 
it. Unfortunately, the Republican approach to this point has been to 
assume that it's too expensive, that we can't do it. It's too expensive 
for the Federal Government, so we're going to transfer the risk to the 
next generation of senior citizens but taking advantage of the savings 
under the Affordable Care Act.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, we're going through an exercise today that is 
largely beside the point. What we should be doing is dealing with 
pieces of legislation that would have bipartisan support, moving 
forward, accelerating health care reform, rebuilding and renewing 
America, taking things like the work that I've done with my good friend 
from Wisconsin in terms of reforming the agricultural system that 
wastes too much money on the wrong people, doing the wrong things. We 
could be moving forward on a constructive agenda that the Occupy Wall 
Street people and the Tea Party folks could actually get behind.

                              {time}  1430

  Unfortunately, today, this H. Res. 516 is another sidetrack that gets 
us away from doing what we should do.

[[Page H145]]

  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, as I yield time to the gentleman 
from Texas, I will simply say I'm sure my colleague, my friend from 
Oregon, knows that you cannot filibuster a budget resolution in the 
Senate. I would just state that for the Record.
  At this time, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Texas, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Flores.
  Mr. FLORES. Mr. Speaker, just like America's families and businesses, 
Congress must base its spending on a budget so that the Federal 
Government lives within its means. While Americans struggling in the 
Obama economy must sit down every day and produce a budget for their 
families, Senate Democrats have decided it would be a better political 
move to not produce a budget for the Nation, even though the law 
requires passage of an annual budget.
  To repeat, the Senate leadership is ignoring the law and has been for 
1,000 days.
  A budget plan is Congress' most basic responsibility of governing, 
but without a budget, the State of the Union is uncertain, just like 
the economy is today.
  Coincidentally, today is not only the President's State of the Union 
address; it is also the 1,000th day since the Senate last passed a 
budget. And without surprise, yesterday, just like it did last year, we 
also learned that the White House will again miss its deadline to 
submit a budget to Congress.
  For 1,000 days, the Democrat-led, do-nothing Senate has refused to 
fulfill this duty to the American people. During this time, our 
national debt has surpassed our gross domestic product. And we've seen 
35 straight months of unemployment higher than 8 percent. That means 
trillions of dollars of debt are being added to the bill our children 
and grandchildren will be forced to pay.
  House Republicans put together a plan to put America back on a sound 
fiscal trajectory and to avoid a future of doubt, debt, and despair. 
Our ``Path to Prosperity'' budget will cut excess spending while 
strengthening vital programs like Medicare so they will be around for 
current and future generations.
  Unfortunately, Senate Democrats rejected this bill; and, in fact, 
they have not bothered to do their job and pass a budget for the 
Federal Government since April 29, 2009, exactly 1,000 days ago.
  Today, I call on President Obama and Senate Democrats to do their 
jobs, providing real leadership for the American people and to join 
House Republicans in passing a responsible budget so that we may 
restore America's promise, prosperity, and security for future 
generations.
  I urge my colleagues to support this important resolution, H. Res. 
516.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes 
to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).
  Mr. AUSTIN SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, as I heard the gentleman 
from Oregon speaking of debt, doubt, despair, decline, I couldn't help 
but think that all of those words start with ``D,'' just as 
``Democrat'' does, and ``recovery'' starts with ``R,'' just as 
``Republican'' does.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, the President presented a budget, and that's a 
fact, and the House passed a fiscally responsible budget. The Senate 
defeated both of those budgets and then failed to produce an alternate.
  Republicans in the House stand willing to work and want to move to 
regular process. Senator Reid has closed that door at every 
opportunity.
  Today, we call on the President to appeal to the Senate in his State 
of the Union address tonight to ask the Senate simply to pass a budget. 
Without a budget, there is no plan. With no plan, that means no 
recovery, and no recovery means no new jobs.
  Mr. Speaker, Americans did not send us here to play the same tired 
old games that Senator Reid continues to play. They sent us here to get 
something done for this generation.
  This is my son, Wells. He's 12 years old. Our class represents over 
300 children and grandchildren. Now, times are tough, but Americans are 
tougher, so the future of America is bright. But today is 1,000 days 
that this country has operated without a Federal budget.
  I understand the majority leader likes to say that we don't have a 
budget because of House freshmen, but that's simply not true. When we 
arrived in Washington, we were sworn in just over a year ago, and 
America had operated at that time without a budget for 678 days. Our 
freshman class knew we could do better than that, and we did better 
than that, Mr. Speaker. We passed a budget in the House, and we call on 
the President tonight to ask the Senate to fulfill their job for the 
American people and simply pass a budget.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes 
to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Long).
  Mr. LONG. I rise today to address a thousand days. Now, I can try to 
impress you with my knowledge of a thousand days and tell you things 
like Mark Zuckerberg could have invented Facebook in his dorm room at 
Harvard 71.3 times in a thousand days, but I don't think that's going 
to get us anywhere. I could tell you that you could build 2.4 Empire 
State buildings in a thousand days, but that really doesn't mean 
anything. Those are the things you could do in a thousand days. What 
I'd like to address is what you cannot do in a thousand days.
  What can we not do in a thousand days? The Senate cannot pass a 
budget. I was with one of the 87 freshmen that got here last year. I've 
been here 365-plus days. So what happened to that first 600-and-some 
days, if we could address that, when the Democrats controlled all three 
bodies, the House, the Senate, and the White House? They didn't produce 
a budget in that time.
  This is an election year. I don't think we're really going to see a 
budget this year. We can talk about it all we want and ask them to 
produce one, but it's not politically correct to budget in this country 
anymore. And to me, Mr. Speaker, that's appalling.
  When you do come forth with a budget, as we did last year, a couple 
days later you're going to get an ad of somebody throwing a lady off a 
cliff in a wheelchair, because that's what happens in this country when 
you put your plan down in writing, and that's appalling.
  Eighty-seven freshmen came here last year--doctors, nurses. I was one 
of two auctioneers. Pizza parlor owner, roofing contractor. Just like 
the Founding Fathers envisioned. Car dealers, people off the street, 
people that have run businesses, small business people.
  We got here and we were told the first vote we needed to take was for 
what? Speaker of the House. We voted for John Boehner, Speaker of the 
House, because the public sent us up here with a 25-seat majority.
  What was our second vote? A CR, a continuing resolution. We looked at 
each other. Continuing resolution? Oh, yeah. We've got to keep the 
government open for 2 more full weeks, 14 days, because that's how we 
operate here in Washington, D.C. And if that's not appalling, too--we 
were sent here to change the way Washington does business.
  Now, you can have your three Ds--doubt, despair, decline--and I think 
on ``Hee Haw'' they used to say ``in agony''--but we can also be 
optimistic in this country.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 
seconds.
  Mr. LONG. You can deal from a position of defeat and doubt and 
decline like our colleagues across the aisle like to, but I wish I 
would have stepped 14 steps down the hall to my good friend from 
Oregon's office--that's how far our offices are apart--and I could have 
studied on how the first term of George W. Bush they worked night and 
day how to figure out how to get him reelected, because apparently Mr. 
McConnell is doing something wrong in the Senate.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. 
Kucinich).
  Mr. KUCINICH. I thank the gentleman from Oregon for yielding.
  On its surface, the resolution seems to make sense about making sure 
we pass a budget, and that's of national importance. I think that all 
of us who

[[Page H146]]

are here understand the underlying politics that have made it very 
difficult to bring a budget forward.
  Of course, budgets are all about priorities, what are our Nation's 
priorities. When we get to the point of passing a budget, here's what 
we ought to be telling the American people: that the middle class will 
be protected; that the social safety net will be protected; that Social 
Security will be protected; that benefits will not be cut; that the cap 
will be lifted; that there will be no privatization; that Medicare will 
be protected; that there will be a fix so that doctors can get a fair 
shake; that we'll do something about Medicare Part D, which blew a hole 
in the Medicare budget; that we'll begin to cut back our military 
presence around the world, and that we start to take down this military 
industrial complex that General Eisenhower warned about so many years 
ago; that we'll begin investing in new technologies so that we can grow 
the economy of the future.
  Budgets are about priorities. And while we still debate whether or 
not we're going to pass a budget, we need to set those priorities that 
will enable America, when it finally has a budget, to move forward into 
the future with a country that's going to be serving everyone, not just 
a few at the expense of the many.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time 
remains between the two sides?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 10\1/2\ minutes remaining, 
and the side in opposition has 12\1/2\ minutes remaining.

                              {time}  1440

  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Doggett).
  Mr. DOGGETT. I thank the gentleman.
  As a long-time member of the Budget Committee, I certainly think that 
having a budget resolution is a good idea. I think it is a matter of 
national importance. I don't see how anyone can really disagree with 
the resolution, although it seems to have been offered primarily to 
establish a setting for the Republican response to the State of the 
Union Address that we all look forward to hearing tonight.
  It is important to understand what the budget resolution is and what 
it is not, and what difference it really makes if one hasn't been 
passed for 1,000 days, 3 or 4 years, or 3 or 4 weeks. The budget 
resolution is not the appropriations act. It is a statement of our 
values and of our priorities, and I think that it is important to try 
to get one passed every year.
  But the most important practical consequence of passing a budget 
resolution is to establish the level of discretionary spending, that 
is, to establish the level of expenditures that can be made by the 
various Appropriations committees and by this Congress. It provides us 
a good opportunity to look at what the consequences of that spending 
are, to try to match it up to revenues, and not to engage in endless 
deficit spending.
  But the practical effect of the resolution itself is to say to the 
Appropriations Committee here in the House and in the Senate how much 
discretionary spending will the Congress approve this year. So what 
happens when there is not a budget resolution? The Congress finds other 
ways to do the very same thing.
  So, in fact, the Congress did not pass a budget resolution for fiscal 
year 2003, for fiscal year 2005, for fiscal year 2007; but that did not 
stop President Bush from signing appropriation bills that added 
billions of dollars to our national debt--along with his tax cuts for 
those at the top that also added immensely to our national debt. He 
signed those appropriation bills.
  I don't know whether we went a thousand days or a year or two then 
without a budget resolution. It would have been better if we could have 
adopted one, but the budget resolution tends to be confused by some 
people with the appropriations that keep the Federal Government going. 
This is not the act that Republicans from time to time have threatened 
to shut down the government.
  You can't threaten to shut down the government over the passage of a 
budget resolution. That has happened with some of our appropriation 
bills. It almost happened with the ceiling on debt for the Federal 
Government. It is also inaccurate, not only confusing, to mix the two; 
and it is inaccurate to say that this Congress has not acted to 
establish some discretionary spending limits, even though a budget 
resolution, as good as it would be to have one, has not been formally 
adopted.
  We did, in fact, adopt last year the Budget Control Act. The Budget 
Control Act proposes to set discretionary expenditure limits, what this 
Congress will spend, not just for this year but for a 10-year period in 
an effort to try to get spending under control and bring us closer to 
getting our fiscal house in order, which is something we very much need 
to do.
  I see today's resolution as restating the obvious, that a budget 
resolution is a good idea, but not adding really much to our attempt to 
achieve some balance in our budget. Indeed, the last debate here on the 
floor about instructing conferees and trying to move forward on the 
issues of unemployment, the job creation, and the payroll tax extension 
are much more on target than a resolution of this nature.
  We do have some serious challenges and deadlines. We still have 
almost 5 million Americans that would lose their unemployment benefits 
this year if we don't have an extension. I'd focus on those and working 
with the President, rather than a resolution that accomplishes little.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Nunnelee).
  Mr. NUNNELEE. I would like to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for 
yielding and also for his leadership on budget issues.
  Mr. Speaker, 1,000 days without a budget and then 2 days ago we 
received news that the President is going to miss his deadline for 
submitting a budget to Congress. Rather than urging Senate Democrats to 
pass a budget and work with us to solve our Nation's fiscal problems, 
President Obama has joined them in failing to do their job.
  America deserves better than this. Families and businesses set 
budgets every day. How much money do we have? What can we afford? What 
do we have to go without? In Washington, we have an obligation to ask 
and to answer those same questions. As I learned operating a small 
business, failing to plan is planning to fail.
  Now, 17 years ago when I lost my job in a corporate merger, my wife 
and I sat down around the kitchen table, made a pot of coffee and got 
out a sheet of notebook paper, drew a line down the middle and on the 
left side we wrote this is how much we have, on the right side how we 
were going to spend it. That's a budget. Americans are sitting around 
their kitchen tables every night, and they have every reason to expect 
their government in Washington to do the same thing.
  In the House, we passed a serious budget last year, and we're 
committed to do so again this year. It's time for the President and the 
Democrats in the Senate to do the same.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I yield myself 2 minutes.
  It's interesting to watch my friend's attempt to reframe the issue 
away from proposals that they have offered and the inartful budgetary 
fiscal activities of this last year. It was, after all, a Republican 
choice to halt the operation of the other body, essentially shutting 
down the Senate, by requiring supermajorities on everything.
  We started the year with the threat of government shutdown. You 
recall we went to just minutes away from having to shut down the 
Federal Government over a basically theological argument on the part of 
my friends on the other side of the aisle over things like Planned 
Parenthood and Big Bird.
  Then this summer we had cast doubt for the first time in history 
about whether we were actually going to honor the requirement to pay 
the debt for obligations we'd already incurred. This summer the 
Republicans were willing to leave town, and we actually shot the 
hostage when it came to the FAA: 70,000 people were idled on 
construction projects for aviation; 4,000 employees laid off.
  Then this fall and into the winter, we had the spectacle of what 
should be a relatively routine effort, and has been a routine effort 
for Republicans and Democrats alike, dealing with things

[[Page H147]]

like the extension of unemployment insurance and avoiding a draconian 
impact with the sustainable growth rate, the SGR, the doc fix. We 
watched our Republican friends in the House and Senate unable to 
communicate, and we ended up having a situation where they just 
basically turned their backs on the American people and were going to 
insist it was their way or the highway again.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I yield myself 1 additional minute.
  It took days for, finally, reason to settle in when even the 
Republicans in the Senate had to say, no, well, this is the deal that 
we had. There appears to be a lack of accord on behalf of the new 
majority in the House, we're still spinning around.
  And all the time we're dealing with things like this that are a 
sideshow when the majority of what really makes the difference, how we 
spend the money, these appropriation bills, the majority of which 
haven't even come out of the Republican-controlled committee to the 
Republican-controlled House to be passed, when we actually should be 
working on the next fiscal year.

                              {time}  1450

  So we'll endure the sideshow. This will pass. It will not really do 
anything other than sort of trying to be the pivot point in trying to 
spin the issue. But it would be nice at some point to stop the spin and 
the things that are beside the point, and maybe encourage the 
Republicans to agree amongst themselves, come into accord between the 
House and the Senate, and maybe get some of these appropriations bills 
to the floor so we can see where we're going.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Huelskamp).
  Mr. HUELSKAMP. Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of the resolution 
offered by my colleague, the gentleman from Florida. The jaws of the 
people I represent drop when I inform them that 1,000 days have passed 
since the Senate actually passed a budget; 1,000 days since Democrat 
Harry Reid allowed a budget to actually be debated. They can't believe 
that such a failure of duty has occurred, yet alone that it can occur.
  Two weeks ago I hosted a town hall in Clay Center, Kansas, and a 
constituent asked: How is it possible for the Senate to not pass a 
budget? As the constituent correctly pointed out, you can't run a city, 
a State, or a business this way. Washington seems to be the only place 
in the world where reality doesn't apply. Perhaps it's fitting that the 
President traveled to the most magical place on earth--Disney World--
last week. He is complicit with allowing the Senate Democrats to live 
out a fairy tale in which fiscal policy is carried out on a whim.
  Not only do cities, States, and businesses not function without 
budgets, but American families cannot get ahead without them. Families 
who face mountains of debt, like Washington does, never erased the red 
ink without a plan to pay it down or a plan to stop adding to it. 
Families who want to save and invest for the future cannot do so 
without a budget. Families who want to leave a legacy for their 
children and grandchildren come up with a blueprint to do so. And in 
the same regard, we should be focused on the legacy Washington is 
leaving for our children and grandchildren, Mr. President and Mr. Reid. 
We cannot wait.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes.
  Here's the deal, Mr. Speaker. We're going to have a debt crisis in 
this country if we don't watch it. What is going to happen if that 
happens is everybody's going to get hurt in this country. Europe is in 
the middle of austerity. What that means is they're cranking up taxes 
on all of their countrymen, slowing down their economy. And they're 
pulling the rug out from under their seniors who have already retired 
and organized their lives around these programs. We want to prevent 
that from happening. We want to preempt a debt crisis. We want to get 
America on a path to prosperity and deal with this debt issue, and we 
can't grow the economy and create jobs unless we do that. The only way 
to fix this problem, to prevent seniors from getting harmed, to grow 
this economy, is to have a budget.
  And it's been 1,000 days since the Senate bothered even trying to 
pass a budget. It's the epitome of irresponsibility that the other body 
has neglected this most basic function of governing. We've got to save 
this country. And in order to do that, we have to budget and prioritize 
because that's what our constituents elected us to do.
  With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I agree with the goal of my good friend from Wisconsin about making 
sure that we deal with our long-term problems of budget deficits and 
national debt, and certainly look forward to working together moving 
down a path to prosperity. But we have slightly different ways of going 
about this, and it is unfortunate because I think if we really had full 
and open debate on the floor of the House, if we hadn't accepted 
draconian rules that make it very hard to be able to discuss on the 
floor the opportunity to have a balanced approach that would include, 
for example, eliminating unnecessary tax breaks for industries that no 
longer need them, or adjusting the Tax Code so we wouldn't have the 
anomaly of where people worth hundreds of millions of dollars--the most 
recent example of Mr. Romney releasing his tax returns, where he is 
paying less than 15 percent due to the use of carried interest long 
after he left his former employer. These are things that we could do 
that the American public agrees with and that would help have a 
balanced approach that ultimately would make a difference.
  I am, as I mentioned, a little bit perplexed that we are going to 
continue to beat up on the Senate, although that's always fun, to whack 
around the other body, but the point is that the dysfunction of the 
Senate is a Republican choice to shut it down, require extraordinary 
majorities for the most routine of items. We see it with judicial 
appointments that have been cleared out of committee, that have 
bipartisan support, that the minority in the other body, the Republican 
Party, won't even allow to move forward when we have a serious crisis 
in a number of the areas of our judiciary.
  We have watched where there's long on rhetoric, but when it comes 
time to just getting the budgets done for this year, there are six 
major appropriations bills for this year, and we're now 5 months into 
the fiscal year, that are languishing, that have not passed out of the 
Republican committee to the Republican-controlled House to at least 
start the process going.
  Now, today in the Budget Committee we had a fascinating intellectual 
exercise. There were four bills that were considered. We're moving 
these items to the House floor, each and every one of which was an 
interesting intellectual exercise, but in the name of transparency and 
simplicity and giving the American public a fuller picture, every one 
of them clouds the budget picture, whether it's so-called dynamic 
scoring that won't deal with important investments like infrastructure 
and give the people a great picture, but it will muddy the waters in 
terms of the impact on legislation coming forward.
  Biennial budgets, when we can't move forward now with appropriations 
on an annual basis, will institutionalize the sideshow. We'll do it 
twice; we'll require the bureaucracy to generate more information over 
a longer timeframe that will be more inaccurate. It flies in the face 
of what is happening in the States--which have been referred to as the 
laboratories of democracy--which used to have biennial budgets, and the 
majority are moving away because it doesn't work, it is inaccurate, and 
it requires extra work. This is part of the Republican approach, to 
move in this direction.
  Freezing baseline budgets will make long-term budgeting less accurate 
and make it harder to really assess what the budgetary costs and 
consequences are going to be.
  And then there's a little thing that deals with risk adjustment that 
would require the current process, where there is an absolute accurate 
appraisal of what will happen with Federal loans and their performance, 
but because it doesn't deal with their academic

[[Page H148]]

model, will require a risk adjustment premium and further budget 
balancing. And I defy any Member of the House to explain to any of 
their constituency, even pretty sophisticated people, why this is an 
improvement for greater transparency and accuracy.
  The point is it's continuing a side show instead of working together 
on what the American public wants. They want a balanced solution. And 
if we didn't have the vast majority of the people in the House and the 
Senate pledging their fealty to an unelected lobbyist, pledging never 
to increase taxes, we could have moved with the supercommittee and 
moved forward and done something.

                              {time}  1500

  It is time for us to stop the gimmicks, maybe work together doing 
what the American public wants so that we can deal with avoiding a debt 
crisis and get us launched on a path to prosperity that the American 
public would agree with.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, for the purposes of closing, I 
yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from Florida, the 
author of this House resolution, Mr. Nugent.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Florida is recognized for 
5\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. NUGENT. I would like to thank the chairman, Mr. Ryan, for 
allowing me to speak and allowing me to close. And I heard this is a 
sideshow. I don't think the American people see it as that.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to offer a resolution expressing the sense 
of the House of Representatives that the passage of a fiscal year 2013 
Federal budget is of national importance. You've heard it over and over 
again that this is the 1,000th day, 1,000 days, Mr. Speaker, since the 
Senate has not fulfilled its obligation. Think about all the things 
Americans have done and been able to accomplish in the last 1,000 days, 
and yet the Senate has failed to achieve this basic responsibility 
under the Budget Act of 1974.
  It's astonishing. I've had two sons graduate from college, two sons 
go to war and come home again. Another son got married in that time 
period. And in that time, the citizens of Florida's Fifth Congressional 
District sent me to Washington to do this job to work for the American 
people.
  That work undoubtedly includes passing a budget, as this House did on 
April 15 based on the leadership of Chairman Ryan. The Senate, on the 
other hand, hasn't produced a budget since 2009--I believe it's April 
of 2009--and didn't even bother to propose a budget this last year. The 
last time the Senate passed the budget, the CBO predicted that the 
deficit for 2011 would be $693 billion. In reality, it was twice, 
almost twice that, $1.3 trillion.
  When I'm at home talking with people in my district, they're 
astounded that the Senate has not passed a budget in almost 3 years. 
They can't fathom how we can operate without a budget. In truth, Mr. 
Speaker, you've heard the other side even say that we haven't been 
operating smoothly. When I first got here, we had to do a CR. That's 
because we haven't done what we're supposed to do in the Senate and the 
House. The American people know that, and that's reflected in our 
approval ratings.
  You see, in the real world, Americans routinely set budgets for 
themselves, their families, and their businesses. I had to set one when 
I was a sheriff. Unfortunately, the Senate doesn't operate in the real 
world. Rather, it has become a legislative graveyard, even for bills 
passed with bipartisan support.
  The House, however, has acted. We've passed 27 bipartisan jobs bills 
that have been lost to the black hole that is the Senate. Some of those 
bills received an overwhelming majority of support. For instance, H.R. 
1070, the Small Company Capital Formation Act, would allow small 
businesses to capture more capital in the early stages of their 
formation, and that passed in this House with 421 votes for and one 
opposed. That's a perfect example of legislation that should be public 
law, and it isn't because it's died in the Senate.
  Now, I understand the Senate may not agree with everything in our 
bills that we pass, and that's fine. That's how the Founding Fathers 
envisioned it. But if you have objections, then put forth your own 
proposals and allow the normal process to work. Do not simply sit on 
the sidelines and decry every idea that comes out of the House of 
Representatives--ideas that we put forward.
  In my opinion, there couldn't be a better example of putting politics 
before country than the Senate's refusal to pass a budget. Even those 
on the other side have said, it's a plan, we have to have a direction. 
That's what we ask. We don't have to agree on that direction; but at 
the end of the day, we have to have something to set our appropriators 
free to work with within the confines.
  Rather than show Americans what priorities are, rather than show what 
they're willing to spend, where they want to cut and how much they want 
to increase taxes, and whether they believe our colossal debt is even 
an issue, the Senate has instead insisted on punting this issue 
entirely. This is not only a disservice to the American people; but, 
frankly, it's irresponsible. And when you hear them say the Republicans 
in the Senate are blocking a budget, you can't filibuster a budget in 
the Senate. The rules do not allow for it. So they could, if they 
wanted to, do their job and assist the American people in figuring out 
where they stand on issues of great national importance. Once again, we 
talked about spending, taxes, and how we move forward.
  The Senate Democrats had the supermajority in the Senate, control of 
the House and the White House and still didn't pass a budget. I don't 
think it's too much to ask the Senate to produce a budget. I know 
Americans don't think so either.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) that the House suspend the rules 
and agree to the resolution, H. Res. 516.
  The question was taken.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds 
being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
  Mr. RYAN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further 
proceedings on this question will be postponed.

                          ____________________