mr. chairman , before i begin , let me just say that in addition to rising in support of this amendment budget , i also rise to support the efforts of the gentleman from iowa ( chairman nussle ) that he has done to move us in the right direction with the budget that he has released . 
it was just a short time ago that i had the opportunity to finish reading a book by chuck colson which is entitled `` how now shall we live '' . 
and it is a title that is an intriguing title . 
it is a question that we really should all ask ourselves all the time . 
how shall we conduct ourselves in our private lives , in our lives with our families and our lives in our community , in our lives in our society , and it is really a question that every member of congress should be asking ourselves every day as we come down to the floor . 
now , with families , how shall we live . 
well , we ask our families to do a simple thing , to live within our means . 
families have many ways that we can be spending our money , on trips , on schools , on property , on houses and fancy cars . 
but at the end of the day , a responsible family knows it has to spend no more than it takes in at the end of the year and must live within its means because if it does not what will the family be doing but simply passing that financial burden on to their children and their grandchildren . 
so congress really has to set an example , and i guess you could say in a way we have been setting an example for years . 
but we have been setting a terrible example for families for years , and it is about time that we set a good one . 
i serve on the budget committee , and if you ever come to those meetings you will see , from the other side of the aisle especially , their ways to live within our means is to increase the means by increasing the revenue by raising taxes , and they just did it last week again . 
i have never had anyone explain to me how we improve the economy by taking more money out of the family budget and sending it down here to washington so that we can spend it . 
so raising taxes obviously is not the answer to living within our means . 
it is spending less . 
just like families who have lots of things that we can spend money on , congress has lots of things that we can spend money on and if you come to the budget meetings you will see . 
every agency , every department , every program that comes before us , they all say the same thing basically , that they want more money to spend . 
as a matter of fact , if you sat on a budget hearing last year you saw the gentleman from minnesota ( mr. gutknecht ) xz4001640 , who , where we put charts up on all the time of these various things , spending requests and what have you , the gentleman from minnesota asked a question . 
he said , could you put up a chart behind us of all the agencies , all the programs , all the departments that have ever come before us to ask for their program , for their department to spend less money . 
and we all looked at the chart , and there was nothing on the chart , because no one ever asks for less money in washington because we know we always spend more . 
so i am rising in support of the bill sponsored by the gentleman from texas ( mr. hensarling ) xz4001750 because it moves us in that right direction . 
it moves us in the direction of spending within our means . 
and how does it do it ? 
not really hard at all . 
one of the things it does is it limits our spending on nonsecurity discretionary by reducing the spending by 2 percent . 
2 percent . 
many families have to do that all the time . 
it is not a heavy lift to reduce our spending in that area . 
we should be able to do the same thing . 
the second area is by reducing the growth in mandatory spending from 6.4 to 6.1 percent . 
we are still increasing spending there by almost twice the increase in the inflation rate , but we are just lowering the curve a little bit . 
so how now shall congress live ? 
we shall live as families have to live , within their means . 
and this bill sponsored by the gentleman from texas ( mr. hensarling ) xz4001750 does do that . 
