mr. chairman , i yield myself the balance of my time . 
mr. chairman , first let me say to the gentleman from south carolina ( mr. spratt ) xz4003860 , there is absolutely no one on the democratic side that i admire more than the gentleman and the partnership we have in working on these budgets . 
this is the culmination when we come to the floor and have these debates , and i really respect the way he handled the debate . 
we appreciate that . 
we disagree how we are going to accomplish the goals that our nation needs to set , but we know the goals are pretty important . 
we have to keep the country strong . 
there is no question about that . 
it is really nonnegotiable . 
there is not a constituent i talk to that would suggest at this point in time in our history we do not want to protect the country . 
our borders , everything from terrorism to illegals and drugs and all sorts of things coming into the country , we have to protect the country , number one . 
number two , we have to make sure that the economy keeps growing . 
that should not be an item up for negotiation . 
it is so important that families have the resources to deal with the challenges that they face every single day . 
we come out here and talk about other people 's money very easily on the floor of the house , what the taxpayers send us in order to solve problems ; but we really do need to be mindful of the fact that the most important budget that we ought to be focused on is the budget decided and discussed and sweated over and argued about around kitchen tables across the country . 
that is such an important budget . 
we worry about education here , but parents do that every night after their kids go to bed . 
we worry about health care here , but seniors do that every night when they are laying in a bed in a nursing home . 
we worry about creating jobs , but small business people do that every night in the quiet of their closed shop . 
they try and make sure their cash register all added up . 
it is funny , i have heard people say we should not worry about the error rate in the food stamp program , which is now 6 percent . 
mr. chairman , 6 cents on every dollar in this country in food stamps is wasted . 
we say that is an improvement because it is down from 19 percent . 
the interesting and fascinating thing about that is if a small business person ended the night , closed that shop door and turned the open sign around to closed and rang up the cash register and they were missing six pennies , they would stay all night to find it , all night long to find those six pennies that did not add up in their cash register . 
but we say , oh , that is an improvement . 
amazing . 
it really is amazing . 
that is what i turn to first . 
this is the record of federal government spending over the last 10 years . 
in these numbers is what i was talking about , the concern of education , the concern of homeland security , the concern of national defense , the concern of job training , the concern of our environment , the concern of transportation , the concern of research and development . 
all of the concerns that we have talked about are embodied in numbers because in washington we define compassion from one year to the next , solutions from one year to the next of spending more . 
we have all seen that . 
if i spend just a little bit more from one year to the next year , i must care , i must be solving problems , i must be dealing with real solutions . 
if i just spend a little bit more money , i will solve all of the problems in the country . 
every problem that every family ever addressed around their kitchen table can be solved with just a little bit more washington spending . 
that is the fallacy of what we are debating tonight , and that is that if we believe , truly believe that all we have to do is take more money to washington in the form of taxes and define and design and develop just one or two more programs that hires a number of more bureaucrats , that builds maybe a few more office buildings to be filled with those bureaucrats , it spends more money , it increases taxes , and it purports to solve problems . 
unfortunately , we are not solving those problems by doing that . 
my favorite saying that i heard on the floor , and i do not remember who said it , a long time ago , if you always do what you always did , you will always get what you always got . 
if members think about it , we have been trying to solve problems in washington with more spending for quite some time now , and those problems do not seem to go away . 
last year we decided to put the brakes on spending . 
we said yes , we have had the excuse of september 11 , of the war on terror , of needing to deal with homeland security and needing to deal with our economy ; but it is time to be done with all of that . 
and so what we did was we said let us put the brakes on spending just a little bit . 
what happened ? 
when the economy grows and when we control spending , just like the republican budgets in the late 1990s when we got back to balance , and president clinton can take credit for anything he wants , that is fine . 
but everyone who has studied government knows that the buck stops here when it comes to spending . 
when it comes to fiscal responsibility and article i of the constitution , we are the ones in charge of the budget . 
members know that . 
as a result , last year with fiscal discipline and a growing economy , we were able to reduce the deficit 20 percent in 1 year . 
that is good news , but we need to build on that . 
what our budget does is it says , let us continue to build on that success every year with more and more deficit reduction . 
that is what we accomplish with the spending discipline within this budget . 
we say not only should we hold the line on discretionary spending , that is the spending we will argue about every day out here during the appropriations process . 
we want to actually reduce some spending there . 
we want to have the first reduction in non-security spending since ronald reagan was in town back in 1980 . 
that is good news . 
we also know that we have to start tackling what we call the mandatory spending , or the automatic spending . 
and so we accomplish that because we know that mandatory spending , that is this yellow part , the part here that back in 1995 was half the budget and now is more than half the budget and is growing to even more than half the budget , almost two-thirds of the budget if we do not start controlling our spending in these accounts . 
i want to give you an example of what we would have to do . 
as much as there will be all sorts of discussion today , and there has been , and tomorrow about medicaid , you can not find the word medicaid in the budget . 
the reason is because what we do is we say the committees of jurisdiction , in this instance the committee on energy and commerce , should be given responsibility to look through the programs and see if they can not only find savings but reform the program , to do a better job of delivering the product to the people who need it . 
if it is true that people sit up at night worrying about how they are going to pay their bills , how they are going to meet their health care needs , then let us help them figure that out . 
but let us not continue to do a program that every single governor would admit is unsustainable . 
we have got quotes from here to the end of the day from governors who have written us that have said , this program can not continue . 
it can not continue . 
all right . 
so what do we have ? 
we have one budget on the democratic side . 
we actually , i think , will have two or three budgets on the democratic side that do nothing with regard to medicaid . 
no reforms . 
no changes . 
let us continue to always do what we have always done , and that is continue what has been what some people say is fraudulent transfers that are going on at the state level , where governors and state legislators are put in a position where they actually have to figure out how to game the system , how to manipulate the system so that they can get more money from the federal government . 
i have heard of situations that colleagues of mine have told me from around the country where we actually have a situation where kids , teenagers who are eligible for foster care , good kids , good teenagers , that are difficult to find families for so that they can integrate and become part of a family again , but the state , a couple of states in particular , what they have done is they have devised a way to lock those kids into i realize if you measure your compassion from one year to the next with spending , i cared at $ 92 billion this year . 
oops , there i went and i cared a little bit more that year . 
then i cared at $ 101 billion . 
then i really cared at $ 108 billion . 
boy , my caring and compassion is going up . 
that is not how we should measure it . 
we should measure it on results . 
are these programs working ? 
are they helping families ? 
are they helping kids ? 
are they helping communities ? 
are they solving the problem that medicaid ought to be solving for people with long-term health care concerns , people with disabilities , people who require indigent care ? 
that is what we ought to be asking . 
what do we do in this budget ? 
we say , commerce committee , go to work . 
invite the governors to come to washington to give us their proposal . 
the gentleman from south carolina ( mr. spratt ) xz4003860 and i sat in a room with governors where they said , `` do n't arbitrarily let the number drive the policy. '' that is exactly right . 
the number should not drive policy . 
this number should not drive policy any more than it ought to determine compassion . 
but there is only one way to get the governors to come back to washington . 
they were here the first time . 
the only way to get them back the second time is to have a process that requires reform and that is exactly what this budget does . 
it says , by september , we want you to come back with ideas for reform . 
just as a result of this , they have committed to come back by june with a reform proposal that the what does the so-called reduction in growth look like ? 
we have heard all the complaints on the floor today . 
one would think we were just eliminating the medicaid program . 
i want to show you the chart of what this looks like after we are all done . 
this is what the governors would complain about . 
this is what some of the advocates are complaining about . 
in other words , we are asking for just a little sliver , just slow down the growth . 
but it is growing every year . 
every year it grows . 
we are just asking for a little bit of change , just a little bit of reform , make the program work better , less it help seniors , let it help people with disabilities , make sure it is solving the problem for families that do not have the resources to meet their health care needs . 
let us also instill some personal responsibility . 
i understand that between today and tomorrow we have got a big decision to make . 
the decision as it boils down to me is very simple . 
if you believe that taxing a little bit more , taking a little bit more out to washington from all of these hardworking families across the country and hiring more bureaucrats and inventing more programs and trying to solve more of these problems from washington , if you believe that is the solution , you need to vote for the spratt budget . 
you need to vote for the democrat alternative budget because that is what it does . 
it says increase taxes , increase spending and you will begin to solve these problems . 
but there is an alternative and it is the majority . 
what the majority is saying , stop the madness . 
it is the spending . 
we have got to get the spending under control . 
we know the other body left to their own devices may not do it on their own . 
we have already seen in a kind of a disappointing way that they have not really stepped up the way the president has and how we believe the way i have . 
in closing , let me just say that we will be able to give , i believe , our kids and our grandkids the opportunity of a debt-free world if we begin with a small step again this year . 
i ask members to support the majority budget . 
