mr. chairman , i thank the gentleman for yielding me this time . 
i rise in strong opposition to the spratt amendment . 
i respect the ranking member and the work that he has put into the budget committee , but i have to clarify a number of points that have been made by the prior speaker . 
this budget goes a long way toward laying out priorities for this nation . 
we have through this process been afforded the opportunity to see a variety of different sets of priorities . 
members have had the opportunity to vote on four different blueprints for this nation , across the ideological and political spectrum . 
i think that is a healthy thing . 
i do not think that happens enough in this house where we have good solid debate like this . 
the differences amongst those priorities , though , are stark . 
our budget lays out a blueprint that invests in defense and invests in homeland security , two things that we find to be most urgent at a time when our nation has come under attack recently and where we are engaged in conflict against terrorism around the world . 
we create in this budget blueprint an opportunity for policies to move forward that create jobs , that allow for continued economic expansion , that allow us to build upon the fact that homeownership is at its highest rate ever , that americans are enjoying a lower tax burden that allows them to make decisions about their children 's higher education , about their small business , about their opportunity to carve out their piece of the american dream . 
it does not raise taxes on those same small business men and women who are taxed at the individual rate because they are an s corporation , because they are a small business , because they are the neighborhood barber or diner or farmer . 
we lay out a policy that also calls for fiscal restraint , and we balance the approach to fiscal restraint on both the discretionary side of the ledger and the mandatory side of the ledger . 
for those who are uninformed about washingtonese , the mandatory side of the ledger now consumes over half of the federal budget and soon will consume over two-thirds . 
it is on automatic pilot . 
you can not get your arms around the deficit without tackling mandatory spending . 
our side knows that . 
the other side knows that . 
you can not be serious about budget reform without simultaneously addressing discretionary spending and mandatory spending . 
we do that . 
we shave the rate of growth by one-tenth of 1 percent . 
yet the new testament is invoked on a regular basis from the other side 's talking points to claim that there will be blood in the streets , that there will be mass pandemonium and starvation because one-tenth of 1 percent of mandatory spending 's rate of growth has been shaven off . 
on the discretionary side , we bring eight-tenths of a percent cut to programs that have experienced double-digit increases over the last decade . 
you can not look at the spending history of this house and this congress ' budget in veterans , in students with disabilities , in hud , in education , in homeland security and defense and find anyone who has experienced real pain or real cuts in the last decade . 
there have been substantial increases . 
our budget lays out that priority , investing in defense , creating economic opportunity and beginning that long process of making tough decisions , the decisions we are paid to make to get our arms around the deficit so that future generations are not burdened and that the current generation , current workers , current employers , current small businesses are not seeing their tax burden go up . 
vote for the underlying house budget and defeat the spratt amendment . 
