mr. chairman , i want to thank the gentleman from iowa ( mr. nussle )  for his hard work on this budget and for yielding me this time to talk about his budget and this alternative .  certainly his committee and he under his leadership have worked hard to bring us a fiscally responsible budget .  the base bill we are debating today is the most fiscally conservative budget resolution we have considered since we joined the congress .  the cuts we are hearing about in medicaid are really a reduction of the growth .  the cut in medicaid , as i read the base budget , is a cut in the growth rate of 7.5 percent to a growth rate of 7.3 percent .  where i live , and i suspect where most of us live , 7.3 percent growth would not be seen as a cut .  the committee 's budget permits us to extend recently enacted tax relief so that american families will not see a tax increase .  what we have found is that if we trust the american people and american families , our economy grows again and it is growing .  passage of the committee 's budget will provide for a real reduction of nearly 1 percent in nonsecurity discretionary spending .  after holding the line on that category of spending at almost no growth in the last budget year , we hope to do even better this year and actually have a reduction of 1 percent below last year 's spending .  furthermore , the budget calls for a reduction in the rate of growth of mandatory spending .  in addition to reducing spending , this bill will ultimately save taxpayers almost $ 69 billion over the next 5 years .  only rarely has the congress even been willing to discuss looking at mandatory spending .  almost all of our debate about spending is about the increasingly declining percentage of the budget that is discretionary .  we are increasingly losing our control over the budget because we have not been willing to tackle mandatory spending .  the chairman 's budget , the committee 's budget , says that mandatory spending can be , must be , and will be dealt with .  it sets the targets for the authorizing committees to do their work and find the places to make this process more efficient and cut the growth in spending in those mandatory categories that the chairman 's budget , the committee 's budget , sets out .  that does put us on a path to cutting the deficit in half within 5 years .  the chairman 's budget , the committee 's budget , mr. chairman , is a good budget .  i am proud of the work the budget committee and the chairman have done .  i urge we move this budget forward today , we do the tough things in discretionary spending and mandatory spending it asks us to do , that we defeat the substitute and get on with our work .  