mr. chairman , i yield myself the balance of my time for the purpose of closing general debate .  mr. chairman , we have put before the house a substitute resolution as an alternative to the resolution supported by the republicans and reported by the committee .  what does our resolution do ?  first of all , in the realm of fiscal discipline , we would reimpose a rule found to work and work well during the 1990s , a rule that was first implemented by a bill signed into law by president bush , the first president bush , in 1990 as part of the bush budget summit agreement , which laid the foundation for the phenomenal success in the 1990s when we finally moved the budget out of intractable deficits into a surplus in 1998 and into a monumental surplus of $ 236 billion in the year 2000 .  part of the budget process changes that helped us achieve those impressive results was a rule called pay-as-you-go , which simply stipulates that before anyone can increase an entitlement or mandatory spending program , add to its benefits , they have to either pay for the benefits by an identified revenue source , or they have to offset the increased expenditure by decreasing expenditures elsewhere .  in addition , it provides when anyone wants to cut taxes , when we have a deficit , must offset the tax cut so it will not contribute to the deficit ; it will not further enlarge the problem on the bottom line .  so we first of all would reinstate the paygo rule .  as i said earlier , this is not just some notion we have concocted .  three times chairman alan greenspan of the federal reserve has testified before the committee on the budget that he would reinstate the paygo rule and he would apply it to expiring tax cuts that are renewed .  on the spending side of the ledger , we have brought spending back to current services , in many cases restoring deep cuts made by the republicans .  we have brought it back to current services , but we have held it at that level .  current services is basically today 's spending level carried forward with inflation .  what do we do by instituting those two practices ?  what do we accomplish ?  well , our budget moves to balance in the year 2012 , which the gentleman from iowa ( chairman nussle ) can not say with respect to his budget resolution .  secondly , we incur less in deficits each year and over the 10-year period of time that we run out our numbers , even though we provide current services funding .  thirdly , we protect medicare and medicaid .  the republicans would cut medicaid by $ 60 billion .  i met with governors , republicans and democrats , who have told us a cut of that magnitude would be devastating and we should not cut medicaid by any significant amount so that when the program is revised , it has to be revised in pursuit of some arbitrary savings number .  finally , we match funding for defense , function 050 , dollar for dollar the same as their resolution .  we match funding for international affairs , function 150 .  there is no difference between us there , but we have made some changes in our budget resolution which recommends that resources within the defense budget be shifted to personnel benefits and in particular to see that the $ 400 , 000 life insurance increase just provided in the supplemental will be carried forward and that the $ 100 , 000 increase in death gratuities will also be carried forward and funded in the future .  so we have a budget resolution with many positive features to it , but also with fiscal discipline .  a signature element is that in the year 2012 it gets to balance , but it gets there with balanced priorities .  