The Keystone XL Pipeline

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROKITA. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

The gentleman is exactly right. By the way, while I am at it, let me
just say that the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), in my humble
opinion, is a blessing not only for this Congress and for the people of
Georgia but for this country because of the tenacity you bring, the
energy you bring. If I had a list of all the pieces of legislation, all
the things that we have gotten done around here for the last 4 years
that you and I have been in here, that you have had your fingers on,
that you weren't mentioned about, the work you have done behind the
scenes, that list would be very long and would probably go out these
doors.

One of the things that you have done, that we have done together, is
for the first time since the Korean war, we have cut discretionary
spending 4 years in a row. It hasn't been done since the Korean war.

Now, as you pointed out in earlier slides, there is a lot more work
to do, and we are going to continue to get to it. We need a partner at
some point. We need people to put on what I call their big boy pants
and their big girl skirts and get to the bottom of this, and that is
getting to a balanced budget.

I will tell you that this pie chart is very good. You are exactly
right. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Woodall is exactly right. The two blue pieces
that we pull out for you in this pie chart are what you would get at in
a traditional, regular budget process.

This is what we call our discretionary spending both in the
nondefense area and in the defense area. As you can see, it is really
no more than one-third--or 40 percent--of our total Federal spending.
The rest, all that red that you see there is on what we call autopilot
spending because the budget, line by line, doesn't touch that. Why?
Because it is on autopilot.

That is your Medicare, that is your Medicaid, that is your Social
Security, and that is your interest that we owe ourselves and other
countries for all this debt because that is a contract. That red is
just going to continue to grow as a percentage of that pie until it
takes up nearly all of it over the next several years.

Then we are not going to have the money we need to spend on the
things that constitutionally we need to spend it on, like defense and
like some of the other 167 other agencies around here. That is a bad,
bad situation. It is unsustainable.

Until you get to the underlying law, that is Social Security, that is
Medicare, that is Medicaid, and that is the other mandatory spending,
until you reform those programs, until they fit how we live in the 21st
century, so they can be saved for our children and for our
grandchildren, then you are really never going to get to balancing the
budget or paying down this awful debt.

I can't imagine anything more immoral than passing on to future
Americans--our children and grandchildren who do not yet exist--this
burden. Talk about taxation without representation.

Well, thank you, Mr. Woodall. I appreciate your letting me as a
member of the Budget Committee, under the excellent leadership of Chairman
Price, chime in here. We are going to have a budget, the fifth time we
will do it in a row here, by the statutory deadline. We intend to get
it over to the Senate, and we intend to move this country forward.

Again, I say, Mr. Speaker, chiming in with Mr. Woodall, I hope we
have a partner this time. I hope we have personal responsibility on the
floor of this House and the floor of the other Chamber.

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