National Debt and Spending

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROKITA. Mr. Speaker, let me just say on the Record that I greatly appreciate the leadership of our newer members of the Budget Committee, especially the member from Arkansas. I think the people of Arkansas were right to send him to Congress. Not only does he come ready to identify the spending problems that this country has, but he comes ready with solutions, too. And I think that is, in essence, Mr. Speaker, the definition of leadership. I thank the gentleman.

I also thank the gentleman from Georgia who just spoke. He speaks so eloquently on so many subjects, a member of the Rules Committee. I am also very appreciative of his contribution to the Budget Committee. He, of course, as we all are today, and almost every day, unfortunately, was talking about the debt.

And let me just put it in a pictorial form. This is the new red menace, Mr. Speaker. Look at that trajectory. It goes nearly vertical.

So the question is: How do you turn that big ship, that Titanic, if you will, so, number one, it doesn't sink this entire country and, number two, it gets on a more meaningful, more productive course so that we can continue to be the world's best hope in a 21st century world?

Now, some, especially those on the other side of the aisle, will immediately turn to the fact that there are two ways to, in fact, solve this problem. One is to control spending. The other is to grow revenue.

Let me talk about the latter for just a second. The latter is a false choice because at 10,000 people a day retiring into unreformed social programs, that trajectory will not turn around, it will not plateau.

No matter how much property you confiscate from the American people, Mr. Speaker, no matter how much you take in the form of taxes, with 10,000 people a day retiring in unreformed programs, can you get that to go down.

So let's look at that more closely. This is what the Federal Government confiscates from the American people to run itself. In fiscal year 2015, it was $3.25 trillion, revenue we took in to run the operations of just the Federal Government.

Mr. Speaker, the American people know we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.

The question should be what can't you do? What can't you do, Mr. Speaker, with $3.25 trillion of property confiscated?

More revenue is not the answer. Thankfully, the majority here in the House of Representatives doesn't think it is the answer either. We know we can do better. We know we have to do better for the American people. We know we have to control the spending.

That is why I am very proud to be part of a committee, the Budget Committee, and part of a new crew that came, starting in 2011, that for every year we have put in a budget, a narrative, something that we don't legally have to do as part of the budget process, but we took the extra step to put a narrative in our budget to give the solutions that are needed to correct this debt problem, reforming Medicare, reforming Medicaid, putting us on a track that will reduce that red menace, that will plateau it, and start pointing it downward over the next generation.

We took the political risk to have that conversation with the American people, and we have done it every year since 2011. Some people called it the third rail of politics. Touch it and you will be politically electrocuted.

Well, we touched it, Mr. Speaker. And we touched the next year, and the next year, and the year after that. And my hope and my pledge is, on this House floor, that we will continue to have that conversation with the American people, backed up with votes that show, really, how to solve this problem.

Mr. Speaker, I will refer us to the spending that I am talking about. This chart was used before by the gentleman from Arkansas. I will refer to it again.

Here is what is on autopilot. Here is what needs to be reformed. And if you look at one piece of that pie there, Medicaid, a solution for that has been in our budget for the last 5 years.

In the remaining time I have, Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about that solution, a State flexibility grant, block grant, if you will. We have had that idea in our budget for the last 5 years.

It is the idea that we in the Federal Government, we are going to get out of the business of Medicaid. We are going to get out of the business of deciding who is poor in terms of health care, what the poor need in terms of health care, or how the poor get it, that health care service.

We are going to give it to the States, to individuals, to locally elected officials, people who know their communities better, in fact, than any Federal bureaucrat does; people who can determine, given a finite amount of money from us, their money back, in fact, what the poor need, who the poor really are, who the disabled really are, what they should get in terms of healthcare services, and how they should get it.

Maybe, like the gentleman from Arkansas alluded to earlier, maybe there ought to be a work requirement for the able-bodied ones of them. Maybe there ought to be other conditions, but let the States decide what that would be, pressured, in a good way, by the fact that there would only be a finite amount of money coming from our budget.

That would allow us to know exactly what we are in for, as a Federal Government, exactly what we are giving out, and not a cent more, and would naturally incentivize the States to innovate, to come up with better ways of service, to serve those who really need health care who can't get it any other way. And those who, in fact, are gaming the system will be naturally forced off.

The States are in the best position to provide that when they are properly incentivized with a finite amount of money that doesn't grow over time.

The Republican budget for the last 5 years, the one that has passed this House of Representatives, has done that very thing. We are on the right track. We need to continue these votes. We need to continue to have a budget. We need to continue to have stand-alone votes on these reforms to take this issue to the American people, especially in a Presidential election year when, frankly, the candidates, I haven't seen them talk enough about what is really on people's minds, and that is how they are going to leave their children and grandchildren with a better life than they have, when we are knowingly saddled with $19 trillion in debt, a very hard thing to do.

In fact, I think this is the first generation in American history, Mr. Speaker, that is poised to leave the next generation worse off. I refuse to let that happen on this Budget Committee's watch, and that is why we are here today, that is why we are providing the leadership.

I thank the gentleman very much for his leadership.

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