Tim Ryan: “Absolutely. Just to continue to reinforce your point on the PAYGO, on the fiscal responsibility. We call it PAYGO. It…”

“Absolutely. Just to continue to reinforce your point on the PAYGO, on the fiscal responsibility. We call it PAYGO. It means pay as you go, which means you have to have the money to pay for it. If you have a program, you either have to raise taxes or cut the money from somewhere else to pay for it. Cut the energy subsidy if you need $14 billion or whatever to pay for Medicaid; find a way to control spending with the prescription drug program that is $700 billion and not doing anything to control the costs by allowing reimportation or allowing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down the drug prices for the Medicare program and take that money and pay for what you want to pay, whether it is some of the Medicaid cuts that came up, or whether it was some of the college PELL grants or students loan cuts that were made in this recent budget. But just to reinforce the PAYGO, the Democrats have supported PAYGO, period, and we have tried to get it reinstated time and time again. We will talk to our staff to make sure this gets up on our new Website. March 30, 2004, Representative Mike Thompson, a Democrat from California, tried to instruct the budget conferees to include pay as you go requirements in the 2006 budget resolution.…”