John Spratt: “Let us look at the Committee on Ways and Means. In the original budget resolution, the Committee on Ways and Means was…”

“Let us look at the Committee on Ways and Means. In the original budget resolution, the Committee on Ways and Means was largely spared, mainly because the cuts in Ways and Means would mostly fall on Medicare. It is the biggest entitlement within their jurisdiction except for Social Security, and that is not in the cards right now. Only $1 billion was reconciled in the way of spending cuts to the Committee on Ways and Means, but now, in recent weeks, in the zeal to get the amount from $35 billion to $50 billion, which is reconciled, they have added to the directive for Ways and Means, or they will if this resolution gets passed this week, another $7 billion, $8 billion. {time} 2100 Very little of this actually comes out of Medicare because they do not want to touch Medicare for fear that they will have a fight in their own ranks, but this is where it comes from. This is astounding. It comes from child support enforcement. This is the money that we appropriate to match State money to enforce fathers who are not supporting their families to come up with the financial support for their own families. We let them know this program will be robustly funded. We have a national program so they cannot skip from one State to another. We have a State-by-State program so they cannot elude enforcement. They are going to take a reduction in child support enforcement of $3.8- to $4 billion in child support enforcement.…”