Paul Ryan: “Having that higher vote threshold makes it much more difficult for Congress to defeat its own budgets. Having a…”

“Having that higher vote threshold makes it much more difficult for Congress to defeat its own budgets. Having a legally-binding budget, which automatically kicks in spending cuts across the board, forces Congress to act. And if Congress chooses not to act, then the across-the-board spending cut comes in. If two-thirds of the Members of Congress do not want that to happen, then they can make sure that that does not happen. But that is a much higher threshold. Among the other tricks that we seek to limit here is not only do we want to tightly define what an emergency is, but we want to raise the vote threshold on emergencies to a two-thirds vote, so that that too is a protected procedure, not another game that can be used to get around the budget spending caps that we have. But also, we want to set aside money for emergencies. We often have emergencies in this country that need quick attention by Congress. That is why we are proposing to set up a rainy day fund.”