Paul Ryan: “I thank the elderly gentleman from Florida for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I wish to speak in favor of this rule…”

“I thank the elderly gentleman from Florida for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I wish to speak in favor of this rule and in favor of this budget. It all comes down to priorities, Mr. Speaker: how are we going to balance the budget. There are different ways of doing it. We believe the way to balance the budget is grow the economy and create more jobs and control spending. What the other side has said they want to do is raise taxes. You can raise taxes, but you will hurt jobs. What we have done in the last year is remarkable, Mr. Speaker. The budget deficit has gone down from a projected $521 billion, down by 20 percent over the last year, to $412 billion, largely because of increased jobs and economic activity. Now, what we want to do to ensure that we cut the deficit in half over 5 years and, hopefully, exceed that goal is control spending. For the first time since the Reagan administration, we are actually going to reduce nonsecurity discretionary spending, an actual reduction in expenditures on nonsecurity discretionary spending. That is a great step in the right direction. For the first time since 1997, we are actually going to address entitlement reform. Fifty-four percent of the Federal budget, Mr. Speaker, is on auto pilot, our entitlements. We are finally going to be trying to control the growth of entitlements. Is it Draconian? Hardly. We are growing entitlements at 5.6 percent instead of 5.7 percent over the next 10 years.…”