Paul Ryan: “I yield myself 2 minutes. One additional point I wanted to make, Mr. Speaker, is the point about PAYGO that the…”

“I yield myself 2 minutes. One additional point I wanted to make, Mr. Speaker, is the point about PAYGO that the gentleman from South Carolina mentioned. As it is well known, we have a problem with their version of PAYGO. When PAYGO is designed to raise taxes, we don't like it. When PAYGO is designed to control spending, we like it. That is why we are for PAYGO on spending, not on raising taxes. But if this amendment is accepted, if this motion to instruct is accepted, let's just be very clear, it does violate their PAYGO. Because the Baucus amendment, which is what we are referring to, which is the amendment that passed in the Senate, uses their surpluses, quote-unquote, to pay for these tax cuts. PAYGO says if you are going to reduce taxes, you have to offset them with either a tax increase or a spending cut, not with surpluses. So this amendment, we believe if you are going to have a surplus, it should either go back to the Social Security trust fund and pay down debt, or reduce taxes. That is what we are proposing. But just so we are very clear with ourselves here, this Baucus amendment, this acceptance of this policy of not raising all of these taxes, just some of them, which is the best choice we have between the two options as the minority, does violate their own PAYGO rule by dedicating their surpluses towards this tax relief, rather than having offsets, either coming from spending cuts or tax increases.”