Paul Ryan: “I want to start off by complimenting the chairman of the committee and the ranking member of the committee, along with…”

“I want to start off by complimenting the chairman of the committee and the ranking member of the committee, along with all the other members of the Foreign Affairs Committee for working in a bipartisan way to put together this compromise. We heard a very good fulfilling debate about the merits of PEPFAR. I, too, agree that the PEPFAR program is a very worthwhile program. So we agree that this is the right thing to do. The question is, should we more than double the authorization of this program? Now, the President's budget called for doing just that. And I think you can make a very good and compelling case that this program is so successful that it ought to be doubled. That's not what the underlying bill does. This underlying bill more than triples this program. I have three concerns about this tripling of this program. Number 1, the spending levels set out in this authorization bill are higher than the recipient countries can even accept. They can't absorb all of this money. We know this from the studies in the field. So even if we hit these authorization levels, we know that the recipient countries cannot even accept all of this money. They can't spend it that fast.”