WASHINGTON – Congressman Paul Ryan voted in favor of the Fiscal Year 2006 Budget Resolution, which passed the House of Representatives today by a vote of 218-214. In an effort to keep Congress’ spending in check, Ryan and like-minded colleagues were able to secure a new procedural tool that will allow representatives to object and require a vote of the full House, prior to final passage, if a House spending bill goes over budget. 

“This is a step in the right direction, toward making the budget something we can actually enforce,” Ryan said. “It is not airtight, and there’s more work to do to bring greater discipline to the process Congress uses to spend taxpayers’ money, but this progress is encouraging. Overall, this budget resolution does a great job of funding priorities, while slowing the growth of federal spending. Now we need to make sure Congress sticks to it. This is a good starting point and paves the way for further action to fix our broken budget process – which House leadership has committed to bring up for a vote in the coming months.” 

The House Budget Resolution does not determine or dictate specific funding or policy decisions. Rather, it sets limits for spending in broad areas that the House is supposed to adhere to when it crafts spending legislation. 

The budget plan the House passed today provides for the following:

• An increase in overall spending, from $2.471 trillion in Fiscal Year 2005 to $2.554 trillion in Fiscal Year 2006. 

• Increases in defense and homeland security spending.

• A reduction of 0.8% in non-security discretionary (non-mandatory) spending.

• Deficit reduction (under this plan the deficit would be cut in half by 2010).

The measure also instructs House authorizing committees to find savings under mandatory programs, in order to slow the growth of mandatory spending from 6.4% to 6.3%.