Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, as for the last speaker, I heard that speech in 1981. I heard it in 2001. I heard it in 2003. The certainty of this bill is that we will explode further deficits and provide for disinvestment. That is the certainty of this bill, and I rise in strong opposition to it.

This package will raise deficits by approximately $622 billion over the next 10 years. Add to that the $58 billion in unpaid-for tax provisions in the omnibus bill of approximately $680 billion. When you add interest to that, it is almost $800 billion in additional debt, Mr. and Mrs. America.

I came to this floor on Tuesday and spoke in greater detail about my opposition to this package. I, again, want to highlight one major issue, and that is how enacting this legislation will set the stage for the next round of painful sequester cuts, otherwise known as disinvestment in growing our economy and jobs.

Do my colleagues not see the tragic symmetry of this package's almost $800 billion in new deficits and the sequester's $813 billion in cuts that were imposed for the sake of deficit reduction?

Republicans will again insist upon hundreds of billions of cuts from domestic discretionary investment--i.e., growing jobs and the economy-- in order to make up for the budget shortfall incurred by the extension of these tax credits, some of which are made permanent.

There are, certainly, good reasons to make a number of these tax credits and deductions permanent, and I support making many of these permanent, but we ought to pay for it in the process, as your predecessor did, Mr. Camp. It was a tough decision he made, and it was dismissed out of hand because it was hard to do.

This is easy to do. There is no courage required to vote for this bill. All you have to do is suspend common sense. This legislation flies in the face of the basic budgeting principle, which hardworking families all across our Nation understand and have to live with every month.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, wrote in The Washington Post last week:

``How do we explain to our children that we borrowed more than $1 trillion--counting interest--not because it was a national emergency or to make critical investments in the future but because we just don't like paying our bills?''

Republicans would answer as they always do--that tax cuts somehow, magically, pay for themselves. I have been here 35 years. It has never happened.

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, we have seen that notion disproven several times over, and the results of experimenting with that idea have been higher deficits and a ballooning debt that fuel Republican efforts to disinvest in our future and to dismantle Medicare, Social Security, and safety net programs. Let's not make the same mistake again.

Instead, we ought to be voting on a straightforward, 2-year extension, and then commit ourselves to meaningful tax reform as David Camp did. It is tough to do, I understand that, but it is the right thing to do. Let us show that we have courage as well as common sense. Defeat this bill. Let us move on to meaningful tax reform and to growing our economy.

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