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

Floor Speech

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Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his leadership on bigger paychecks for America's working families and in so many areas. Thank you, Mr. Levin, for your leadership.

I congratulate Chairman Brady for assuming his new position. We all wish him success and look forward to working with him.

The bill before us today calls for very serious discussion. We in this body have a very big responsibility to make decisions as architects of our children's future, where we are making decisions that strengthen the middle class and that take us to our responsibility to be custodians of our democracy.

The middle class is the backbone of our democracy, and this legislation undermines the success of the middle class. In terms of children, their education, the financial security of their families, the pension security of their grandparents, the health of the environment in which they live, all of that is seriously affected by this legislation.

Let's put it in perspective, because this is part of a grand scheme that started after President Clinton left office. In his term of office, because of the Budget Act of 1993 which passed with Democratic support, it unleashed a remarkable era of job creation, and it took us on a path to deficit reduction. In fact, five of his last budgets were even or in surplus, and that was taking us to a path of reducing not only the deficit--of course it would be eliminated--but the national debt.

Along came tax cuts for the middle class, and in just a few years, all of the progress in reducing the deficit that occurred during the Clinton administration was reversed by the Bush tax cuts--unpaid for-- for the wealthiest. That unpaid for is really what my problem is here today.

There are many provisions in this bill that we Democrats take ownership of and I personally take some personal pride in having worked on. For example, the earned income tax credit and the childcare tax credit, those initiatives we negotiated with President Bush to take them to the place that they are. They are a stimulus. They were debated and passed at the time as part of President Bush's stimulus package.

When it comes to some of the initiatives like R&D, we have all been talking about modernizing and making permanent the research and development tax credit. The problem is, unpaid for.

When we talk about 179, that is a creation of which Democrats were very much a part, which were the initiatives to help small businesses. We fully subscribe to that. But when we make them permanent--and that might be a good idea--and they are unpaid for, it also hurts our ability to do something broader in the Tax Code and take advantage of that opportunity.

So low-income housing tax credits, again, I think I am second to none--except maybe Mr. Rangel--in this body in my advocacy for that, when Mr. Rostenkowski was the chairman of the committee. It is important that they are in this legislation, and they should be permanent.

My problem with it all is why are these things--look, this is an engine to send jobs overseas with some of the provisions that are in the legislation, so it is like a Trojan horse. There are many good things, and then all of a sudden you find out what is in the belly of them.

So the fact that they are permanent means that, for certain things like bonus depreciation and things like that, if they are for a short term, people will take advantage of them. We get the boost in our economy, and our Treasury from that.

Here is what it comes down to: You go down this path of $600-plus billion of permanent, unpaid for tax extenders largely benefiting corporate America and say that doesn't have to be paid for. Oh, but, by the way, if you want to do $7 billion to honor the work of 9/11 first responders, you have to pay for every penny of it, find a way to do it by cuts or outlay or some other way.

So what is the symmetry in all of this? Tax cuts for businesses to send jobs overseas, unpaid for and permanent; 9/11, which is an emergency, would you not agree? If there ever were an emergency, it would be 9/11. And the costs related to honoring our commitments, both in health and compensation to those workers, should be held up because we couldn't find pay-fors. Now we have, so that is good. We had to find the pay-fors.

What I question very seriously is: What are the costs in the outyears? It is hard to determine, but they are there.

What they are going to do is increase the deficit with such seriousness that our country will have to borrow from the Social Security trust fund to stay afloat, seriously undermining Social Security--and as our distinguished whip said, Social Security, Medicare, and the rest. It seriously affects this legislation, seriously affects our ability to make the discretionary investments in the education of our children, the promotion of growth, and the rest of that.

So I think what it comes down to is, yes, there are some good ideas in here. We developed them. We support them. We don't even care if some of them are permanent. It is the unpaid for part of it that is mortgaging our children's future, that is threatening Social Security, and that undermines our ability to reduce the deficit and reduce the interest payments on the national debt.

Again, we are walking away from what President Clinton did so successfully with a very difficult vote. We lost the Congress after that for that and other reasons. Some Members did. They said: I did the right thing because it took us on a path of fiscal soundness, and it took us on a path of economic growth. This, of course, was reversed in the Bush years. The $5.5 trillion of deficit reduction was--there was an $11 trillion reversal, one of the biggest, up until that time, of a reversal.

My colleagues, I sympathize with some who say, well, I have always been for R&D tax credits, and others who say, well, it has to do with the tax stuff in my State and all that. I appreciate that, and I respect your judgment on it.

There is a bigger picture here, and the bigger picture is our responsibility to the future. The chickens will come home to roost on this. We will have to pay. You know who is going to pay? Our children, their families, the Social Security system, and the rest.

For that reason, I will not be supporting this, and I join our distinguished Whip Hoyer in urging our colleagues to vote against it as well. I know it sounds good. But, as I said, it is a Trojan horse, and we should not be fooled.

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