Providing For Consideration Of Statutory Pay-As-You-Go-Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

Providing For Consideration Of Statutory Pay-As-You-Go-Act Of 2009

Mr. SCALISE. I want to thank the gentleman from California for yielding time and for the comments that he made earlier against the bill and the rule. And I rise, as well, in opposition to the bill because this bill, this PAYGO bill as it's dubbed, does nothing to control spending. I strongly believe we need to get our fiscal house in order.

I think if you look at the actions of this administration since President Obama became President in January and Speaker Pelosi continued her reign, and she has been in office for 2 1/2 years now as the Speaker, Harry Reid over in the Senate as well, you have seen spending get out of control here in this Congress, and it's done so under PAYGO.

The PAYGO rule that they are trying to put into law has gotten us to a point today where we're facing a $1.8 trillion, with a ``T,'' deficit.

Just last week the Federal deficit this year exceeded $1 trillion. These are numbers that have never been seen before in the history of our country, and it all happened under this rule that we're hearing all of these Fourth of July speeches about how great PAYGO is and how PAYGO is going to require fiscal responsibility. We have PAYGO today, and it has given us a $1.8 trillion deficit this year.

And so what I proposed in the Rules Committee last night was an actual ability to require some strict discipline on PAYGO by taking out the exemptions, the loopholes. You would ask yourself if we've got PAYGO, and if the people on the other side that are talking about it and they say how wonderful it's going to be, well, if it's so good, how could it have yielded us a $1.8 trillion deficit?

That's because PAYGO is a hoax. PAYGO is waived every time they want to spend money that we don't have. So they simply waive it. In fact, in the stimulus bill earlier this year, the largest spending bill in the history of our country, $787 billion of money that we don't have, it was rammed through Congress. Not one person who voted for it had the opportunity to read it, but the President said it had to be done quickly because it's going to create millions of jobs. Well, we've seen now that is a failure.

Where are the jobs? Two million more Americans have lost their jobs since the stimulus bill passed. And the bill passed without the funding in place, without any kind of offsets, no cuts at all; in fact, $787 billion of new spending under the PAYGO rule.

So you would ask yourself if PAYGO is so good, how could a $787 billion unfunded bill pass under that rule? Well, that's because they simply waived the rule. It's right here in the rule that they passed on the stimulus bill. Many of the people that are coauthors of this bill were happy to vote to waive it, and they were able to waive it with a simple majority vote. And this bill that they're talking about today has the same language that still allows PAYGO to be waived any time they feel like looking the other way.

And you would say, Oh, they wouldn't do that. Well, sorry to tell you, in the last Congress, 12 times they waived PAYGO.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I'm happy to yield my friend an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. SCALISE. So 12 times in the last Congress alone they waived PAYGO by a simple majority vote.

I had an amendment last night in the Rules Committee to require a three-fifths vote to say if you really want to install fiscal discipline, then put a high bar so you can't just waive it every time you want to spend money you don't have. Guess what? Not one person on the other side supported that amendment.

I've cosponsored a constitutional amendment that requires that we balance our Federal budget. Many States have a similar fiscal discipline that's placed in their constitutions. Unfortunately, we don't have anything like that here in Washington, and the results are that this Congress is spending at unprecedented levels that's led to these debts.

And one other hidden secret about PAYGO. It is allowed to cut spending. Some people around here don't know what cutting spending means; they just keep growing spending. But when PAYGO has been used, 34 times in the last Congress it was used not to cut spending but to raise taxes.

So once again, not only is PAYGO a hoax, it doesn't stop spending from being out of control at all because it's been waived every time they wanted to spend money, like in the stimulus bill, but 34 times in the last 2 years, PAYGO was used to raise taxes on American families.

And so if you wonder why your tax burden keeps going up and up and up and then you've got this thing called PAYGO that sounds really good and you hear all of these Fourth of July speeches on the other side about fiscal discipline, well, fiscal discipline to them means raising taxes on American families or just waiving it when you feel like spending money that you don't have.

The American people deserve better. They deserve honesty and transparency in their government, not some bill that purports to be about fiscal discipline and yet can be waived any time they want to just look the other way. And judging by history, they've waived it every time they wanted to spend money that this country doesn't have.

We can hear about George Bush all day and about Republicans. For the last 2 1/2 years the Democrats have been running Congress. Nancy Pelosi has been the Speaker. HARRY REID has been the Senate President and Barack Obama today is the President, and in the last 6 months we've seen spending at unprecedented levels with a $1.2 trillion deficit. PAYGO is a hoax. Let's get real fiscal discipline.

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