Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act Of 2009

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Mr. DOGGETT. As one economist concluded, it's easy to dodge your responsibilities but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.

For 8 long years, fiscal responsibility was abandoned by the Bush administration and its congressional enablers. When a difficult decision came along, they played a devastating game of dodgeball to the tune of, ``Don't worry, be happy.'' Well, record surpluses turned into record deficits and the economy began to collapse. This did not happen by accident.

Republican ideologues urged the irresponsible approach of fiscal deficit with more borrow-and-spend and tax cuts as the best tactic to starve government and ensure that Democrats would never be able to address the other deficits in our society: educational deficits, health care deficits, and more.

This year, with only 7 months so far to correct 8 years of failure, as we clean up the mess that we were given, we reaffirm our commitment to pay-as-you-go. And we're already making it a reality in one of the most significant challenges of our time, the health care deficit. We correct it without adding to the fiscal deficit. We're paying for long neglected health care reform by cutting costs in the system and taxing the few at the top who benefited the most from the Bush era.

Fiscal responsibility, fiscal security is national security. Today's vote signals that we are abandoning the Republicans' fiscal model, which is straight out of the Magic Kingdom. Their rule, like the first law of Disney, is that ``wishing will make it so.'' That may work well in the law of fairy tales, but it has been a budgeting disaster and an economic nightmare that we begin correcting today.

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