Legislative Program
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Boehner and I did attempt to pursue some meaningful restraints last week, and unfortunately, we couldn't get agreement to do so on your side of the aisle. Having said that, we certainly agree that we need to get a handle on the extraordinary deficit picture that confronts us.
I know I am repetitive, but in 2001, President Bush came before the Congress and said we have a $5.6 trillion surplus. Unfortunately, that $5.6 trillion surplus was eliminated, and in fact, $5 trillion of additional deficit was incurred, giving us a $10 trillion deficit when this administration took over. That's unfortunate.
I will tell the gentleman, as he knows, he and others have voted for trillions, that's with a T, of dollars of unfunded liabilities for the Federal Government, either reduction in revenues, which of course you say will grow the economy--unfortunately, it did not--or a prescription drug bill which was not paid for which was hundreds of billions of dollars, not minimal dollars. But I will tell the gentleman that we are interested in working with you in a meaningful way, not in procedural vote ways, but in meaningful ways to reduce the deficit that confronts us, including reducing areas of spending, which we think is appropriate.
With respect to the motion that you made today, a procedural motion, if it hadn't been a procedural motion, maybe a real motion--and of course many of those programs were in existence for the 12 years that you controlled the Congress of the United States, as the gentleman well knows. The motion today, of course, would
have affected a program which is going to create, we believe, 185,000 jobs. We think that's important in an economy that is still struggling to get jobs back. But we applaud the efforts to bring forward meaningful, important ideas. Unfortunately, that has not always been our experience.
I am sure you read there have been a lot of motions to recommit that have been made. Now we are onto previous questions now, but motions to recommit. Norm Ornstein wrote an article about those just the other day in which he said, The unfortunate fact is that the motion to recommit with instructions has for more than a decade become a hollow vehicle and farce. Now, the American people don't want to see us participate in hollow vehicles and farces. What they want to see is us work together in real ways to effect the kind of fiscal responsibility that we had in the nineties, and unfortunately we did not have in the last decade. We need to return to that.
We have, as you know, taken very substantive steps. One was to pay for what we buy--not a previous question--legislation on this floor which said we are going to pay for what we buy. That was in place in the nineties, put in place in a bipartisan way with Mr. Bush and Mr. Gephardt leading the way and others. Again adopted in a bipartisan way with Mr. Gingrich and President Clinton working together. And then of course jettisoned under not your personal leadership, but under the leadership of the Republican Party in 2001, 2002, 2003, formally jettisoned in 2003, in which we said, no, we don't believe that paying for what we buy is the policy that we are going to pursue. And in fact you didn't pursue it. You created large deficits every year that you controlled the Congress: the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. Every year without fail.
So I tell my friend that we want to join together in real efforts. We are sorry that in a partisan way PAYGO was jettisoned. We are also sorry that the commission that the President established by Executive order didn't pass because so many of your colleagues in the Senate who said they were for the idea of setting up a commission to propose real restraint in spending, not only in terms of discretionary dollars but in terms of entitlement dollars, that so many of your colleagues in the Senate opposed that, and as result we don't have a statutory commission, we have a Presidentially appointed commission.
I am hopeful that they will make substantive recommendations. I am hopeful that our Members and your Members will join together in making recommendations to us. And as you know, both Mr. Reid, the leader in the Senate, and Speaker Pelosi have indicated that we will put their recommendations on the floor. If the Senate passes them, we will put them on the floor here. Hopefully, we can work together toward the end that I think we both seek even though there may be disagreement on the process that is being pursued.
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Mr. HOYER. Well, first of all, we don't believe this is a real vote. Our Members don't believe it's a real vote. Our Members are cognizant of why it's being done. But the 185,000 jobs, clearly, those nine Members that you referenced did not vote to eliminate 185,000 jobs. But all your Members did. The difference is because you are not going to run ads against your Members.
The fact of the matter is that if you want to do real things to create real jobs, we're prepared to work with you. We believe the program you wanted to eliminate does in fact score at creating 185,000 jobs. You call it welfare. We call it work. We think it was an appropriate expenditure. As a matter of fact, as the gentleman may know, we have that expenditure in our jobs bill. Why? Because it's scored to create 185,000 jobs, put people to work, allow them to support their families, allow them to live with some degree of dignity. And we think that's appropriate in a very, very strained economy to this date.
We're coming back, but as we've seen lately, it is fragile and this gum, grease, and oil has caused us problems in terms of confidence. And we need to keep confidence up and not make the mistakes that have been made in the past.
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Mr. HOYER. I ask the gentleman, there is a Member on your side of the aisle who has, in my opinion, a very thoughtful, courageous, and substantive proposal. I happen not to agree with it, but I think it is a courageous, intellectually honest proposal. And that is Mr. Ryan, who's the ranking member of the Budget Committee. If the gentleman would like us to put that budget on the floor--which is from his chair when he was in the majority of the Budget Committee--that is a really substantive proposal. Again, I don't agree with it, but I think it intellectually is an honest, effective proposal to deal with a very serious problem, not a little problem, but a trillion-dollar problem; not a little problem that sounds good in sound bites but is not going to get us to where we need to be.
I think Mr. Ryan has such a proposal, and I certainly would urge the chairman of the Budget Committee to agree to make sure that's on the floor because I believe that is a substantive proposal.
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