Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2021, Jobs and Energy Permitting Act of 2011, and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1249, America Invents Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule on this historic day in the 112th Congress.

Six months. That's it. Six months. It took less than 6 months for the Republican majority to come to the floor of this House and break their most treasured promise to the American people, a promise made in writing to the rules of the House of Representatives. Today, by waiving the House CutGo rule, my colleagues across the aisle are giving up on their foundational principle of deficit reduction--no new spending without offsets.

Don't take my word for it. The Congressional Budget Office clearly states that the manager's amendment, as we just heard, to the base bill, H.R. 1249, breaks the rules of the House. So the majority has written a new one-time rule that breaks their most fundamental promise to America, that this Congress will not enact a dime of new spending without cutting spending from another area of our Federal budget.

This bill is going to increase discretionary spending by nearly half a billion dollars with no offset to cover that new spending. From my seat on the Budget Committee, I have watched how fiercely they have clung to this promise; and though I disagree with many of their choices and cuts, this is truly a new low. It is a historic breakdown that only took 6 months to arrive.

Though America is watching and waiting for a solution, a jobs bill, for instance, to our Nation's fiscal and economic crisis, Republicans began the year by saying that half the budget question was off the table. For instance, questions like $800 billion were spent on tax breaks for the wealthy, or like tens of billions in subsidies and deliberate loopholes for some of the wealthiest corporations on Earth.

CutGo doesn't lay down any rules about tax expenditures. We could entirely stop collecting taxes and let the budget and the economy collapse tomorrow, and that would abide by CutGo.

Again, this rule only deals with spending without finding the roughly half a billion dollars' worth of offsets to pay for the bill. Not surprisingly, this rule has lasted us only 6 months. I would ask my Republican colleagues, what will the next 6 months bring and the next 6 months after that?

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