Baseline Reform Act of 2011

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. DeLAURO. I rise in strong opposition to this legislation, which would remove consideration of inflation from congressional budget baselines. Instead of beginning this year by putting forward legislation to create jobs, spur growth, and address the economic challenges that we face, the majority is trying, yet again, to achieve their ideological goals, this time by playing an accounting trick on the American people.

At its heart, this bill is a backdoor attempt to enact the same radical cuts the majority attempted last year and to further reduce the spending caps agreed to in last August's Budget Control Act. By eliminating inflation from our official budget considerations, this bill represents a freeze on all discretionary programs that, over time, would become a devastating cut to critical programs.

Within 10 years, all discretionary programs would see their funding slashed by as much as 20 percent. Among the priorities that would be gutted are scientific and medical research, financial aid for college students, assistance to elementary and secondary education, and investments in water and sewer systems. No discretionary program would be spared the axe. Disaster assistance, food safety, medical care for veterans, meals on wheels, community health centers, support for law enforcement and nutrition programs, all of these across the board would be slashed by leaving inflation out of the budget equation, and millions of middle class families would be harmed. Why don't we index tax brackets?

This dangerous cut aside, this legislation makes no sense from an accounting standpoint. Why don't we all put our heads in the sand, this bill argues, and just pretend that inflation does not exist? Now isn't that foolish? Then we can just pretend to be fulfilling our responsibilities to the American people.

Closing our eyes to inflation is not a solution. This is not a serious bill. It does nothing to cut the deficit. Do you want to try to cut the deficit? Let's look at the tax cuts for the oil and gas industry. Let's look at ending the subsidies to those multinational corporations that take their jobs overseas. Do you want to do something about the deficit? Then let's cut the Bush tax cuts for the richest 1 percent of the people in this Nation. This does nothing to cut the deficit. And like every other initiative from this majority, it does nothing to address the top priority of the American people, and that is jobs, growing the economy, and investing in the economy to put us on a glide path to economic sustainability in the future.

I urge my colleagues to oppose it.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source