Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of 2012

Floor Speech

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Ms. MOORE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chair, I rise today to join my fellow Democratic members of the House Budget Committee to express my confusion and disbelief over our colleagues' decision to make a spectacle out of the so-called budget process reform bills rather than using our time to wisely address serious economic policy and make long-term, overdue process improvements.

I admire my Republican colleagues for raising the issue of the need to have a better budgeting process. But these are just spectacles. This so-called Budget and Accounting Transparency Act is an example of that.

H.R. 3581 would change the way we budget for government loans by requiring that estimates for these loans--examples are student loans, energy loans, housing, small business loans--be done on the so-called fair value basis.

These estimates account for so-called ``market-based'' risk.

Now, experts argue that so-called fair-value estimates overstate the true cost of government credit programs because the estimates include a risk premium that never materializes in the government's cash flow.

It's also critical to note that in every single discussion of H.R. 3581 and fair-value estimates, that if we applied this policy not just to credit products, but government-wide--like to Medicare or to ag programs, or some of the other favored programs of the majority--it would increase estimated subsidy costs to the government for all loan programs by more than $50 billion. But you know what, that may in fact be consistent with what the authors and proponents of this bill want to see.

We heard, Madam Chair, our good friend, Mr. Garrett, start his opening speech with how the country is broke. We heard Mr. Hensarling talk about the food stamp President.

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