Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his information.

The gentleman, in his comments, indicates that we might go to conference on the surface transportation bill. As the gentleman knows, the Senate surface transportation bill passed overwhelmingly and with a very substantial bipartisan vote and a vote led by Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma. There were 22 Republican Senators. About half of the Republican Senators voted for it, and so it passed overwhelmingly.

I am wondering, given the timeframe in which we are dealing, whether or not the gentleman feels comfortable with some assurance that we are going to move to go to conference so that we can get a conference under way. I know the majority indicated it wanted a bill so that it could, in fact, go to conference. I have had discussions with, I think, you but I know Mr. Boehner, the Speaker, and Mr. McCarthy, that that was the intent to go to conference.

What would preclude us, I suppose would be the better way to phrase the question, from having a motion to go to conference next week? As the gentleman knows, we are going to be out the week following so that we will not be back until May, into May; and to the extent that we delay going to conference, we are going to delay the resolution of what I think is a very, very important bill. I know the gentleman does as well. We believe this is a real job creator.

As you know, Mr. LaHood is the Secretary of Transportation, your former colleague on your side of the aisle. He has made it very clear that this is a very substantial jobs bill. To the extent that we could move quickly, I think it would be in the best interests of our country, of infrastructure investment, and the creation of jobs.

I yield to my friend.

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman.

And in light of the fact that he looks forward to my help, I want to tell him that if he brings a motion to go to conference next week, I will bring the overwhelming majority of my caucus to a vote with that motion to go to conference so that we can get that done. I will be glad to help in that respect.

Will that help him?

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Mr. HOYER. I didn't know whether those votes would help you get the job done that I think needs to be done. I don't say that facetiously. I think we want to go to conference. I have been told you want to go to conference, and I would hope we could move forward on that. As a matter of fact, the chairman of your committee, Representative Mica, said yesterday we should go to conference immediately, and we would be very interested in helping you towards that process.

Mr. Leader, the Appropriations Committee has started to mark up its bills and has dealt with the reconciliation instructions. My understanding is the reconciliation instructions, the result of those instructions will be coming to the floor probably the first month, the month of May.

Is that accurate?

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Mr. HOYER. With respect to the appropriations bills, much was made of the fact that you wanted to bring appropriations bills to the floor one at a time and under open rules. I think that's a good practice. Frankly, I would have liked to have done that when we were in charge, and we didn't get that done. I said then that I didn't think it was good for the institution for the consideration of appropriation bills, and you, I think, rightfully criticized us for that--not you, personally, but the Republican side of the aisle.

Is it your intention to bring the appropriations bills to the floor singly, individually, with an open rule as Speaker Boehner indicated would be the case, and, if so, when will that occur?

I yield to my friend.

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comments.

I make the additional observation that we passed a budget. Many of us voted against that budget, as you know, that passed. We voted for our alternative. But the American people, I think, have an interest and, frankly, a right to know what the ramifications of that budget that was passed are; and obviously they will find that out as the appropriation bills move forward, are considered on this floor, open to debate and open to amendment. That will educate the American people on what the consequences are of passing budget A over budget B, your budget, our budget, or an alternative budget.

It's really in the appropriations bill. The budget doesn't really do anything, as we all know, other than set a 302(a) allocation. That is the amount of discretionary dollars that can be applied in the appropriations process. What that means is that the only thing it does is set that limit and does not apportion resources to particular objectives in the appropriations bill or, for that matter, in the Ways and Means Committee bill in terms of actions that might occur with reference to taxes and revenues.

So I say to my friend that the importance of bringing the appropriation bills to the floor is to give that transparency to the American public so they can make a judgment on which priorities they support. We think it's going to be very difficult, frankly, to bring appropriation bills to the floor under the constraints that have been imposed. And we regret, as the gentleman knows, very much that we did not follow the agreement that was reached when we precluded the country's going into default. We agreed on a figure of $1.048 trillion to be the figure that the Appropriations Committee would mark to.

I don't know whether the gentleman had an opportunity to see, but 12 out of the 14 Senators on the Appropriations Committee voted to honor the agreement that was reached today, including Senator McConnell. Regrettably, we did not do that in the House. We reduced that figure very substantially, and we also shifted some of the resources from one object--nondefense to defense--which cuts even further the nondefense portion of the budget by about $8 billion.

So I ask the gentleman, in that context, is the committee going to mark to the House-passed budget, which we have deemed adopted? Notwithstanding the fact it has not been adopted, is the House going to mark to those figures, and will it mark to those figures knowing full well what dollars are left for bills that are to follow? In other words, are you going to front-load and make those appropriation bills sweeter? That will then not leave resources for bills that will come after.

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Mr. HOYER. I know the gentleman doesn't like to relitigate history, but when he says spending got out of control over the last two decades, I may agree with him on the last decade we went deeply into debt, but certainly the decade preceding that my friend surely remembers that we ran 4 years of surplus and a net surplus over 8 years during the Clinton administration. A $62.9 billion net surplus after 8 years. And we had 4 years of surplus. Two of those were actual surpluses--and we counted Social Security's revenues, which obviously were borrowed money from the Social Security trust fund. So we swapped Social Security money for IOUs. But 2 of those years of actual balance.

So I would agree with him on the last decade, but I would not agree with him on the decade before that because, frankly, working from both sides of the aisle and an exploding economy, we created those deficits essentially together.

I want to say to my friend that in that context, yes, the American people want to see us use their money wisely. We all agree on that. They need to know how we intend to use their money. And if they don't have appropriation bills on the floor--because the gentleman talks about the fact that the Senate hasn't passed a budget in a thousand days. It has had no effect, none, zero on what we are doing. Why? Because all the budget does, as the gentleman well knows, is not allocate money. It sets a ceiling--as the gentleman likes, apparently, ceilings and not agreements--a ceiling on what discretionary spending will be. Other than that, it doesn't do anything. Therefore, it sets forth a plan.

But the key is going to be how you carry out that plan and let the American people know how you're going to carry it out. We do that in appropriation bills and the Ways and Means tax bills.

Does the gentleman have an idea of when a Ways and Means tax bill carrying out the budget might come to the floor?

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Mr. HOYER. We passed--if I can go to another subject briefly--we passed a bill today which the gentleman was a principle advocate of which cost $46 billion in terms of revenues in effect forgone, if you will, that otherwise were being expected, if that bill passes. Does the gentleman believe that if that bill passes and is signed by the President, that in light of the fact it's a 1-year bill, does the gentleman believe that it will be only 1 year or does the gentleman intend, if his party happens to be in charge in the next Congress, to see that lapse and that tax increased again on small businesses? What is the gentleman's thought on that? I ask him that question, if I might, in light of The Wall Street Journal's observation today that certainly this did not give small businesses much certainty.

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman, and he is correct, we do have a very substantial difference of opinion. The indication is this is a start. Frankly, we were told it was a start in 2001. We were told it was a start in 2003 when we cut taxes very substantially. Unfortunately, we didn't cut revenues very substantially. And when you don't cut revenues after you cut taxes, what happens is you have deficit. And that's why we went from a $5.6 trillion projected surplus after the Clinton administration, projected by the Bush administration, to an $11 trillion deficit at the end of the Bush administration--because we cut revenues and we increased spending.

We were not in charge for 75 percent of that time. In fact, we weren't in charge of ultimately passing legislation any of that time because the President, of course, had an 8-year term. So I say to my friend, we dug another $46 billion hole.

My belief is that your side of the aisle will not want to reinstate that tax next year no matter what the economy is doing, no matter how good the economy is. That's my suspicion. But it's based upon 30 years of experience, I tell my friend. And if that's the case, then we're not talking about $46 billion, we're talking about a half trillion dollars, which is $46 billion times 10 with escalation for inflation, so about a half-a-trillion-dollar additional hole in the deficit unless the gentleman is prepared to say, look, if the economy recovers, we're going to reinstate that revenue.

The difference between us is you want to talk about tax increases, and I want to talk about paying our bills. And I believe that if we don't want to buy, then we don't have to tax. But if we buy, we have a moral responsibility to have the courage to ask people to pay for it.

Very frankly, I think you've taken the discipline out of the system. I think supply-side economics takes the discipline out of the system. What supply-side economics does is, we can cut revenues but don't have to cut spending because magically we're going to get more revenues.

Very frankly, Mr. Greenspan thought for a while that that worked. He said 3 years ago, no, he was wrong. I think he was right the second time. He was demonstrably, graphically not right the first time when he rationalized the 2001 and 2003. We cut revenues, they did not raise sufficient additional dollars and growth in the economy.

As a matter of fact, whether there was a direct result, we had the worst economy I've experienced in my adult lifetime at the end of the Bush term and at the beginning of the Obama term as responsibility for the economy went over to President Obama.

Now, there's a lot of debate during this bill about how we've lost jobs. That's true. Those jobs were lost in the early part of the Obama administration. As the gentleman knows, over the last 24 months, we've had 4 million new jobs created, 10 quarters of economic growth in our country, and the Dow has doubled. The Dow has doubled since March of 2009. It's hard for me to see how that was a failure. It certainly hasn't been the success we'd like, but not a failure.

I tell my friend that, yes, we have a difference, and the public needs to come to grips with that difference and that debate, and that is whether or not we're going to pay for things we buy. And if we don't want to buy them, we won't have to pay for them, and we can cut taxes.

Unless the gentleman wants to say something further, I yield back the balance of my time.

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