Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I actually had been prepared to come to the floor of this House and say this was a refreshing moment, that this was going to be a moment of bipartisanship. I commend the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Mulvaney) for finally offering a balanced plan to reduce our long-term deficit and a plan that will make sure our economy grows rather than offering a plan that results in over 750,000 fewer American jobs by the end of this year, and I hope that the gentleman will demonstrate his sincerity in the support of his own bill by voting for it. We will be able to tell whether this is simply some kind of stunt or a genuine effort.
Mr. Chairman, let me say, with respect to the comments about the President's budget, I think everyone in this country knows that this Congress was here until January 2 of this year, trying to work out a compromise to avoid going over the fiscal cliff, and until we'd resolved that, the President had no idea how much revenue would be available for the budget. I think most families recognize that you need to know how much revenue is available as you put together a budget, number one.
Number two, we've been lurching from one manufactured crisis to another. The sequester. You need to know how the sequester is going to turn out before you know how much money is going to be available for government agencies.
Finally, when the President has to put together a budget, it's not like the budgets Members of Congress put together in which you have one amount for all of defense or just one amount for the function for all of health care and all of education. The President actually has to allocate that money among different agencies. That's part of the process. So the President will be submitting a budget now that we know what the revenue stream is, now that we have some idea as to where we are in terms of those other issues.
I'm glad the gentleman brought forward this alternative, because it is the Senate Democratic proposal for the most part. Just for the record, he has left some stuff out, but it's close enough for negotiation and discussion purposes here.
What this measure does is, number one, replaces the sequester. It replaces the sequester with a balanced approach to reducing our long-term deficit so that you avoid the job losses that will result from the sequester. Our referees, our umpires--the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office--has told us, if we allow that sequester to remain in place, you will have 750,000 fewer Americans working at the end of this year. We also know that you'll have 2 million fewer jobs next year.
So it's a good thing that the gentleman brought to the floor a proposal to replace the sequester. After all, in comments last year, the Republican leader, Mr. Cantor, called for a plan to replace the sequester, so we support that.
The gentleman talks about the Senate proposal on taxes. What he doesn't tell you is what the Senate proposal does. Like the House Democratic proposal, it proposes to balance the budget through a combination of cuts but also cuts to tax expenditures. These are the special preferences and deductions in the Tax Code. We say, yes, we should eliminate some of those tax preferences for very high-income individuals. Our colleagues tell us there are about $4 trillion worth of those that mostly go to high-income individuals. We say, okay, let's close some of those tax breaks of about $1 trillion over 10 years to help reduce the deficit. What's different between the Republican plan and this plan that our colleague has brought up is that they propose to provide tax cuts for very wealthy people, financed by increasing the tax burden on middle-income people.
We put that question to the test in the Budget Committee just the other day. We said, if your plan doesn't propose to give folks at the top a big tax break--because you do in your budget drop it from 39 percent to 25 percent. So a millionaire sees more than a third cut in his rate right off the bat. So we said, well, if it's not your intention to finance that by increasing middle class taxes, you should support this amendment. It was called the Protect the American Middle Class from Tax Increases, and it was very simple. It said, as part of tax reform, don't raise taxes on middle-income people to finance your tax breaks for folks at the very top. Every Republican voted ``no.''
So, yes, this plan that the gentleman has brought forward today, apparently under sort of a mock bipartisanship, will reduce the deficit in a balanced way. It calls for shared responsibility, and it certainly does not give folks at the very top a tax break financed by middle-income taxpayers like the Republican proposal does.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, the only comparison between these budgets we're debating and what's going on in Europe is that the Republican budget proposes the same European-style austerity approach that many European countries tried, and as a result, they've seen their economies slip back into recession. We want to avoid slowing down economic growth in this country, which is why we're really glad that the gentleman from South Carolina brought this particular budget proposal to the floor of the House, and we hope he will vote for it.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to a terrific member of the Budget Committee, the gen tle lady from Florida (Ms. Castor).
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I will just ask our colleagues to take a look at the latest analysis put forward by our own Congressional Budget Office, the professionals, the referees here. What they tell us is that half of the deficit in this year is as a result of the fact that millions of Americans are still looking for work. Three-quarters of the projected deficit next year is for the very reason, which is why we get to the heart of the issue, by going after the jobs deficit and then reducing the deficit in a balanced manner over a long period of time.
The issue isn't whether we reduce our deficits dramatically; it is how we do it. We call for a balanced approach that, yes, asks the very wealthy people to get rid of some of their special interest tax breaks which our Republican colleagues concede they have, but get rid of them in part to reduce the deficit. Our colleagues refuse to take one penny from closing tax loopholes--not one--to help reduce the deficit. They'll only do that to help finance tax breaks for higher-income individuals.
So, Mr. Chairman, we focus right now on jobs, growing the economy, and a balanced approach to deficit reduction.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition.
The CHAIR. The gentleman from Maryland is recognized for 15 minutes.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, we had a discussion yesterday and today about different approaches to the budget, and we've had a discussion about the Budget Committee budget, the Ryan budget, that was on the floor and will be voted on later.
That budget, of course, is an uncompromising budget. If you look at this budget, it's even worse. And on top of that, this budget has even more gimmicks than the earlier budget that we talked about.
So what are those gimmicks? Well, first of all, this budget says it comes into balance in 4 years. Look, if you want a race to a fake balance, obviously you should vote for this one over the Republican caucus budget. But the reality is, it gets to that balance by keeping the savings from ObamaCare, which our Republican colleagues say they want to eliminate, that they want to repeal.
You don't have to take my word for it. The Heritage Foundation did a quick action alert on this budget. Here is what they say: ``Another failing of this RSC budget is that, like the committee budget''--in other words like the principal Republican budget--``it keeps revenues near the levels reached with ObamaCare tax hikes even though it repeals the health care bill's spending provisions.''
So let's just be really clear what that means for the American people. They are repealing the spending provisions. That means they are getting rid of all the benefits in the Affordable Care Act, including the provision to make sure that your child can stay on your insurance policy until they are age 26 so a family is not bankrupted by an accident or some disease that their child gets. It means the provisions that make sure people can't get denied coverage because of preexisting conditions, that is gone. So they get rid of all that, but they keep the ObamaCare taxes. That is what the Heritage Foundation says.
Guess what? They also keep the savings from the Affordable Care Act in the Medicare area that we achieve by ending the overpayments to some of the insurance companies and other changes in the incentive structure. We did it without hitting beneficiaries. They have railed against that in the past, but it is right here in their budget.
And here is the catch: they say their budget gets a surplus in just 4 years. Well, the surplus is $22 billion, they claim. But here is how much of it comes from the Affordable Care Act, from ObamaCare. They have got a little under $100 billion in revenue that year coming in, and then they have got Medicare savings. So not close to balance in 4 years without those provisions, which, as the Heritage Foundation points out, are in there.
And do you know what? Even at the 10-year window, even at the end of the 10-year window, they claim to have a $246 billion surplus, and yet they wouldn't get there without the savings from the Affordable Care Act, from ObamaCare.
That's a hoax. To come to the floor and say you will have a balanced budget in 4 years or 10 years, but guess what, you are going to repeal ObamaCare, your budget doesn't work when you do that. That just doesn't add up.
Now, they have another big sort of gimmick in this one that is not in the other Republican budget that has to do with taxes. So the problem with the main Republican budget is that it will provide tax breaks to very wealthy people and help finance those tax breaks by bringing down those rates by raising the tax burden on middle-income people.
As we discussed earlier, we actually put that question to the test in the Budget Committee. We offered an amendment that says: Well, when you do tax reform, don't make it a Trojan horse for raising middle class taxes to finance tax breaks for the wealthy. Protect the American middle class from tax increases. A simple amendment. Every Republican on the committee voted ``no.'' So that is their problem with the main Republican budget.
This one has another problem. It creates two tax systems and says: Taxpayer, you get to choose. And then it assumes that they are going to choose the one that is worst for them. Because if they choose the one that is better for the taxpayer, from the taxpayer's perspective they don't have enough revenue in their budget to come to balance.
Now, look, the American people are smart. If you give them two choices, obviously people are going to add them up, and they are going to pick the tax return where they pay less. And if the American people are as smart as I think they are, they will blow another hole in this RSC budget.
So I am not even beginning to talk about the fact that they, once again, more than double the sequester cuts to places like NIH and places where we do scientific research, that they slash our investment in infrastructure. They do all that. They do even more of that than the other Republican budget, but it has the same fundamental gimmick with respect to ObamaCare. And then on top of that, it has this other tax gimmick in it.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, our budget focuses first and foremost on jobs and getting the economy growing. It does balance in the same time that the Republican budget last year balanced. And unlike the Republican budget, the main one, we do not give tax breaks to the folks at the very top financed by increasing taxes on middle class taxpayers.
I now yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Cárdenas), a great new member of the Budget Committee.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I think the American people know full well that the best way to attack the deficit right now is to help put more Americans back to work. That's the sense in this country and that's what all the numbers show from the Congressional Budget Office.
If you take the austerity approach recommended in either this budget or the main Republican budget, we know from the referees, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, that we'll see 750,000 fewer jobs just by the end of this calendar year. We also know you'll see 2 million fewer jobs next year, which is why we say let's focus on the jobs deficit and address the budget deficit in a sustained way where we bring it down in a balanced way, where we ask for shared responsibility and not another round of tax breaks for the folks at the very top.
And yes, we achieve balance in the same year the Republican budget last year achieved balance, but our priority is getting the country fully back to work.
We also believe that when we put together these budgets, we shouldn't pretend that you can have it all ways. And as I have said repeatedly, the Republican budget, including this RSC budget, is based, on the one hand, on the claim that it gets to balance in 4 years--one, in 10 years--but at the same time that they're repealing ObamaCare, and that just is not the case. It doesn't add up.
So if you're in a race to fake balance, then you should vote for this one because it gets to fake balance in 4 years instead of 10 years. But if you're in a race to put America back to work, you should vote for the Democratic plan.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, today we are offering a budget with commonsense solutions that first focuses on the issue that's most pressing for the country and the American people today: kicking our economy into higher gear and putting more Americans back to work.
We know from the Congressional Budget Office--the professionals--that one-half of this year's deficit is due to the fact that millions of Americans are still looking for work and that three-quarters of next year's deficit is because we're not at full employment.
Our budget goes to the heart of the issue. It attacks the jobs deficit because we know we can't get the budget deficit under control until people are back to work and we take a balanced approach to long-term deficit reduction where we ask for shared responsibility.
We do ask people at the very high end of the income ladder to give up some of the tax preferences and tax breaks they have in order to help reduce the deficit. It's very different than the Republican budget that doesn't close one tax loophole for the purpose of reducing the deficit. Theirs only lowers tax rates for folks at the very top by increasing the tax burden on middle-income Americans. We don't do that.
We make sure that people can get back to work by replacing the sequester, which we know will result in 750,000 fewer Americans working at the end of this year. We also have a jobs program investing in this country, especially in the area of infrastructure, to help rebuild our aging infrastructure and build the modern infrastructure that's necessary to compete in the 21st century. Those measures will make sure that, compared to our Republican colleague's budget, we have 1.2 million more Americans working by the end of this year and 2 million more by the end of next year.
We also make sure we keep our commitments to our seniors. Unlike the Republican budget, we don't reopen the prescription drug doughnut hole, which will mean seniors with high prescription drug costs will have to pay thousands more out of pocket over the period of this budget, and we don't turn Medicare into a voucher program that leaves seniors facing the risks and costs of escalating health care costs in the future.
We make sure that students don't face a doubling of the interest rate in July, scheduled to go from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. The Republican budget keeps that doubling of interest rate in place. We don't.
We fully fund the transportation program for the next 10 years. The Republican budget cuts it by 20 percent, even at a time when we have 15 percent unemployment in the construction industry.
Mr. Chairman, we get at the budget issues by putting more people back to work, by dealing with this in a balanced way. We reduce the deficit way down so it's growing much slower than the economy. We stabilize the debt, and we balance the budget in the same time period that the Republican budget for the last 2 years had balanced the budget, but our focus is on jobs and the jobs deficit as a way to tackle the budget deficit.
With that, I'm very pleased to yield 3 minutes to my colleague and friend, the distinguished whip from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I think, if you ask the American people, they know what the challenge is right now. It's getting the economy back in full gear, and they're struggling because too many of them can't find a job, and the Republican budget will make that even worse. That's not me saying it. That's not a Democratic economist saying it. Those are the professionals at the Congressional Budget Office saying it.
Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I don't have enough time. On your time, I'm happy to, my friend, but I can't do it right now.
Let me say another thing, Mr. Chairman, with respect to balance. It's really interesting.
One of the reasons the Republican budget that last year came into balance in 2040 and the year before was able to balance this year is that the increase in per capita health care costs has come down significantly, in part because of the Affordable Care Act and the changes in incentives. In fact, if you applied much more reasonable assumptions to our proposals than the Congressional Budget Office applied to the Republican budget last year, you'd get balance. I know our Republican colleagues don't want to hear it. Now our focus and our priority is on dealing with the jobs deficit. That is the best way to reduce the long-term deficit and to do it in a balanced way.
I now yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished assistant Democratic leader, my friend from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn).
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. The way to save Medicare is to bring down costs overall in the health care system, not give seniors a voucher that puts all the risk on the senior, which is what the Republican approach does.
I now yield 1 minute to the distinguished ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman).
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Indiana just made the point that under the current Medicaid system States have lots of flexibility, including Indiana, to help bring down costs. But when you have a tight program, cutting another $820 billion is not a lifeline; it's throwing them an anchor.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The fundamental choice here is whether we want a budget like the Democratic budget that focuses on economic growth and strengthening the middle class or whether you want to take a budget like the Republican budget that imposes European-style austerity by more than doubling the size of the sequester on essential investments to help the economy grow. Investment in our infrastructure, when we know we have 15 percent unemployment in the construction industry. Investment in our kids' education, not doubling the student loan interest rate in July, as the Republican budget would do. Investment in science and research. If we don't make those investments, our global competitors are going to eat our lunch.
And yes, we do ask the very wealthy to get rid of some of their tax breaks and loopholes to help contribute to the reduction of the deficit so that we can reduce the deficit in a balanced way that calls for shared responsibility. And no, we do not ask middle-income families to pay higher taxes in order to finance tax breaks for the wealthy. And yes, we get the deficit down in a steady way. We balance it in the same year the Republican bill balanced last year, and we don't pretend that we're going to balance and get rid of ObamaCare at the same time. That's fake balance, not real balance.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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