Republican Budget More of the Same

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, the baseball season begins this week, so I will quote the great Yogi Berra. ``It's déja 2 vu all over again.''

This year's Republican budget, which Chairman Ryan unveiled yesterday, is more of the same we have, unfortunately, come to expect. It is an exercise in partisan messaging, not a serious and honest attempt to invest in our priorities and pursue compromise toward a sustainable fiscal outlook.

Their budget rejects the balanced approach of spending reforms, new revenue, and investments in our economy called for by both the Bowles-Simpson and the Rivlin-Domenici Commissions, as well as by the Gang of Six in the United States Senate and by virtually every economist. The Ryan budget cuts $5 trillion without a single penny of new revenue, not even a hint of balance.

Moreover, Chairman Ryan's budget once again relies on the magic asterisk of hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts to important domestic programs. He doesn't say what programs we are going to cut; he simply says we are going to get the money.

He said that last year, of course, and it didn't happen. He gives virtually no details about the policies through which he expects to achieve these savings. To that extent, it is radically different from the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee's tax reform plan, which made real choices, showed real courage, and was a real document.

The Republican budget continues their obsession with repealing or undermining the Affordable Care Act, their 53rd attempt to do so. However, of course, they keep all the savings and revenues that the Affordable Care Act is scored as giving.

It would furthermore kick millions off their health insurance and turn Medicaid into a capped block grant, decimating the program and making life more difficult for all those millions who rely on it.

Once more, they are seeking to end the Medicare guarantee as we know it. They will say it is a choice, that at 55 you can make a choice whether you want to have private insurance with a voucher that you get from the Federal Government or go into Medicare. That's what they say.

The reality is, however, they would make traditional Medicare far, far, far more expensive, driving people out of that program and eliminating it over time.

Their budget, in addition, would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for Congress to invest in our economy and our people by driving domestic discretionary spending well below the sequester's harmful level.

The American people ought to be outraged but not surprised. We have seen this movie before, and it never ends well for Republicans or, tragically, does it end happily for the American people. The new plot twist in this year's budget is that Chairman Ryan is going where no budget chairman has gone before, relying on the spurious gimmickry of so-called ``dynamic scoring'' to pad his numbers with budget savings that simply do not exist.

We have talked about this a lot. The 1981 tax cuts were supposed to boom the economy. In fact, we increased the national debt by 187 percent. In 2001 and 2003, we were promised that the tax cuts would grow the economy. In fact, during those 8 years of the Bush administration, we had the worst economy that anybody in this Chamber has experienced and, indeed, I would presume, in the gallery as well.

While Chairman Ryan claims his budget balances in 10 years, in reality, his projection for revenues in 2024 is less than his projection for outlays. In other words, no balance. That is the simple budget math. The only way Chairman Ryan can pretend his math works is by using Republicans' dynamic scoring trick.

This is the same trick that paved the way for the Bush tax cuts to turn record surpluses into record deficits, as I have said. It is sort of like a family making its budget and projecting: well, we are going to get a big raise because the boss is going to be doing better, the economy is going to be doing better, and we will get a big raise, so we will budget as if we had already gotten the raise. What happens is you don't get that raise and you are deeply in the hole. Americans get that. It is a shame their Congress doesn't get that.

Republicans have a bill on the floor this week to force the nonpartisan CBO to use the Republican math. The virtue of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was that it would give us honest numbers, but now the Republicans want to force them to give them their numbers that they want that make it easier for them to pretend that things are going to get better with their policies rather than putting their policies in place and then seeing if it does get better, and if it does, we have a bonus. Of course, if it doesn't, we run up large deficits as we did in the last administration, as we did in the Reagan administration, as we did in the first Bush administration, and, yes, slightly in the Clinton administration. But in the Clinton administration, over every Republican's objections, we balanced the budget for 4 years.

We need a budget, Madam Speaker, that reflects our real challenges and recognizes that we must compromise to make the difficult choices necessary to meet them. The American people deserve a budget that focuses not on gimmicks but one that promotes opportunity, growth, and security; compromise, not confrontation; pragmatism, not partisanship; what works, not what sounds good.

Our budget proposal should reflect our priorities and enable us to rise to meet our challenges. The Republican budget that is going to be voted on today in the Budget Committee does not do that.

The Wall Street Journal, Madam Speaker, wrote an editorial about the Ryan priorities, most of which I disagree with because I think their reliance, as Ryan does, on dynamic scoring is a ``fool's errand'' and has been proved to be such over the years that I have served in Congress over the last 33 years. But I do agree with their conclusion, and they say this:

But the Ryan outline does the service of showing the policy direction in which Republicans would head if they regain control of the Senate next year.

I agree with that. I think this is a litmus test for the American people. They can review the Ryan budget. They can review its consequences to them, themselves, their families, their children, and their community. They can see the adverse consequences of a plan that will not work.

I predict, as I predicted last year, Madam Speaker, the Appropriations Committee, headed by Hal Rogers, Republican chairman, will not bring appropriation bills to the floor that will pass on this floor that will implement the Ryan budget, notwithstanding the fact that Ryan's party controls this House. I predicted that last year, and I was right. As a matter of fact, no bills passed this House at the Ryan budget numbers last year--none, not one. Sadly, I think that is what is going to happen this year--sadly, for the American people; sadly, for this Congress; sadly, for our children.

Madam Speaker, we can do better. We can be real. We ought to do the job that the American people expect us to do and get this country on a fiscally sustainable path, not with smoke and mirrors but with sincerity and courage.

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