Baseline Reform Act of 2013
Floor Speech
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Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I appreciate my friend from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) for kicking off this debate.
As he indicated earlier, as we debate the budgets, there will be differences of opinion and differences of philosophy, but when it comes to math, there is not a Republican math, and there is not a Democratic math. When you run a math equation, you get the same result whether you are a Republican or a Democrat.
What this bill attempts to do is to legislate away inflation. Gee, that would be so nice if we could pass a law and inflation would go away. What is worse is this bill then says that we are going to put together budgets on the assumption that there is no inflation, on the assumption that the price of goods and services doesn't change over time, and if you do that, you will get very misleading results in your budget.
Now, the gentleman talked about Washington math. Madam Speaker, I would just like to show you the change in the cost of a hamburger from the last 10-year period. We do our budgets in 10-year windows. The price of a hamburger in 2004 was $2.71. The price of that same hamburger 10 years later, in 2014, is $4.62. That is not Washington math. That is reality-based math.
Here is what this Republican proposal would do.
It wants to take that fantasy land math and apply it to our budgets. Here is the chart. If you applied that idea in the budgets that we had from 2004 to today, you would assume that the price of that hamburger or of any goods and services that we bought as the Federal Government would remain the same--no inflation, no change--but that is not the reality. The reality is, between 2004 and 2014, we had inflation, and the costs of goods and services went up. The good news is that we did not have this proposal in effect from 2004 to 2014, so we didn't have this detachment from reality. Yet what our Republican colleagues want to do is say, from now on--from 2014 on--when the Congressional Budget Office puts together its estimations of future budgets, it has got to assume away inflation. Presto. As you can see, over time, that would become further and further detached from reality, not Washington reality but economic reality.
Here is what would happen if you budgeted that way.
For $2.71 today, you don't get as big a hamburger, right? So apply that idea to an aircraft carrier. We have 10-year budgets. The gentleman's proposal is to pretend that, over the next 10 years, there will be no increase in the price of the inputs to making that aircraft carrier. Just assume it away. Inflation. Do you know what? If you plan that way, at the end of the day, you are going to have half an aircraft carrier in your budget just like you would have a half a hamburger in your budget.
Imagine a business that was planning ahead for the next 10 years, trying to do a profit and loss statement, and it had to calculate what it was going to cost it to buy inputs to its manufacturing process--energy inputs, oil and gas, other inputs of material it has to purchase. Then let's say that, today, it miraculously assumed there was no increase in the costs of those inputs. Boy, that would be nice, but do you know what? That private business would go under, and that business would be sued for malpractice by its shareholders.
Why would we do something to the Federal Government that we would never allow to happen in the private sector that would result in a private sector business's going belly up?
I would just say, Madam Speaker, that the reason the Congressional Budget Office projects the budgets as they do today--the reason they include the estimated costs of inflation--is not that they do Washington math. It is that they can go out and go to McDonald's and find out that--do you know what?--the price of a Big Mac is not the same today as it was 10 years ago. It would be misleading to pretend, as we put together our next 10-year budgets, that the price of aircraft carriers and the price of education and the price of providing health care to our veterans will be the same. If you assume that, at the end of the day, you shortchange those veterans, you shortchange that defense policy, you shortchange our kids because, just like you can only buy a half a hamburger today for what you could have in 2004, you are not going to be able to buy the same education for kids and the same military 10 years from now.
We are not talking about Washington math. This is a case of basic math. As I said, it shouldn't be a Republican math or a Democratic math. We would all love to repeal inflation. That is not the real world. Let's stick with real-world budgeting. If we get away from that, we are going to be in a world of trouble here in the United States Congress.
Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to yield the control of the balance of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman), a terrific new member of the Budget Committee.
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As you know, the value meal on that McDonald's menu 10 years ago cost more than the value meal today. This is just to get about math and budgeting in a transparent way.
Mr. WOODALL. In reclaiming my time, absolutely, inflation is not going to go away, but we have to make tough choices, and this bill requires us to make those choices in a transparent way for the American people.
At this time, Madam Speaker, I would like to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), who first said that we must be transparent in this way, that we must be fair and honest in this way. He is the original author of the Baseline Reform Act.
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