Pro-Growth Budgeting Act of 2013
Floor Speech
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Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this legislation.
I was interested to hear my colleague from Georgia end his comments by saying we should have more information rather than less. As I look at this legislation, on page 3, they say they want more information on the dynamic effects of different policies but specifically exclude, for example, the Committee on Appropriations; investments that we might make in our kids' education; or investments that we might make in other areas to power our economy--research and development, for example.
It is particularly interesting because the Republican budget that was just released and voted on the other night in the Budget Committee, according to CBO, in the next couple of years will create a drag on the economy, will actually hurt jobs in the next couple of years. Why is that? That is, in part, due to the fact that they make deep cuts in parts of the budget for investment in research and development and other areas that help power our economy. So it is kind of interesting, Mr. Chairman, that they specifically excluded the CBO from doing an analysis on that.
Now, a couple of my colleagues will have amendments to the bill, and if our Republican colleagues don't somehow mean to ignore those important investments, hopefully they will join us in supporting those amendments.
If you were the CEO of a company and you were projecting your growth and you were projecting your income, you would want to look at how much you are going to make from certain investments you make in your workforce and those kinds of investments. According to this bill, you don't want that. What this bill is after is simply to do an analysis primarily on a tax policy. It is motivated primarily by this idea that, if you provide big tax breaks to people at the very high end of the income ladder, it will trickle down and lift up all the boats, everybody else, trickle-down theory.
We saw how well that worked in the 2000s. We had big tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. A few years later, for a variety of reasons, the economy tanked. You heard the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve who predicted that those tax cuts would generate growth come back and say, you know, he was wrong.
So, I am all for additional information. On that point, I want to say to my colleagues that, on the most recent tax reform proposal that came out of the Ways and Means Committee, you actually do have a number of scores from the Joint Tax Committee, from our nonpartisan scores.
They have eight. They have eight scenarios. One projects .1 percent growth; one projects 1.6 percent growth. That is, of course, the one that Chairman Camp ran with in all the information he put out. But what he failed to mention is they came up with eight scenarios. The reason they came up with eight scenarios is because they couldn't boil it down to say this will be the dynamic impact of that particular legislation because there are too many unknown variables. That is why they had eight.
Now you want them to somehow come up with one when they have repeatedly informed this Congress that it depends so much on the different assumptions that you make, that you can't make one prediction on that kind of legislation.
I have trouble with this legislation for a variety of reasons; one being, when it comes to tax policy, we have been informed by the experts that it is hard to pinpoint one number and boil it down to a growth figure. Then, as I mentioned, my colleagues have left out the benefits of investing in things like infrastructure, things like our kids' education, things like scientific research, so they are certainly not asking for more information when it comes to those important investments.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chairman, look, the gentleman who just spoke mentioned some important examples. If you are a CEO, you want to know when you buy a piece of equipment or capital what the economic dividend is going to be on that. But I go back to the fact, on page 3, our Republican colleagues are asking for information on economic growth impacts of all sorts of things, but they specifically exclude anything that comes out of the Appropriations Committee.
It is not a surprise, because the Congressional Budget Office, in its analysis of the Republican budget, says that during the next couple of years it will actually slow down economic growth. In fact, if you look at their proposal, it calls for deep cuts in important investments. CBO says that will have a negative economic impact over the next couple of years. So it is not surprising that they don't want that information provided as part of this analysis.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Foster), a member of the Financial Services Committee.
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Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Just to respond to the last point of the chairman of the Budget Committee with respect to the appropriations process, as I indicated earlier, this bill specifically exempts those pieces of legislation even if they meet the threshold with respect to the other legislation in here.
Again, it is, perhaps, not surprising. I think the American public knows that we have a short-term budget agreement, the Murray-Ryan agreement, but if you look at the budget that Republicans in Congress are proposing, it calls for a 24 percent cut to the current services in the recent bipartisan legislation over a 10-year period.
Let's just take one category of investments--in our kids. That means about an $18 billion cut in early education. It means about an $80 billion cut in K-12 education. It means about a $205 billion cut in current policy higher education. It calls for charging college students higher interest rates for the period of time when they are in college. That raises about $40 billion at a time when that same budget doesn't ask for anything from the highest-income individuals and doesn't raise one penny to reduce the deficit from closing special interest tax breaks.
So it is no surprise to me that they would want to exclude the economic impacts of those investments that they are dramatically cutting. As I said earlier, the CBO, in its most recent analysis of the House Republican
budget, says it will slow down economic growth in the next couple of years. It is very interesting that they don't want that quantified with respect to the appropriations bills. At the same time our Republican colleagues are saying they want more information, they specifically limit the information to certain areas.
The other thing I want to mention, Mr. Chairman, is immigration reform. We want the CBO to give us an analysis, when they have a specific bill, so they can determine the economic benefit and the impact of it. That is a good thing, and the CBO has done that for immigration reform. In fact, of all of the pieces of legislation that are before this House right now, one of the things that could have the most immediate economic growth benefit is the bipartisan immigration bill before this House.
The Congressional Budget Office has looked at that. They say that will generate a lot more economic activity. In fact, they say, over year 10, it will actually boost economic growth by 5 percent compared to what it would otherwise be. They say it will reduce the deficit in this 10-year window by almost $200 billion and, in the 20-year window, by almost $1 trillion. That is an analysis that we all should benefit from.
Interestingly, while that would provide great economic growth, based on CBO reports, and when Democrats the other night proposed an amendment in the House Budget Committee to adopt that bipartisan immigration reform bill which would generate economic growth, all of our Republican colleagues voted ``no.'' We want more information--the more the better--but it needs to be information that the economists say they can usefully provide us.
I get back to the fact that, when it comes to the tax reform proposal, for example, that Chairman Camp put in, they said that they couldn't narrow it down to one answer. They gave eight different models based on different assumptions. Our Republican colleagues are trying to say to professional economists, We really don't care what you say; you come up with a particular answer. Whereas, we think we should be asking for information in every case where it can be plausibly provided. Unfortunately, our Republican colleagues don't want it everywhere it can be plausibly provided because they specifically exclude the economic benefit of important investments in our economy and jobs.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I keep hearing our Republican colleagues say they want the ``complete picture'' and ``more information is better than less.'' We agree. This is why it is so interesting, that they specifically exclude information based on bills that come out of the Appropriations Committee that call for investments in our economy and in areas that can help promote job growth.
They say they want more information, but their bill says they want it only in one area and not in another.
Again, Mr. Chairman, I guess I am not surprised, given the fact that the budget that the Republicans just voted out of the Budget Committee and expect to be on the floor next week makes dramatic, historic cuts to important investments that this country has made in the past. In fact, it is 40 percent below the lowest investments as a share of the economy we have made since the 1950s.
This country has been able to compete and has been an economic powerhouse, in part, because of the great investments we have made as a Nation in important areas like science, research, infrastructure, and education; and yet Republicans want to exclude that in this bill.
Again, it is not surprising because the Congressional Budget Office, the very entity that they say they want to provide us this analysis, has said, over the next couple of years, their budget is going to slow down the economy and economic growth, in part, because of the deep cuts they make in this one area of budget that they don't want this information about. Surprise, surprise.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gen tle lady from the State of Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).
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I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I just ask one more time, if our Republican colleagues want information to make informed decisions, why did they specifically exclude one whole category of information based on legislation coming out of the Appropriations Committee to make some important investments that can help our economy grow? They say they want all this additional information, but apparently, they didn't.
Again, I say it is not surprising because some of the changes that the Republican budget makes in that area do, according to the Congressional Budget Office, create a drag on the economy in the coming few years.
So, again, you are going to have an amendment later on offered by Mr. Connolly--and he will talk about that point--to find out if our Republican colleagues really do want full information, but at least in the current form of this bill, they don't.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The CBO provides lots of information right now. I hope all Members of Congress will take advantage of the information they provide.
We have now heard, for the second time today, that the Affordable Care Act has cost the economy jobs. Well, the CBO looked at that. They studied it. They gave the Congress information just like our colleagues are asking for. They didn't say that it had any negative job impact at all right now. Now, they said, in the outyears, that now that people are able to go into exchanges to afford health care, that people may decide to not go to a job where the job had been the only way to get taxpayer-benefited health care.
Under our current system, if you want a tax benefit for your health care, if you want preferential tax treatment on your health care, where do you go? You go to a job. That is where the tax benefit comes from. As a result of the Affordable Care Act, people now can get a tax credit and go into the exchange. So they can decide to launch a business from their home and get health insurance without having been locked into another job which had been the only place where they got tax-benefited health care.
So I encourage my colleagues to read the CBO reports that have already been issued on the Affordable Care Act. I also urge them to read the CBO reports that have already been issued on the recovery bill because the Congressional Budget Office has indicated that, as a result of the recovery bill, the economy actually saved millions of jobs, that that helped the economy from falling farther and farther.
Remember, when President Obama was sworn in, we were losing 800,000 jobs every month, and the recovery bill helped stop that free fall and turned that around. That is what the Congressional Budget Office said, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
So it is great our colleagues are asking the Congressional Budget Office for more information, and we welcome that. It would be great if they read the information the Congressional Budget Office has already issued.
I just want to make one final point, Mr. Chairman. I have made it before, but it is important because we keep saying we want more information, more complete information, and if you read this legislation, it says that. Then it says: except. We want information except. We don't want any information on the job impact of those parts of our budget that invest in jobs and our economy, like R&D at places like NIH, National Institutes of Health, like our kids' education. We want all the information, but don't tell us about the benefits of those investments.
And I wonder why. It is because the Republican budget slashes our investments in those areas. So don't tell us about the impact of that, Congressional Budget Office.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I was glad the last speaker mentioned the CBO report on immigration reform. I just wish that, if they really wanted to have a pro-growth policy, they would adopt the bipartisan immigration legislation that the CBO wrote about, because what the CBO report said was that would be a great boost to economic growth in our country. It would create more jobs. It would create more economic activity. As I said, because it would generate more economic activity and more pro-growth revenue, it would actually reduce the deficit over the next 10 years by $190 billion, and almost a trillion over 20. So, great.
I haven't really heard a response to this, Mr. Chairman, but we want more information. CBO does reports all the time. But they have this big except. We want more information, except we don't want information about this part of our budget that deals with important investment in our future.
As Mr. Connolly said, a lot of our economic competitors have been copying successful models from the United States. For example, the Chinese are trying to hire more scientists in the areas of biomedical research, yet the Republican budget, if you apply it across the board, cut 24 percent--cut--over the next 10 years from the amount for research at NIH that was in the Ryan-Murray document. Again, not surprising they don't want the Congressional Budget Office to look in detail at that.
When the Congressional Budget Office looked at the budget that just came out of the Budget Committee the other night, which will be on the floor next week, they said, over the next couple of years, these fiscal policies would reduce output and employment below the levels projected in CBO's baseline--translation: it would reduce economic activity and reduce job growth over the next couple of years.
So, again, not surprising that in the legislation before us, pro-growth budgeting, our Republican colleagues don't want the CBO to tell us about the pro-growth benefits of those important investments.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleague Ms. Jackson Lee. We have heard from our colleagues all morning that they want more information, a more complete picture of the impact of legislation on our economy.
Well, the legislation before us, as we have pointed out repeatedly today, exempts the part of the budget that deals with investments in discretionary spending. From the start, it does that.
Then they said no to amendments on the impact on jobs. They have said no to getting more information on the impact on State and local governments and local taxpayers, and now, they are saying no to getting more information on vital portions of our economy.
This doesn't say the CBO can't look at other things. It just says that it is important that they look at this part of the economy. There are HUBZones in every part of the country, and they are an important part of our strategy that a lot of us are working towards to try to make sure that everyone in this country has an opportunity to move forward and succeed.
So it is discouraging to hear our colleagues reject a request for more information on jobs, local taxpayers, and now in this particular area.
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