[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 71 (Thursday, May 1, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H2992-H2995]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




MOTION TO INSTRUCT CONFEREES ON H.R. 2419, FOOD AND ENERGY SECURITY ACT 
                                OF 2007

  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct 
conferees.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin moves that the managers on the part 
     of the House on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on 
     the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 2419 be instructed, 
     within the scope of the conference, to use the most recent 
     baseline estimates supplied by the Congressional Budget 
     Office when evaluating the costs of the provisions of the 
     report.

  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin (during the reading). Mr. Speaker, I ask 
unanimous consent that the text of the motion be considered as read.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) and a Member opposed each will be recognized for 
30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, it's not my intention to consume 
the full amount of time, as we had discussed earlier.
  At the beginning of this Congress, the Speaker of the House said the 
following: ``After years of deficit spending, this new Congress will 
commit itself to a higher standard: pay-as-you-go, no new deficit 
spending.''
  Well, the majority did follow through on half of their promise. One 
of the first things they did when they took control of this place was 
put in a new pay-as-you-go rule.
  But things haven't quite worked out as well on the deficit. This 
year's deficit is projected to double as spending is projected to rise 
by over $200 billion. But at least they did put in the rule. And one of 
the things that makes this rule interesting, that requires this rule, 
is that the House must use the most recent CBO baseline when 
determining whether a bill complies with PAYGO. Let me read this rule 
word for word to be clear:
  ``The effect of a measure on the deficit or surplus shall be 
determined on the basis of estimates by the Committee on Budget 
relative to the most recent baseline supplied by the Congressional 
Budget Office.''
  It sounds pretty straightforward, Mr. Speaker. You've got to use the 
current baseline when you apply PAYGO, no questions asked.
  But despite this, everyone I have talked to about this issue, 
everything I've heard, everything I've read in the newspapers had told 
me that the farm bill isn't going to use the updated 2008 baseline but 
instead is going to use the 2007 baseline, an outdated baseline from 
over a year ago. Now, I hope that this is not the case. I hope that 
this does not happen. But it sounds like that's the direction they are 
headed. And that is what this motion is all about.
  This motion is very simple. All it would do is require that the House 
will follow its own rules and use the current CBO baseline when 
determining whether or not the farm bill complies with PAYGO.
  Why should we care? Why does this seemingly technical issue make a 
difference?
  First of all, economic conditions have changed in the past year. 
Agricultural profits are way up. Food prices are soaring. And it's 
simply not accurate to use an estimate that's over a year old.
  Second, there's a strong possibility that using the old baseline 
could hide

[[Page H2993]]

billions and billions of dollars in new spending. We don't have all the 
details yet, and we don't know exactly how CBO is going to score it, 
but based on what we've heard, based on rising food prices and other 
factors, we think it's quite likely that this bill is going to appear 
to cost billions of dollars less under the old baseline than it really 
does under the current one.
  Now, isn't that convenient? I'm sure that a lot of taxpayers would 
love to have this type of choice. I'm sure that when they were filling 
out their taxes a few weeks ago, a lot of people thought it would 
surely be nice to have the option of paying taxes on either last year's 
income or this year's income. They could just pick the year where they 
made less money and save a couple bucks.
  But the taxpayers don't have that choice. They are required to play 
by the rules. They have got to pay taxes on their current income 
whether they like it or not. And if the majority follows the rules, it 
doesn't have this choice either. They must use the 2008 baseline, or 
they will be in clear violation of their PAYGO rules.
  Now, the majority has dodged PAYGO before. The farm bill they passed 
last year had over $5 billion in timing shifts and other gimmicks in 
it, and I wouldn't be surprised if you saw some of those in the 
conference report again this year. But if they use an old baseline, 
this would take it to a whole new level, Mr. Speaker. This would be the 
first time the majority actually used baseline shopping to violate the 
PAYGO requirement.
  You see things like this, and it's no wonder people think Washington 
is broken. These types of games are exactly what make people cynical 
about Congress. And I agree. This just isn't the way the House should 
operate. The American people deserve better than having the House play 
games with its own rules and then go home and claim they have entered a 
new era of fiscal discipline.
  You know, some people might find it odd for me to be down here 
talking about PAYGO, and I will be the first to admit that I have been 
critical of this rule and don't think it's the best way to proceed with 
respect to fiscal discipline. But let's put those concerns aside for a 
minute. Budgetary rules are only as good as the integrity of the 
numbers that you use to enforce them. So let's enforce those rules with 
updated CBO estimates. Let's have a strong bipartisan vote for this 
motion and say that these games have got to end. Let's not manipulate 
the rules and pick and choose whichever baseline is more convenient.
  With that I urge my colleagues to support this motion.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier).
  Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this motion.
  My friend has outlined very clearly exactly where we are. And I will 
tell you from the perspective of the House Rules Committee, while we 
have not been enthusiastic supporters of this PAYGO procedure, I will 
say that while my friend used the tax analogy, as I listened to the 
exchange between the distinguished Republican whip and the majority 
leader, I couldn't help but think about the gasoline price issue. It 
would be tantamount to one of our constituents or any of us being able 
to go up to a gas pump and say, ``You know what? I'd like to pay the 
price of gasoline as it was 6 months ago as opposed to where it is 
today.'' This is not the way this should be done.
  I urge my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike, to come 
together in support of this motion.
  I rise in support of this motion. We don't actually know what's in 
the Farm Bill Conference Report, because the Conference Report has yet 
to be finalized, which is precisely why we are here seeking to instruct 
the conferees on the part of the House. But if press reports are 
accurate, the Conference Report could be in violation of clause 10 of 
Rule XXI of the Rules of the House of Representatives, known as the 
PAYGO rule. Now, I am not a supporter of the PAYGO rule. Ostensibly it 
is intended to impose fiscal discipline--a worthy goal that I share. 
But in reality it does nothing more than mandate tax increases. If the 
Democratic Leadership were to recognize this reality and propose a rule 
change to eliminate PAYGO, I'd support it. So far, they have not yet 
recognized the error of their ways, and PAYGO is a rule of the House.
  At issue here is the number that is used as the baseline for 
determining deficit neutrality. The rules of the House are unambiguous. 
The most current baseline estimate must be used. Clause 10 of Rule XXI 
provides: ``the effect of a measure on the deficit or surplus shall be 
determined on the basis of estimates made by the Committee on the 
Budget relative to the most recent baseline supplied by the 
Congressional Budget Office.''
  This does, after all, make perfect sense. If out-of-date and 
irrelevant numbers can be used, the rule would be a complete farce, 
even to those who support it in principle. In the case of the Farm 
Bill, the most up-to-date estimate was released on March 3, 2008. And 
yet it has been rumored that the Farm Bill's authors may choose to use 
the fiscal year 2007 numbers.
  This would be akin to pulling up to the gas station and rather than 
having to pay the current 2008 price of $3.62 per gallon, you tell the 
gas station attendant that that price doesn't apply to you, and you get 
to pay the 2007 price of $2.97.
  If Democrats insist on following this path, their bill will be in 
violation of PAYGO. And if the Rules Committee chooses to waive PAYGO, 
I suspect they would have trouble garnering enough support to pass such 
a rule within their own caucus. While the Democratic Leadership has 
proven they have no qualms about breaking House rules, or circumventing 
them altogether, a number of their Members are committed to the current 
incarnation of PAYGO. The Democratic Leadership knows that failure to 
comply with this rule is a non-starter for a large bloc of their 
caucus.
  So if their solution was to simply cook the books, pretend their bill 
was PAYGO compliant, and hope no one noticed, then I'm sorry to say, we 
noticed. To all of my colleagues who support PAYGO, and to all of my 
colleagues who oppose PAYGO but also oppose budget gimmickry and 
backroom deals to thwart the rules of the House, I urge you to join me 
in supporting this motion. Let's send the Farm Bill conferees a strong 
message that a budgetary shell game will not get them their 218 votes. 
And let's send a message to the Democratic Leadership that they can't 
piously claim to follow the rules, while perpetrating an end-run around 
them.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the motion to instruct.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from North Dakota is 
recognized for 30 minutes.
  Mr. POMEROY. I thank the Speaker.
  We agree that under normal circumstances a farm bill considered at 
this time ought to be scored on the March, 2008, baseline. But let me 
emphatically emphasize there has been nothing normal about the 
development of this farm bill.
  We're moving into our 17th month of intensive work on this farm bill. 
I'm telling you we have encountered every barrier you can possibly 
imagine, and we are almost done. We have almost got this to conference 
committee and to the floor. As the majority leader indicated, we are 
hopeful it will be on the floor next week.
  During the period of time we have been working on this bill, the 
House passed this farm bill July 27, 2007, and it took nearly 5 months 
in addition before the Senate passed its bill, December 14, 2007. If 
they would have gotten their bill done earlier, we probably could have 
concluded this. This wouldn't even have come up. We would have had the 
farm bill out of here by now. The Senate-passed bill, however, is 1,876 
pages long; the House bill, 160 pages long. That alone will tell you we 
had an awful lot of work to reconcile these two bills.
  The Senate uses a different rule relative to determining baseline, a 
rule used by the House in the construction of the 1996 farm bill as 
well as the 2002 farm bill. This principle is pretty simple: If you 
have done most of the work on the legislation under the old baseline, 
you can conclude the work. It would undo everything to suddenly have 
the new scoring requirement. And if the Senate didn't go along, you 
would have the crazy situation of trying to do one baseline for the 
House, another baseline for the Senate, trying to meld those in 
conference committee, and you will never get this thing done.
  So the gentleman's motion to instruct has an intellectual basis for 
it, but the reality of this farm bill is we have worked now 17 months 
building the bill, most of that time under the 2007 farm bill. When we 
passed the bill in the House, we had no idea what the 2008 baseline 
would be; so it's not like

[[Page H2994]]

we were forum shopping or trying to pick the most lenient number. It 
was just the only way we could proceed. And if we would at this point 
in time do a baseline shift, I'm telling you this project, so close to 
home, gets put back to square one.
  I have asked my friend and colleague Chairman John Spratt to join me 
in this discussion because, obviously, when it comes to budget matters, 
he has broad respect across both sides of the aisle and I believe he 
can advance a more detailed discussion on some of the rules at issue as 
we respond in opposition to the motion.
  Mr. SPRATT. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. POMEROY. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.
  Mr. SPRATT. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, more than a year ago, in meetings with Chairman Peterson 
and the Ag Committee staff, the Budget Committee made it clear that the 
new farm bill had to stay within the CBO baseline for the current farm 
bill. Policies could be added or altered, but the aggregate cost could 
not exceed CBO's current baseline. We based that position on the so-
called ``pay-as-you-go'' rule. Pay-as-you-go requires that any new 
legislation, in the form of mandatory spending, be fully offset, that 
it not exceed the current baseline.
  In this instance, with the new farm bill, which about to come from 
conference, it appears that the farm bill will be complied with the 
fiscal year 2007 baseline but perhaps not fully complied with the 
fiscal year 2008 baseline. I have not seen the numbers yet.
  CBO produces many baselines, and for a time the House PAYGO rule was 
ambiguous about the proper time for switching to a newer, updated 
baseline. Over time the House Budget Committee, in consultation with 
the Parliamentarian, came to an agreement to use longstanding scoring 
principles. These principles or guidelines allowed the Budget Committee 
discretion so that we could choose the appropriate baseline. This 
principle evolved over many years as a rule of practicality. It was 
founded on the rationale that we should not change the rules in the 
middle of the game or the middle of the legislative process or, in this 
case, in the middle of a complex conference. This rule was applied in 
1996 to the farm bill passed then and again in 2002 to the farm bill 
which was passed then. Once again, the underlying idea is to avoid 
changing the rules in the middle of a contested process that is complex 
and protracted enough already.
  The House PAYGO rule, the rule which we adopted in January of 2007, 
does set a limit to it. It does say that the latest baseline can and 
should be used until such time as the Budget Committee reports a budget 
resolution. The Senate has a different rule. The Senate PAYGO rule also 
sets a limit. It proposes that the last baseline be used until a 
conference report on the budget is adopted.

                              {time}  1500

  So there is a significant disagreement in the position between the 
two rules in the two bodies. As part of the resolution of all the 
differences in the conference, this too has to be resolved.
  Much of the farm bill about to come before us was hammered out in 
2007. The bill passed the House and passed the Senate and the conferees 
on all sides believed that the final package would emerge certainly no 
later than March of this year. The Budget Committee determined and 
informed the conferees that any farm bill would have to be scored 
against the FY07 baseline up until the Budget Committee reported a 
budget resolution for fiscal year 2009.
  The budget resolution was passed on March 7. Our committee staff 
informed the conferees that the baseline for measuring compliance with 
PAYGO would now be the fiscal year 08 baseline. In rendering that 
advice, we didn't resolve or really consider the pertinent problem. As 
I said earlier, the rules require that the conferees use the March 07 
baseline until the Senate adopts the conference report on the budget 
for fiscal year 2009. This makes sense because then you will have 
something done definitively by concurrent budget resolution passed in 
both Houses. And the purpose of a conference is to resolve 
disagreements between the two Houses.
  Here, we have such a disagreement, as I said earlier. Either we use 
the FY07 baseline or we use the FY08 baseline. We can't use base 
because there is a significant difference between the two. It seems 
fair and reasonable to me to use the FY07 baseline since so much of 
this conference agreement was written with the FY07 baseline as the 
yardstick, and to revert to FY08 would require more protracted 
negotiations and maybe no conference report at all.
  I have to say to you I could argue you this either way. But I believe 
on balance that this is a good application, a proper allocation of the 
baseline rule, and certainly the rule of practicality in this instance.
  Mr. POMEROY. Reclaiming the time----
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. If the gentleman is willing to yield back his 
time, I will just have a 1-minute speaker and then I will close--fast.
  Mr. POMEROY. I would just like to point out one quick thing. This is 
what PAYGO accomplishes. In 2002, pay-as-you-go budget discipline was 
allowed to expire. The farm bill, when it was passed, added to the 
baseline $73.5 billion. I believe the gentleman from Wisconsin voted 
for that farm bill. I did.
  Now we have an important restoration of pay-as-you-go discipline, and 
under the 2007 baseline we have accounted for every dollar of spending 
in this farm bill. No deficit added, no deepening of the deficit, as 
figured on the 2007 baseline, compared to a very, very different 
situation in the 2002 farm bill.
  So the gentleman's motion involves, in my view, pointing out that 
this might not technically jibe with the House rule. I believe that we 
have learned a lesson from the gentleman's motion. We ought to have our 
rule like the old rule where the baseline on a discretionary call by 
the Budget Chair can continue to be the baseline under which you 
drafted the legislation, because otherwise all of this work could be 
lost. We need to get this bill done. And we are this close to getting 
it done.
  So with respect to my friend, Mr. Ryan, I would urge that we reject 
the motion. I will let this statement serve as the close. Let the Ag 
Committee finish its work; let's pass the farm bill. Let's reject this 
motion to instruct.
  I yield back.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).
  Mr. KIND. I thank my friend for yielding.
  He and I and others have tried to introduce the concept of more 
reform in this next farm bill. But I didn't intend to speak on this 
motion; I just want to point out a little bit of irony in what this 
motion would do.
  It's my understanding that by using the 2008 numbers, it would result 
in a lower baseline for the commodity subsidy programs by about $11 
billion, which I don't have a problem with because we have introduced a 
10-point option plan to find over $10 billion of reasonable savings 
under these commodity programs already. So it's consistent with that.
  But it would also call for an increase of the baseline under the 
conservation title of close to $2 billion and under the nutrition title 
of close to $35 billion because of increased food costs and eligibility 
under these nutrition programs. If the nutrition groups knew what the 
practical effect of this motion to instruct would be, they will be 
doing cartwheels all over this town for the next week.
  I just wanted to point out the irony of today's baseline versus last 
year's baseline.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I am curious, does the gentleman want time 
from me or time from them?
  Four quick points. The war supplemental, been working on it for a 
year. That is going to be done under the new baseline. Number two, CBO 
can score this on time. They have already told us they are going to 
give us simultaneous scores under the 2008 baseline.
  Number three, you have had plenty of time to do this. The CBO 
baseline has been out for 2 months. But number four, and lastly, this 
isn't an option, this isn't a choice. You don't have discretion. It's 
the rules. This is your PAYGO rules.
  So the question is: Are you going to violate your rules or not?
  I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the previous question is 
ordered on the motion to instruct.

[[Page H2995]]

  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to instruct 
offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan).
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the noes appeared to have it.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and 
nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further 
proceedings on this question will be postponed.

                          ____________________