[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.
____________________