[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 104 (Tuesday, June 17, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3446-S3448]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, now, turning to an issue that has to be
worked out in our U.S. Senate, is the challenge of having honest budget
numbers for the conversation over the reconciliation bill.
Back in 1974, the Senate and House were alarmed over the growing
deficits. They were microscopic compared to the type of deficits we
have today, but still people said: Let's not get on that path of
expanding the national debt. Let's create a real budgeting process
where we lay out a vision at the front end so that the bills that are
passed by the committees--the revenue bills and the policy bills--fit
into that budget framework so we will have control over the result,
whether it is a surplus that we want or whether we want to spend more
and run up some deficit because, perhaps, it is a year in which the
economy is dipping, and we need to provide some stimulus. But the point
was a front-end budgeting process into which we could put the effects
of all of these different bills in the course of a year.
So it was an act designed to bring planning for revenue and spending
levels into a coherent framework by laying out a budget and holding
committees accountable to that budget vision.
In this Budget Act, Congress created two significant tools for very
different and separate purposes. One of them is section 312 of the
Budget Act. Section 312 says that the Committee on the Budget will
establish estimates of ``the levels of new budget authority, outlays,
direct spending, new entitlement authority, and revenues for a fiscal
year.'' So there is the framework.
And to clarify, for most of the work that is done, the committee
depends on the Joint Committee on Taxation for revenue projections and
depends on the Congressional Budget Office for the cost of programs.
But this section in 312 has also been interpreted to give the chair
of the Budget Committee the authority to resolve complex scoring
questions that come up or technical ambiguities that come up on
particular programs for particular revenue measures during normal
legislating.
I emphasize ``during normal legislating.'' It has nothing to do with
reconciliation.
Now, Congress created a second tool that was specifically about
reconciliation. It is presented in the Budget Act and for a very
special purpose. This section, reconciliation, was to be a filibuster-
free pathway in the Senate for one reason and one reason alone:
decreasing the deficit.
And you can imagine: There is Robert Byrd, who is the champion of the
filibuster, who wants everything to have to go through a supermajority
vote. It was often used against civil rights bills but was often used
in other ways as well. And he would not let go of that for any reason,
except the special role of reducing the national deficit.
A hundred Senators said yes to that vision--all the Democrats, all
the Republicans.
So we have in that act a section 313, affectionately known as the
Byrd rule, that lays out some very specific details for how to handle
that reconciliation process.
So we have section 312, normal budgeting, for nonreconciliation
bills, and we have section 313 with special rules for reconciliation
bills.
Now, why am I coming to the floor to make such a detailed examination
of issues that we wouldn't normally, well, wrestle with in a public
forum. Well, the answer is because there is a plan afoot to take this
tool that was always used and framed for regular budgeting to give a
bit of flexibility to the Budget Committee through the Budget chair to
resolve complex technicalities or abnormalities--issues--on small
issues in normal bills and apply it in a completely corrupted version
to section 313, overruling the foundation for reconciliation. Two very
different tools, two very different purposes, but taking one and
applying it to the other destroys the integrity of the reconciliation
process, and I am going to lay that out in some detail.
Section 312 allows the Budget chair to be a referee, to find
bipartisan common ground to solve those ambiguities in the budgets--
but, again, never used in reconciliation because it wasn't intended for
that purpose.
Now, if you are going to have a special process to reduce deficits,
you have to agree to have honest numbers. So, therefore, the act
created the Congressional Budget Office to give us those honest numbers
on what programs cost.
And then you have honest integrity with numbers on revenue coming
from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
So you have these two institutions and a commitment in section 313 to
honest budgeting numbers. So we will quit fooling ourselves, and we
will quit fooling the public because the goal was to reduce the
deficit, and you can't reduce the deficit if you are lying about what
new measures will cost, whether it be revenue measures or they be
policy measures.
So it would completely defeat the purpose of reconciliation to simply
have the Budget chair, who could resolve a technical ambiguity in a
normal bill, be able to say: Well, that is
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such a power, I am going to transport it from a normal budget bill over
to reconciliation. Instead of using honest numbers from CBO and from
the Joint Committee on Taxation, I am going to just create my own hall
of mirrors, my own smoke, and my own baseline to pretend that things
don't cost what they really cost.
It is a complete obliteration of the responsibility for integrity in
the reconciliation process, which, again, was designed only to decrease
the deficit.
Now, there has been a bit of a journey for the House and Senate since
1974, and that foundation that this reconciliation process would only
be used to reduce the deficit got blown up in 1996. My colleagues
across the aisle decided that, well, they wanted to pass a big tax
bill, and they knew they couldn't do it through regular order. So they
repurposed a process designed to reduce the deficit and said it could
also be used for a tax bill that increases the deficit.
Well, that was a painful blow to fiscal responsibility because each
and every one of their tax bills has vastly increased the deficit.
But they retained two other things: a second pillar, that said, after
10 years, every title has to either be deficit-neutral or reduce the
deficit--so after a 10-year frame--and that they would continue to use
honest numbers.
OK. Well, so now we have another situation where we rely here on
using reconciliation not for its original purpose, to decrease the
deficit, but for a tax bill. But pillars 2 and 3 were still in place up
until this moment: no deficits in any title after 10 years and using
honest numbers.
But the chair of the Budget Committee is saying: I don't want to keep
pillar 2 and 3. I don't want to keep pillar 2 that says everything
after 10 years has to be deficit-neutral or deficit reduction; and I
don't want to use honest numbers because it lets the world see how
expensive this bill is and kind of destroys our reputation for fiscal
responsibility. So we want to create some magic math, some false
baseline, to pretend that the bill does not have a lot of deficit.
Well, this is a huge mistake, and I am just here to say: Let's not
let this happen. Let's not destroy the second and third pillars. Let's
not destroy the second pillar which says: no deficits after 10 years.
Let's not destroy the third pillar which says: We use honest numbers
from the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget
Office.
There are two reasons that my colleague who chairs the Budget
Committee wants to take this provision from section 312 for normal
budgeting that gives some flexibility to the Budget chair and bring it
over and create this new fake baseline so this bill doesn't look like
it will run up the debt that it obviously runs up. One is that he wants
to make the tax cuts permanent, meaning deficits will be run far beyond
the 10-year period. And, second, he wants the American people to
believe that this is not going to create huge, massive, additional
deficits and debt.
Well, those are not good reasons. We should all work together to
maintain the second and third pillars of no deficits after 10 years--
the third pillar that, in fact, we will use honest numbers and not lie
to ourselves and not lie to the American people about the cost of a
bill.
He calls this new, fake baseline ``current policy baseline.'' And
part of the little twist is to say: Hey, the law says that a tax
provision ends, but we will pretend that it doesn't say that--the law
doesn't say that--and it just continues on forever. And since we are
now pretending that the law was written differently than it was really
written, it is really not a new provision that costs anything. Because
a lot of these new extensions or new tax provisions cost because they
reduce the revenues, we will just pretend they don't.
But you know it is that kind of pretending that got us into this
trouble to begin with. That is what the 1974 bill was about. Let's quit
lying to ourselves. Let's quit lying to the public. Let's quit
pretending we are not creating deficits when we are. Let's have honest,
honest budgeting.
So the irony is that you can even see how this philosophy fails even
within the Republican bill, because if this philosophy that every bill
or measure that the law says ends actually continues, then there would
be no reason to have in the bill what my Republican colleagues have put
in the bill, which is that they end a bunch of tax provisions in the
middle of the 10-year period so they can say the bill costs less.
So the old laws that are going to expire, we pretend they continue.
But the new laws that we are creating at this very moment, that end
within the 10 years, we pretend they actually end.
You can see how phony this situation is, and we need to do better.
Now, let me just go through how modest the use of section 312, in
general budgeting, was. The first is, it was always bipartisan. It was
bipartisan in 2017. It was bipartisan in 2023 and 2024 and 2025. Each
of these times, it was bipartisan.
But this new proposal is to use it in this partisan fashion. It is a
complete deviation from a Budget chair working out a gnarly problem in
order to be able to figure out how we should really resolve how this
individual policy should be evaluated, and, instead, turn it into an
instrument in which you fake the numbers and do it in a partisan way.
So that is not the only way that this would break protocol. The
second is that each time it was used, it was used on a very narrow
provision. It was routine--in 2017, on the Crime Victims Fund; on the
Power Marketing Administrations; on the preventing of double counting
of a dairy program; on adjustments to the Fiscal Responsibility Act. It
was always on a very narrow provision, not creating a whole new
baseline out of thin air in order to fake the numbers over deficits and
debt.
One example in this is 2017, when Republican Chair Mike Enzi directed
CBO to use the original current law baseline for the Crime Victims
Fund, rather than a new baseline with updated numbers, because,
essentially, if you have a baseline at the start of the year and then,
a few months pass, the numbers change slightly. And if you keep
inventing or having to use a new baseline that is changing just, like,
small amounts, it makes no sense because they aren't significant
changes.
So it was an issue to say: No. Let's go ahead and use the baseline
from the start of the year rather than updating it every single time
that every week goes by. So a narrow, very narrow, issue.
And, as I noted before, it was to resolve an ambiguity. Each time it
has been used, it has been to resolve an ambiguity. But, in this case,
it is to create ambiguity; it is to create confusion; it is to create
smoke and mirrors; it is to create a phony baseline to lie to ourselves
and to the public about what this bill costs, and that is just wrong.
Let me give you an example.
In 2000, a deal had been struck on how to score activities of the
Power Marketing Administrations, but over the years, the Congressional
Budget Office had started scoring the program differently from the 2000
arrangement. In 2023 and 2024, Senate Budget Chair Sheldon Whitehouse
and House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington invoked section 312 to have the
CBO remember and observe the original 2000 agreement. It was the
example of section 312 being used to resolve a technical ambiguity.
Let's look at one other way that it has been used in the past.
It was never used on reconciliation. It was not used on
reconciliation in 2017. It was not used when they addressed the Power
Marketing Administrations. That was not in reconciliation. Preventing
the double counting of a dairy program is not in reconciliation.
Adjusting the Fiscal Responsibility Act was not in reconciliation.
This provision wasn't designed for reconciliation. Reconciliation has
its own set of rules in section 313, and those rules say each
provision--the word is ``provision''--in the proposed law is accounted
for in terms of estimating accurately through these numbers from the
CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation what its real effect will be.
So that is the story, and I will give you an example.
In 2023, Senator Whitehouse and Representative Arrington again worked
together to resolve an issue in the farm bill. The CBO was scoring the
dairy program and reducing the costs of extending the program by $105
million over 10 years, but the CBO didn't include it in the new farm
bill's baseline, meaning the Ag Committee has to
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pay for the program a second time out of the funding allocated to their
committee. That didn't make any sense so they fixed it.
That is an example--very narrow, bipartisan--and we are talking small
numbers.
Let's turn to those issues over small numbers. Well, they aren't so
small when you think about this in terms of our normal trip to the
grocery store--$73 million or less than $200 million. One case in the
Fiscal Responsibility Act--again, in a bipartisan, specific provision--
is $2.8 billion. What is this bill about? What is this fake baseline
being used to hide in this case? It is $37 trillion of additional debt.
Again, this is absolutely a crime against fiscal responsibility. It
is blowing up the last two pillars from the 1974 Act: no additional
debt or deficit past 10 years of any title; the honest use of numbers
from the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation. It is taking a
provision to allow the taking on of small ambiguities to be wrestled
with in a bipartisan fashion and resolved--taking that flexibility--and
using it in the wholesale destruction of responsible budgeting. So
let's not do this.
Colleagues, the deficit now, annually, is sizable. It is about 6
percent of our gross domestic product. Remember the end of the Clinton
administration? We were raising in revenue about 21 percent of GDP. We
were spending about 21 percent. We were actually running a surplus. Now
we are spending 6 percent more of GDP than we are bringing in as
revenue. We are no longer bringing in 21 percent of GDP in revenue. We
are bringing in 17 percent. We are no longer spending 21 percent. We
are spending 23 percent.
This bill, by the way, will crank up that gap between revenue and
spending even more as time passes. It is a pathway to not only
destroying the current programs that my colleague from Massachusetts
was talking about--16 million people losing healthcare, 4 million
children going hungry to give tax breaks to billionaires. It is not
only a pathway to destroy current programs, but it runs up debt to
destroy the ability to provide fundamental programs in housing and
healthcare and education for the next generation, and that is wrong.
That is why I say to you colleagues on both sides of the aisle: Let's
be honest about the numbers. Let's not corrupt the process by bringing
a measure that belongs in the regular budgeting world, not in the
reconciliation world, in order to destroy reconciliation as a process
that will not increase deficits after 10 years and will honestly convey
the effect of each provision in the bill as to whether it raises
revenue or spends money.
Preserve honest budgeting. Let's do that. It will serve us well. It
will serve the Nation well.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
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