[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 4170-4171]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            TAX EXPENDITURES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOYER. Last week, as I have been doing for a number of weeks, I 
have been speaking about our budget and the crisis that confronts us 
and the challenge that confronts us.
  Last week, former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough said this 
about the hard work of getting America out of debt: ``The belief of 
some on the right that America can balance the budget by cutting 
education, infrastructure, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and 
home heating assistance to the poor is tantamount to budgetary 
witchcraft.'' That was Joe Scarborough, a former conservative 
Republican Member of Congress from northern Florida.
  Last week, Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan expressed a similar 
thought when he said this: ``If you literally think you can just 
balance the budget by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse, foreign aid, and 
NPR, it doesn't work like that,'' said Paul Ryan, chairman of the 
Budget Committee.
  Both Congressman Scarborough and Congressman Ryan are exactly right. 
Last week I explained why Republicans' spending plan, even as it 
cripples America's competitiveness, barely makes a dent in our debt. 
That is because the spending targeted by Republicans, non-security 
discretionary spending, only amounts to 14 percent of the entire 
budget. Should we focus on that? Yes. Can we get to where we need to be 
from there? No.
  If you want to meet an arbitrary goal of cutting $100 billion and you 
confine yourself to just 14 percent of the budget, you severely damage 
investments in education, in innovation, and in competitiveness without 
making our fiscal condition significantly healthier.

[[Page 4171]]

  That is why, to really get our debt under control, we have to go 
beyond that 14 percent. We have to stop making the cuts that, while 
reckless, are politically easy. We have to start doing what is in the 
best interests of our country even though it is politically hard.
  That means addressing the defense spending that takes in more than 
one quarter of our budget. It means making hard choices that can keep 
our entitlements strong for generations to come. But we also need to 
pass deficit-reducing tax reform.
  Our Tax Code is a monumental collection of rules and regulations 
riddled with loopholes and preferences which are a drain on job 
creation and, frankly, exacerbate the deficit.

                              {time}  1010

  Many of those loopholes, or tax expenditures, as they are also 
called, are popular with all sorts of special interests. But they exact 
a high price from the rest of us: billions of dollars and more than 225 
million collective hours spent on tax preparation, money and time that 
could be invested in more productive activity.
  Just as importantly, when the Tax Code is full of loopholes, 
businesses and families start making decisions on maximizing tax 
breaks, not on their economic common sense. Closing those loopholes in 
return for lower tax rates frees us all to make more economically 
sensible choices; in other words, fewer preferences, lower rates.
  Closing those loopholes can also reduce the deficit. In the spending 
bill on the floor this week, total discretionary spending for fiscal 
year 2011 adds up to $1.1 trillion, an awful lot of money. How much do 
our tax expenditures cost for the same fiscal year? Coincidentally, 
$1.1 trillion. This chart reflects that realty: $1.077 trillion in 
expenditures, $1.068 trillion, almost exactly the same sum, in tax 
expenditures. How much do our tax expenditures cost for the same fiscal 
year? Just as much as we spend on non-security discretionary spending 
and security spending.
  Clearly, tax expenditures must be part of the answer. The two 
commissions that met to try to focus on getting our deficit under 
control, making sure that we are economically viable into the next 
century and making sure that our children are not left in a deep 
economic hole, that they will have the resources necessary to meet the 
challenges of their time and will not look at our generation as the 
generation of debt, said as much.
  It must be part of the answer, tax expenditures, because if we 
attempt to solve our debt without addressing defense, entitlements, and 
revenues, we are fighting with one hand and four fingers behind our 
back.

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