[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 1]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 949]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        H.R. 3582 AND H.R. 3578

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                           HON. RUSH D. HOLT

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, February 3, 2012

  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I want to register my opposition to H.R. 3582, 
the so-called ``Pro-Growth Budgeting Act of 2011,'' and H.R. 3578, the 
``Baseline Reform Act of 2011.''
  Once again we, Mr. Speaker, spend time on another set of partisan 
process bills that do nothing to help us reduce the deficit and pay 
down our national debt. Instead, they do quite the opposite--they make 
it more difficult.
  Mr. Speaker, in the 1990s, Congress balanced the budget. Moreover, we 
had a budget surplus. It did not require a balanced budget amendment or 
an overhaul of our budgeting process. It required some sensible 
decisions by Members of Congress and the President to match our taxes 
and our expenditures. The rules aren't broken, Mr. Speaker--Congress 
has simply failed to follow the rules that we have. In his testimony 
before the Budget Committee, Former Budget Committee Chairman Jim 
Nussle, a Republican, said just that. ``It may not be that the budget 
process is broken,'' he said. ``It may not be . . . that tools are 
broken, but it may be the fact that the tools are not even being 
used.''
  Any plan for deficit reduction must be comprised of spending cuts and 
revenue increases, yet H.R. 3582 attempts to hide that fact. It is 
designed to obscure the impact of tax cuts on the deficit. The majority 
simply wants to help its case for passing large tax cuts while 
disguising the actual costs of those cuts. Despite the rhetoric that 
has been thrown around this body, tax cuts do not pay for themselves.
  Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3578 is just as unnecessary and, frankly, 
misleading. The majority wants to change the calculation of the 
discretionary baseline. It wants to include the Bush tax cuts for the 
wealthiest in the permanent baseline for all federal budgeting. This 
also eliminates the budgetary tools currently in place which account 
for increased costs in future years, thus resulting in an effective cut 
of 20 percent from all programs, including military pay, without any 
thought about need or funding priorities.
  Mr. Speaker, these bills constitute solutions for problems that do 
not exist, and will only serve to make things worse. They will not 
solve our debt and deficit problems and they will not create a single 
job. Moreover, the current system works--it has worked for us in the 
past, and it can work for us again now if we stop the political 
gamesmanship and come together to find commonsense solutions to get our 
fiscal house in order.

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