[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5370-5371]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   REPUBLICAN BUDGET MORE OF THE SAME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, the baseball season begins this week, so I 
will quote the great Yogi Berra. ``It's deja vu all over again.''
  This year's Republican budget, which Chairman Ryan unveiled 
yesterday, is more of the same we have, unfortunately, come to expect. 
It is an exercise in partisan messaging, not a serious and honest 
attempt to invest in our priorities and pursue compromise toward a 
sustainable fiscal outlook.
  Their budget rejects the balanced approach of spending reforms, new 
revenue, and investments in our economy called for by both the Bowles-
Simpson and the Rivlin-Domenici Commissions, as well as by the Gang of 
Six in the United States Senate and by virtually every economist. The 
Ryan budget cuts $5 trillion without a single penny of new revenue, not 
even a hint of balance.
  Moreover, Chairman Ryan's budget once again relies on the magic 
asterisk of hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts to 
important domestic programs. He doesn't say what programs we are going 
to cut; he simply says we are going to get the money.
  He said that last year, of course, and it didn't happen. He gives 
virtually no details about the policies through which he expects to 
achieve these savings. To that extent, it is radically different from 
the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee's tax reform plan, which 
made real choices, showed real courage, and was a real document.
  The Republican budget continues their obsession with repealing or 
undermining the Affordable Care Act, their 53rd attempt to do so. 
However, of course, they keep all the savings and revenues that the 
Affordable Care Act is scored as giving.
  It would furthermore kick millions off their health insurance and 
turn Medicaid into a capped block grant, decimating the program and 
making life more difficult for all those millions who rely on it.
  Once more, they are seeking to end the Medicare guarantee as we know 
it. They will say it is a choice, that at 55 you can make a choice 
whether you want to have private insurance with a voucher that you get 
from the Federal Government or go into Medicare. That's what they say.

                              {time}  1015

  The reality is, however, they would make traditional Medicare far, 
far, far more expensive, driving people out of that program and 
eliminating it over time.
  Their budget, in addition, would make it very difficult, if not 
impossible, for Congress to invest in our economy and our people by 
driving domestic discretionary spending well below the sequester's 
harmful level.
  The American people ought to be outraged but not surprised. We have 
seen this movie before, and it never ends well for Republicans or, 
tragically, does it end happily for the American people. The new plot 
twist in this year's budget is that Chairman Ryan is going where no 
budget chairman has gone before, relying on the spurious gimmickry of 
so-called ``dynamic scoring'' to pad his numbers with budget savings 
that simply do not exist.
  We have talked about this a lot. The 1981 tax cuts were supposed to 
boom the economy. In fact, we increased the national debt by 187 
percent. In 2001 and 2003, we were promised that the tax cuts would 
grow the economy. In fact, during those 8 years of the Bush 
administration, we had the worst economy that anybody in this Chamber 
has experienced and, indeed, I would presume, in the gallery as well.
  While Chairman Ryan claims his budget balances in 10 years, in 
reality, his projection for revenues in 2024 is less than his 
projection for outlays. In other words, no balance. That is the simple 
budget math. The only way Chairman Ryan can pretend his math works is 
by using Republicans' dynamic scoring trick.
  This is the same trick that paved the way for the Bush tax cuts to 
turn record surpluses into record deficits, as I have said. It is sort 
of like a family making its budget and projecting: well, we are going 
to get a big raise because the boss is going to be doing better, the 
economy is going to be doing better, and we will get a big raise, so we 
will budget as if we had already gotten the raise. What happens is you 
don't get that raise and you are deeply in the hole. Americans get 
that. It is a shame their Congress doesn't get that.
  Republicans have a bill on the floor this week to force the 
nonpartisan CBO to use the Republican math. The virtue of the 
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was that it would give us 
honest numbers, but now the Republicans want to force them to give them 
their numbers that they want that make it easier for them to pretend 
that things are going to get better with their policies rather than 
putting their policies in place and then seeing if it does get

[[Page 5371]]

better, and if it does, we have a bonus. Of course, if it doesn't, we 
run up large deficits as we did in the last administration, as we did 
in the Reagan administration, as we did in the first Bush 
administration, and, yes, slightly in the Clinton administration. But 
in the Clinton administration, over every Republican's objections, we 
balanced the budget for 4 years.
  We need a budget, Madam Speaker, that reflects our real challenges 
and recognizes that we must compromise to make the difficult choices 
necessary to meet them. The American people deserve a budget that 
focuses not on gimmicks but one that promotes opportunity, growth, and 
security; compromise, not confrontation; pragmatism, not partisanship; 
what works, not what sounds good.
  Our budget proposal should reflect our priorities and enable us to 
rise to meet our challenges. The Republican budget that is going to be 
voted on today in the Budget Committee does not do that.
  The Wall Street Journal, Madam Speaker, wrote an editorial about the 
Ryan priorities, most of which I disagree with because I think their 
reliance, as Ryan does, on dynamic scoring is a ``fool's errand'' and 
has been proved to be such over the years that I have served in 
Congress over the last 33 years. But I do agree with their conclusion, 
and they say this:

       But the Ryan outline does the service of showing the policy 
     direction in which Republicans would head if they regain 
     control of the Senate next year.

  I agree with that. I think this is a litmus test for the American 
people. They can review the Ryan budget. They can review its 
consequences to them, themselves, their families, their children, and 
their community. They can see the adverse consequences of a plan that 
will not work.
  I predict, as I predicted last year, Madam Speaker, the 
Appropriations Committee, headed by Hal Rogers, Republican chairman, 
will not bring appropriation bills to the floor that will pass on this 
floor that will implement the Ryan budget, notwithstanding the fact 
that Ryan's party controls this House. I predicted that last year, and 
I was right. As a matter of fact, no bills passed this House at the 
Ryan budget numbers last year--none, not one. Sadly, I think that is 
what is going to happen this year--sadly, for the American people; 
sadly, for this Congress; sadly, for our children.
  Madam Speaker, we can do better. We can be real. We ought to do the 
job that the American people expect us to do and get this country on a 
fiscally sustainable path, not with smoke and mirrors but with 
sincerity and courage.

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