Baseline Reform Act of 2012

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 534 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I'm happy to be down here with you today, and for the purpose of debate only I yield the customary 30 minutes to my good friend from Florida (Mr. Hastings).

General Leave

I ask unanimous consent, Mr. Speaker, that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 534, this rule before us today, brings the first of two Budget Committee reform bills to the floor. As the Speaker is very familiar, the Budget Committee has been working very hard, not just this year but last year as well, to put together an agenda to make the budget more accessible to the American people, to make budgeting in Washington, DC, look more like budgeting back home around the kitchen table. We have the first of those two reform bills coming to the floor today with the passage of this rule.

This rule is a structured rule, Mr. Speaker, that brings H.R. 3578, the Baseline Reform Act, and H.R. 3582, the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act, to the floor.

We all know it's been over a thousand days since the Senate has produced a budget. But here in the House, not only did we produce a budget last year on time, we will produce a budget this year on time, and we will produce another budget, as we did last year, that the American people can be proud of. Knowing that it's a given the American people are going to be proud of that work product, Mr. Speaker, because you and I will ensure it, the question is, will folks be able to understand it. I confess, as a freshman member on the Budget Committee, Mr. Speaker, it's not always easy to do.

The President is going to submit his budget to us in a couple of weeks. I think it was going to be next week. I think he's put it off for another week. I'm looking forward to seeing it when it finally arrives. But my recollection and expectation is going to be it's going to be more than 12 inches tall. Not because the President's doing anything wrong, but because that's the level of detail and sophistication it takes to produce a budget for the United States of America.

So what can we do to make this budget easier to understand? What can we do to make this budget more like the budgeting that goes on around the kitchen table?

The Baseline Reform Act, the first bill that this rule would bring to the floor, does this, Mr. Speaker. It eliminates the assumption that CBO makes today that every Congress is going to spend more next year than the previous Congress. Now, there are, as a function of law, Mr. Speaker, some areas of the budget that do in fact go up.

We know, for example, that 10,000 new Americans every day apply for Social Security and Medicare. 10,000 new baby boomers every day apply for Social Security and Medicare. We calculate that in the law. It exists in statute today to say let's go ahead and raise that spending level based on those new folks accessing the system.

But there's over a trillion dollars in spending, Mr. Speaker, for which there is no law that says it's going to go up next year and the year after that and the year after that. And yet, the Congressional Budget Office today, when they chart out the budget for the United States of America, assumes that that increase is going to take place.

Well, I'm tremendously proud, Mr. Speaker, that at least in my short time here I've seen just the opposite. Every single bill that this body has brought to the floor and sent to the President has reduced spending. Spending was $1.91 trillion in 2010. We reduced it to $1.50 trillion in 2011. We reduced it again to $1.43 trillion for 2012. That's the trend that my constituents want back home, Mr. Speaker, and I think the trend that America deserves.

But more importantly, we've all been involved in those conversations back home where folks say, when is a cut not really a cut? When is an increase not really an increase? Only here in Washington, Mr. Speaker, can we spend $10 last year and $12 next year and call that a budget cut. Only here. The Baseline Reform Act eliminates that.

The Pro-Growth Budgeting Act, the second bill that this rule would bring to the floor, adds a new bit of information to the Congressional Budget Office baseline. It's the same information that President Obama asked for in his stimulus bill, to say, when we spend this $800 billion, what impact is that going to have. We know it's going to be $800 billion out the door. We know we're never going to get that money back. We know that's going to be money that we have to borrow from foreign lands. But what do we get for that $800 billion?

We asked the Congressional Budget Office to score it that way and they did.

What the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act says is let's add that feature for every future bill on the tax side of the ledger.

What happens, Mr. Speaker, when we cut taxes? We know that means less revenue comes in from that one tax, but what does it mean for the economy as a whole? We see it over and over again when we have taxes at their highest. Sometimes our tax receipts are at their lowest. When we have tax rates at their lowest, sometimes our tax receipts are at their highest. The Congressional Budget Office can give us that information, and this bill makes it possible for them to do that.

So, Mr. Speaker, I'm tremendously proud and tremendously enthusiastic about not only the rule but the two underlying bills, and I look forward to that discussion not just on the rule with my friend, Mr. Hastings, but with the Budget Committee later on this afternoon.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to just really take a moment to think about the doublespeak here in Washington, D.C. That's been the biggest adjustment since having the great privilege of being a Member in this U.S. House of Representatives. What my friend from Florida I know very genuinely calls sneaky, I call common sense.

You know, today in the budget, Mr. Speaker, today in the budget, the CBO doesn't have to follow the law for about a quarter of all Federal Government spending. When they are scoring Medicare and Medicaid, they follow the law to say what's Medicare and Medicaid going to do over the next 10 years. When they're scoring discretionary spending, however, they just guess. They just guess. That's what the process is today: Just guess at what future Congresses are going to be. What are those future Congresses going to do?

Now, I tell you that's an exercise in folly, and you couldn't possibly get it right. That's what the CBO Director told us yesterday, that it's a challenge to put these numbers together. And the more they have to guess, the more inaccurate their result becomes.

So what are these two bills?

I yield to the gentleman.

I thank my friend for asking.

Reclaiming my time, what those 40 years are are 40 years of congressionally mandated action.

But that's what's so different here, Mr. Speaker. There are things that Congress speaks to and things about which Congress is silent. And for reasons unbeknownst to me or the families back home in my district, what this Congress has said, this body that's been instilled with the power of all of our voters back home, we've said we advocate it, CBO just guess.

You know, when you and I were working together last summer on the Budget Control Act, we went exactly the opposite route. As you know, Mr. Speaker, in the Budget Control Act, we said don't guess about what's going to happen next year. We're putting a number in statute for spending. Don't guess about what's going to happen 2 years down the road for that. We're putting a number in statute. And don't guess about another year down the road for that, because we are putting a number in statute.

Look at that, Mr. Speaker. What we've chosen to do, instead of just guessing about the country's future, is to do what the American people sent us here to do, and that's legislate on the country's future. Only here can you spend $10 this year, $12 next year and call that a cut. I don't get it. I don't get it, and folks back home don't get it.

Far from being gimmickry, this is unifying the Federal budget process with what that budget process is for millions of families back home around the dinner table. And to be clear about the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act, Mr. Speaker, because I want to make sure that my friend from Florida and I are working on the same information, the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act does not change the CBO baseline process at all, not at all. The same score that CBO would have done for legislation yesterday, they're going to do that same score for legislation tomorrow if the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act becomes law. What will be different is--and I love this about the direction of this Congress, Mr. Speaker. The difference will be the American people will have a new piece of information to add to the old baseline, a new piece of information.

During the discussion yesterday with the Congressional Budget Office, we got the CBO baseline, but we also got additional information--what would happen if you extended tax cuts, what would happen if you did alternative things called the alternative baseline. The Pro-Growth Budgeting Act says let's build on that. Because, in these times, we can't afford to have any stone unturned for economic growth for this country; and we certainly can't afford to continue, as this town has done far too long if we're candid with ourselves, far too long, keeping the American people in the dark about Federal budgeting issues.

These two bills, again, these are just the first of 10 bills that will be coming to this floor, Mr. Speaker. But these two bills shine a spotlight on the Federal budget process in ways that we can all be proud, and I can discuss that even further later on.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I always enjoy listening to my friend from New Jersey because inevitably I agree with about the first six things he says. All of the facts on which he bases his conclusions, I agree on. And I just reach a completely different set of conclusions.

My friend said that one of the challenges we have in America is that folks think that they're working as hard as they can but they're going backwards instead of forwards. I get that in my district, too. I think the gentleman is absolutely right. Hope is so powerful in this country, when we lose that hope, we really get ourselves in a world of hurt. I think the gentleman is absolutely right.

The gentleman says we can't get the economy back on track unless we get our small businesses moving again. The gentleman is absolutely right. I know it to be true. I see it in my Chambers of Commerce, Mr. Speaker.

But what then? Agreeing that the American people are working as hard as they can, and they feel like they're going backwards. Agreeing that the small business community is working as hard as it can, but it can't find enough consumers. What's the answer?

My friend from New Jersey laid out, as my President did, four giant spending initiatives with borrowed money that he believes if only the Federal Government would get involved in, we could regenerate those two needy areas. And my constituents tell me exactly the opposite, Mr. Speaker.

My constituents say: Rob, if only the Federal Government were not involved in my life, if only the Federal Government were not borrowing all of this money, if only the Federal Government would leave us alone and let us succeed. The government is not the solution, they tell me; the government is the problem.

These two bills today, sadly, I again agree with my friend, do nothing to stop the government from being a problem. And in fairness, the Budget Committee is not in that business. The Budget Committee is in the planning of the financial future business. We need the authorizing committees to actually shrink the size and scope of government.

But what these two bills do, and it troubles me, candidly, it troubles me that it's even an area of debate. What these two bills do is one thing and one thing only, and that's provide additional arrows in the quiver of information that we provide to the American people about the American fiscal situation.

And on days like today, Mr. Speaker, with challenges like we have today, the American people deserve the truth. It's not always easy to say it, but we owe it to them to say it, and these two bills move us in that direction.

I would be happy to yield to my friend.

Reclaiming my time, I absolutely believe that our small businesses are overtaxed today. As the gentleman knows, I've introduced the most cosponsored piece of fundamental tax reform legislation in this House, another version of which has been introduced in the Senate, and has more cosponsors than any other fundamental reform bill in the Senate. And what does that bill do--called the FAIR Tax, H.R. 25, Mr. Speaker, in the House--it abolishes small business taxes entirely. It recognizes the economic truth that businesses don't pay taxes, consumers pay taxes.

I absolutely agree, I don't want to just do a cut, I would say to my friend. I want to abolish those taxes altogether.

And what Congressman Price's Pro-Growth Budgeting Act would do is share with the American people, because we know that's going to lose money in year one because we're cutting taxes. The only way the government gets money is from taxes. You reduce taxes, that's a loss in year one. What that bill would do, Mr. Speaker, is provide the secondary impact, the tertiary impact, share with the American people.

Well, what happens in year two? It's like going to college, Mr. Speaker. When you go to college, you lose money. It's a drain on your bank account. And if you equate the drain on your bank account of going to college the same as the drain on your bank account of going to McDonald's, you're going to make some bad decisions. You've got to know the impact of those down the road.

I am happy to yield to my friend.

Reclaiming my time, and seeing the ranking member of the Budget Committee sitting there to my friend's right, I look forward-- and speaking candidly to the gentleman, if we bring a budget to this floor that doesn't allow us a vote on cutting exactly the kind of taxes you're talking about, not only will I be disappointed, I'll be voting ``no.'' We're absolutely going to bring a budget to the floor that is going to cut those taxes, that is going to lower the burden on the American taxpayer so that we can get this economy going again.

Again, these are issues that we agree on across the aisle, Mr. Speaker. It's important that we look at the same facts. When we look at the same facts, even as we are today, we can sometimes come to different conclusions. What these two bills do today is just make sure that we're looking at the same set of facts--not just us, but all of the American people.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS from Florida. Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege of having our next speaker be the ranking member of the Budget Committee to discuss these budgetary matters that have been discussed by my friend on the other side of the aisle.

But, Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to ensure that the House votes on H.R. 3558, Mr. Van Hollen's proposal to make sure that Members of Congress do not receive a cost-of-living adjustment to our pay in 2013.

At this time, I'm pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), and more time, if needed.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to again find areas of agreement with my colleagues.

I, too, don't know what will happen with the very fine piece of legislation we sent to the Senate yesterday. If experience is any indicator, it will sit there and do nothing, as have all the other fine pieces of job-creation legislation that we've sent to the Senate. I take no pleasure in that, but I share the gentleman's frustration with fearing that fate.

I also share the gentleman's belief that we need to show the American people sitting around the dinner table that we get it. But when Congress sits around the committee table to budget, we say, okay, if rent is $1,000 this year, let's just go ahead and plan to pay $1,100 next year and then $1,200 the year after that and $1,300 the year after that. Let's just plan to do it. Let's just guess the money is going to be there.

But that's not what the American families get to do. American families have to say, if rent is $1,000 this year and rent goes to $1,100 next year, I've got to find something to cut. I'm not getting a pay raise. I don't see that increase coming through. The economy is not getting better for me. I've got to make those tough choices.

Mr. Speaker, if we're going to be honest with folks--and we have to be honest with folks--we've got to tell them there's no spigot of money running on Capitol Hill. If there were, it would be theirs. But there is no spigot of money on Capitol Hill.

And it makes me feel so good to be a freshman Member in this body-- more importantly, while it might have been true for the last 50 years that Congress just assumed every year it would spend more than it did the last, not this Congress, not my colleagues and I working together, Mr. Speaker. What we've said is we know there are not unlimited funds. We know the American people don't have more to contribute. We know that the time for tough choices was before, but it was put off, it was delayed and it was ignored, and the time for tough choices then falls to us. And we've been making them. It's not been easy. It's not areas that we always find agreement on, but we battle through it. When we get to the end of the day, we spent less in 2011 than we did in 2010 in our appropriations bills. We spent less in 2012 than we did in 2011, and I hope that's something that the American people will be proud of.

Mr. Speaker, with that, I would say to my friend, I don't have any other speakers. I am prepared to close if my friend is.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to say I'm a few years younger than my friend from Florida. I didn't get the benefit of the ``Let's Pretend'' radio program that he had in his day, but I feel like I've had a little dose of ``Let's Pretend'' here on the floor today.

I feel a kinship with my friend and what that must have been like to hear that because what we have heard here on the floor is, let's pretend that there's not a serious crisis that we have to get our arms around. Let's pretend that we do have the money to spend more and more and more each and every year. Let's pretend that if we give the American taxpayer more information with which to make informed decisions, that will somehow do us harm.

Mr. Speaker, these bills are about common sense. These bills are about ending the Washington double-speak that has been a frustration to folks back home for far, far too long.

I'm joined here on the floor by Sheriff Rich Nugent from Florida, one of my freshman colleagues here in this body, Mr. Speaker. And as a sheriff, he told us in the Rules Committee yesterday he had some pretty serious responsibilities. There are no easy parts of being sheriff; it is all got-to-happen kind of business. But when he made his budget year after year after year, even though lives were literally hanging in the balance, he didn't get to assume he could spend more next year than he did the year before. He had to justify each and every dollar.

And that's important because the budget process is convoluted. We're doing our best to make it simpler, but folks might not understand exactly what's at the heart of these issues. And when it comes to this Baseline Reform Act, Mr. Speaker, what it's saying is, if the law of the land has a program, let's say we're buying flags to fly over the United States Capitol, if that program is slated to last for 10 years, the CBO will fund it for 10 years, they will estimate it for 10 years. If it's estimated to last for 5 years, CBO will estimate it for 5 years. And if it's supposed to last for 1 year, they'll do it for 1 year. What they won't do is say that just because the entire Congress is spending $50 million, that next year the Congress will be able to spend $60 million because of inflation. What it says is: don't guess.

If the Congress wants to speak to how much money should be spent, the Congress should speak. And in fact we do, day in and day out, mandatory spending, appropriation spending. But the CBO should not be asked to guess. If you want to know what the challenge is, Mr. Speaker, we heard it in the Budget Committee yesterday when the CBO Director came to testify. We talk so much about the Bush-Obama tax cuts expiring. If we kept them all, if we kept all of the tax cuts--in fact, if we went back to the tax cuts that expired in 2011 and we brought those back, too, reduced the American taxpayers' burden to the tune of every single tax cut that's on the books, America's tax burden would still be higher over the next decade than it has been historically over the last 50 years, if we kept them all.

What if you let them go away, Mr. Speaker? If you let all those tax cuts go away, America's tax burden would rise to the highest level in 50 years, the single highest level in 50 years. How much debt would we pay back if we raise the American tax burden that high, Mr. Speaker? Not one penny. Not one penny. How much of our deficit would we get rid of? Would we be able to finally have at least 1 year of a balanced budget? No. We can raise the American tax burden, Mr. Speaker, to the highest level in the last 50 years, and we still wouldn't balance this budget.

Mr. Speaker, the challenge is not revenue. The challenge is spending. And these two bills make sure that both on the revenue side and the spending side the American taxpayer has access to absolutely every bit of information they need to make good decisions.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I again ask my colleagues for their strong support of this rule and their strong support for the two underlying pieces of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time and move the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This is the second budget bill that we've had today. There's been a lot of talk about what we need to do to help move the economy forward, to help put people back to work.

Let's be clear: as was acknowledged earlier, these bills do none of that. This will not help create one job; this is not going to help grow the economy. We've got a lot of work that we should be doing, including taking up the President's jobs bill, which has been sitting in the House since last October.

The economy remains very fragile. Those infrastructure investments and helping rebuild and repair our roads, our bridges, transit ways could be put to good use right now.

With respect to this bill, the concern is that this creates actually a very misleading picture of what we can purchase in terms of goods and services with our dollars, and it gets more misleading over time. Why do I say that?

Every American knows that when you're comparing the amount something costs between different periods of time, you have got to take into account inflation. You know what, $10 back 40 years ago bought a lot more than $10 today. What this bill does is it tries to kind of wish away inflation and, in that sense, it creates, as I say, a misleading sense of what we can expect in terms of goods and services purchased for taxpayer dollars going forward.

I think every taxpayer would say that if we did not, we did not index their taxes for inflation, that would be a tax increase. That's why we index taxes. If we decided to pass a law saying no more indexation of taxes, it would be a hidden tax increase.

Now, here I want to give a very clear example.

In fiscal year 2013, we're going to spend $61 billion to help support our veterans, to help support our veterans, provide for veterans health care and other services. This is part of the discretionary budget. We also provide help in some of the mandatory budget.

Now, this bill would have you believe that 10 years from now, that $61 billion is somehow going to provide you the same amount of goods and services to take care of our veterans. We know that's not true. We know that $61 billion 10 years from now is going to provide a lot less health care for people who served this country. And so let's not play make-believe, and that's what this bill does.

What the Congressional Budget Office does right now is they make the assumptions that reasonable forecasters would make. As the author of the bill has said, there's no law right now that tells CBO how to do it. We leave it to the independent, nonpartisan body, the Congressional Budget Office, to figure out what's the best way, what makes the most sense for budgeting purposes. And they say, you know what; we should do what every American does when they're comparing dollars spent in the past or in the future. We need to normalize that. We need to index that to get a real sense of what taxpayer dollars will be able to purchase; otherwise, it creates a misleading impression.

And so CBO, the independent group, said we need to take an account of inflation. What this bill does is says as a matter of law, ignore that. As a matter of law, we're not going to wish away inflation. We're going to pass a law that says for these purposes, don't take it into account. And as I say, it will create a very misleading picture of what it will take to support investments like veterans' health.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I think it's important to underscore the point, and I think the author of the bill would agree, that this legislation didn't save the taxpayer one dime. That's not what we're talking about. This bill, when you pass it, doesn't save one penny. Every year, with respect to the discretionary budget, we have Appropriations Committees in the House and the Senate who go through the budgets, and they decide what's appropriate and what's necessary to be budgeted for those agencies and those accounts every year. They can cut them. They can increase them based on the needs that are perceived by Members of Congress who are acting on that. That's not the issue. We need to tighten our belts. In fact, back in August, we made some significant savings. We need to continue to find savings.

In fact, my view is, if we're really going to be serious about reducing the deficit and the debt, we've got to do this in a balanced way like bipartisan commissions have suggested. You've got Simpson- Bowles; you've got Rivlin-Domenici. All of them have said we've got to do a combination of cuts, and we also need to deal with the revenue. We can no longer afford to have tax breaks for the folks at the very top, that we can't keep all of these tax loopholes open that disproportionately benefit certain people over others, and tax breaks that actually encourage in some cases the export of American jobs when we want to be encouraging the export of American goods and American services.

So that's a very important debate that we should have, but that's not what this does. This just has to do with how we present the baseline as to what can be purchased in terms of goods and services for certain dollars. And moving to this will create a very misleading perception, everyone knows.

Let's say it took a certain amount of money to buy an aircraft carrier today and we wanted to know how much it was going to take to purchase an aircraft carrier 5 years from now. Let's assume over the next 5 years we're in the midst of rising inflation. What this would do is create the idea that since the number was the same this year as 5 years from now, hey, we can buy the same number of aircraft carriers. That's not true. You're going to get a quarter of an aircraft carrier, and that isn't going to do anybody any good.

So again, Americans know that when they're comparing dollars and the value of their dollars over time, you have to take into account inflation.

It happens every day in terms of financial transactions all over the country. So, again, this bill doesn't save a penny. This has to do with just how you present the budget in terms of a picture for the American people to look at and whether it's realistic in comparing what you can buy for a dollar today versus what you can buy for a dollar 5 or 10 years from now. And what we're saying is you should compare apples to apples so people know what the purchasing power of those dollars are in terms of goods and services. Then we, as the Congress, can decide whether we want to increase that amount or cut it, as we do every year. But this bill doesn't mandate any kind of cutting of that nature.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from

Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), also a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Again, just for people who are trying to get educated about the budget process who may be watching, and among our colleagues, we put together a 10-year projection of the budget in a lot of different categories. The appropriators on a year-to-year basis can decide how much or how little to give any program, and every Member of this body gets a chance to vote up or down on that. So that's not what this is about. This is not about saving money. I hope we will all save money and get the deficit down. This is about what information is presented in terms of giving an accurate picture of what the cost is of providing goods and services.

So I'm going to give the same example very clearly. Again, it's a very clear example. In fiscal year 2013, we're going to have $61 billion in the budget for discretionary spending for veterans' programs. Now under the current procedure, the Congressional Budget Office tries to figure out 10 years from now, knowing what we do about inflation expectations--and everybody calculates those into their financial decisions--what would it take to provide the same services for our veterans?

Now what they're proposing is to put in $61 billion in year 10. But that's misleading because you're not going to be able to provide the services to our veterans at the same level for that amount. In fact, that will represent a 23 percent cut. So I would ask my colleagues, what 23 percent cut are you proposing to make in veterans' programs as we go through this budget? And why do you want to build in what is misleading in a sense that it creates a false impression of what a dollar will purchase 10 years from now compared to what it will purchase today?

I'd be happy to yield.

Well, thank you. And taking back my time, you really made my point, which is that if the purpose of a budget is to try and provide the most realistic projection of what services we're going to provide in the future compared to today, you should take into account the cost of those increases.

The gentleman has just said that of course we're going to build in inflation with respect to veterans programs. In fact, we're going to do better than that. And I'm glad to hear that because we're going to take into account the fact that medical inflation runs higher than regular inflation. But the point is, if you put different numbers in year 10 that don't take into account inflation, you're going to give people a very misleading sense of what can be purchased for their tax dollars in terms of goods and services.

The same holds true with respect to DOD, in other words, the Defense Department. Why don't we want to present the American people with an accurate representation of what it will actually cost to maintain the current defense or current discretionary veterans programs? That's the whole purpose of this. The Appropriations Committee can do what it wants with respect to decisions in increases and in cuts.

I reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I hear what you're saying with veterans. Absolutely true, on a bipartisan basis, we understand we're going to make sure we support the veterans and we're going to make sure they get the cost-of-living increase. And the reality is, you mentioned the defense budget. That's 50 percent of the discretionary budget right there.

Are we going to make sure that we provide increases to make sure that we can maintain the same national defense?

So here's the point. So you're going to create a document for the American people that says, hey, we're going to be spending this much in year 10 for veterans when we know that that's not true. We know right now, in fact, you've just said on the floor of this House, that number's going to be a lot bigger.

And my point is we can make it bigger, we can make it smaller. This bill

doesn't save a dime in terms of what decisions we make. But why would we want to present the American people with a misleading sense of what it's going to cost in real dollars and cents?

I agree with the Member.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Reclaiming my time, but look, we're doing everything in the light of day. The issue isn't whether it's done in the light of day or not. Of course it's done in the light of day. It's what picture we're presenting to the American people in terms of the budget numbers on what their tax dollars will be able to purchase in terms of goods and services.

And in my view, it's misleading to say we're going to be spending the same nominal dollar amount for veterans 10 years from now in the budget when we know, according to your own testimony and according to what we know, that that's not going to be the case. That's why we try and put together a document that gives us the best representation of the information we have as to what it will cost; then we can make a decision to add or subtract.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Maryland, the distinguished Democratic whip, Mr. Hoyer.

I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, I would inquire if my colleague from Georgia is prepared to close.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think we have had a good debate. There have been a couple of themes. One is that this bill in and of itself, I think everyone acknowledges, won't save the taxpayer one penny. It doesn't do that.

In order to save the taxpayer money and reduce the deficit, we have to make the tough decisions that Mr. Hoyer and Mr. Ryan mentioned. There are obviously disagreements as to how we go about doing that. We've talked about the importance of trying to make sure that as we go forward we have a budget that reflects the values and the priorities of the American people, and one where we are covering our costs. That means paying our bills.

A lot of us believe that in order to do that we've got to get rid of some of the tax breaks for the folks at the very top, that we need to close a lot of the special interest loopholes. That is a very important debate.

The question here is just how we put together an accurate reflection for the American people about our best guess of what I think should be a budget that shows what their taxpayer dollars will purchase in terms of goods and services.

It is a question of measurement. How do you measure what you're going to be able to buy for the American people or buy for our veterans 10 years from now? When you put $61 billion in the budget today, which is what we pay for veterans' health issues and for other veterans' programs in the discretionary budget--and as Mr. Hoyer says, let's pretend we're going to put $61 billion in for that program 10 years from now--that is a cut when you take into account inflation and what we know about the increases.

In fact, Mr. Culberson, from the Appropriations Committee, was here on the floor, and he's absolutely right. He says you can be sure that the appropriators are going to build in inflation. We're going to make sure we take care of that. In fact, we're going to do a little more than that because medical inflation runs higher. If we're trying to give an accurate measure to the American people about what the budget is going to look like every 10 years, why would we put a number a member of the Appropriations Committee said is not going to be realistic and that we know, as we gather here, is not realistic?

If we are going to be serious about budgeting, we need to have the best and most accurate sense of what taxpayer dollars are going to buy in terms of goods and services. What this does, as Mr. Hoyer says, is to play let's pretend. Let's pretend that, for the same nominal amount, you're going to be able to get as much in terms of veterans' health care 10 years from now as you are today. If we do that, the real question to ask up front is: What veterans' services and benefits are we going to cut?

Now, the Appropriations Committee decides each year exactly how much to cut and how much to add. That's why, at the end of the day, this is all a question of the will of this body to make tough decisions; but let's make tough decisions off an accurate measure of what things will cost both now and in the future. In order to do that, we should maintain the existing practice, which shows us exactly what that is, and not create what I think will be a misleading sense that we can get more for our buck than we really can.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I thank my good friend from Georgia for yielding me the time to go forward with discussion of this particular rule.

The rule provides for consideration of both H.R. 3578, which is referred to as the Baseline Reform Act, and H.R. 3582, the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act. Both of these bills, in my opinion, impose convoluted new rules on an already complicated budget process, an attempt to enshrine the majority's ideology into what is supposed to be an objective analysis.

What my friends on the Republican side are presenting as commonsense reforms are actually, in my opinion, nonsense reforms. These budget process changes are mere gimmicks to defend the elimination of spending on essential government services and to dress up tax cuts for those in our society who are well-off in the phony disguise of benefiting average Americans.

These changes tie Congress and the Congressional Budget Office up in knots in an effort to prove that conservatives' ideology about taxes and spending is going to grow our Nation's economy--not creating more jobs, not stimulating demand, not investing in infrastructure or education, or any of the many endeavors that are critical to improving the lives of all Americans.

Rather, what my friends, the Republicans, are trying to do is, in my opinion, create a Frankenstein budget process: add a procedure here, add a little bit of a procedure, sever a rule over there, zap it with some electricity or hyperbole, and now you have a budget process that proves tax cuts for the wealthiest among us are the only way to grow our economy. But guess what? It still ain't human, and it certainly isn't humane.

For the Baseline Reform Act, Mr. Speaker, Republicans propose that the Congressional Budget Office not include annual inflation when making their budget estimates.

When I was a child--10 and 11 years old--we didn't get radio programs very much, but we got radio programs on Saturdays. One of the programs that I enjoyed listening to so much as a little boy, while sitting on the rug in the living room, was ``Let's Pretend.'' I never did know then that I would be here in this august institution, sitting around with people who are pretending in the budget process that inflation doesn't exist when they're making budget estimates.

I talked yesterday with one of my friends on the Rules Committee that I'd been down in Florida and that I'd had a major water issue at my home in Florida. For the last 2 or 3 months, my water bill had been exorbitant, and I couldn't figure out why. Ultimately, this morning, I learned for the first time that there is a substantial leak inside the house, so the plumbers are

there, and I'm already out more than $1,000.

Later on, I'm going to be voting about my salary. Yesterday, I voted about the cost of living for Federal employees. I think we do them a terrible disservice by disallowing them the kinds of increases that take into consideration the exact same kind of things that I and other Members of this House and other people around this Nation are experiencing when it comes to their personal undertakings. We've been without an increase here, and, yes, this Nation is in serious trouble. Yet the people that we tend to attack are the people who are at the lowest end of the scale and the middle class people--the police officers, the firefighters, the schoolteachers--who make $35,000, $40,000. One or two of them, luckily, makes $60,000 a year. What we wind up doing is taking them to task. They have the same plumbing problems that I do. There is inflation, and you can't do a budget without contemplating it; but if you wish to pretend, then I guess that's what we will do is play Let's Pretend.

This seems like a rather mundane technical change, but it isn't. I would be pleased to support this, Mr. Speaker, because it means that, in making my own personal budget projections, I could just simply ignore the costs for everyday items, but I don't know a single thing that I've bought in the last 3 years that has gone down in price. I could just simply ignore the fact that costs for everyday items and activities tend to go up every year, indeed, every month. Around this place, if you're looking at the local gas stations every day, every week, I can just assume that what I'm paying today, if I wanted to, I guess, I could keep paying 10 years from now and still expect the exact same numbers of goods and services.

But, of course, we all know that that isn't true. Simply wishing away or pretending inflation away won't make it so. Fuzzy math does not equal fiscal responsibility. By eliminating inflation adjustments from discretionary spending projections, my friends, the Republicans, are actually just reducing the funding for a Federal program. Since the dollar amount would stay the same every year, the number of services that could be covered would decrease.

This morning, I had the good fortune of having in the office a fine group of safety patrol students from Pleasant City Elementary School in Palm Beach County in West Palm Beach. I was talking with them about the fact that I would be here discussing the budget and how everything affects their lives as well as the lives of all American citizens around this country and that, if we were to allow this budget process to take place, all we will have is a continuing decrease over the long term of things that I may wish for those children at Pleasant City Elementary School or at Cove Elementary, whose counselor was also here. We were discussing the number of teachers who have been laid off and the number of music programs that no longer exist.

So let's just pretend that they don't cost but the same thing at one time, and you will find over the long haul that you'll get these decreases, which will result in massive decreases in essential services like fire services and police services and school teachers that millions, indeed all Americans, rely on.

This technical change then is actually a backdoor effort to slowly starve necessary government programs rather than to be up front about which programs Republicans want to eliminate. The celebrated conservative Grover Norquist made it very clear. H.R. 3578 says that, every year, every program and agency should be assumed to get smaller and smaller automatically. I refer to Mr. Norquist as an ideologue.

He said, ``I'm not in favor of abolishing government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.''

I somehow or another am at odds with that kind of thinking when we're about the business of helping more people, as I explained to the children, who are in the category of the neediest, and here we are protecting the greediest in our society.

This technical change then is actually a backdoor effort to slowly starve necessary government programs rather than to be up front about which programs Republicans want to eliminate. They would rather put sneaky rules into place to guarantee the outcome they want without having to have an open debate. That's the kind of budget process that only Igor, the Frankenstein monster, could love.

Through the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act, Mr. Speaker, Republicans want to introduce dynamic scoring into the CBO's projection process. Once again, this seems like a minor technical change; but when you look closely, you see that this is an effort to zap electricity into Igor- the-monster-budget, which in the final analysis is tax cuts for those of us in society who are better off and for the wealthier even among that class.

Under this bill, the CBO's analyses are tweaked so that tax cuts for the wealthy seem like they grow the economy while actual investments in the needs of everyday Americans do not. Republicans make it easier to cut taxes for those of us who are well off and for those of us who are rich than to build bridges and schools for the rest of us.

This bill specifically instructs the CBO to ignore the positive economic effects that would come about from investments in things like infrastructure and education, as if spending on things that Americans want and need won't boost the economy. They would have us pretend. The CBO has already projected that extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest among us would actually reduce growth in the long run; but rather than face the facts, Republicans simply want to change the rules so that this analysis is turned upside down.

My friends on the Republican side have been so concerned about building actual bridges to nowhere that they've turned the budget process into its own kind of bridge to nowhere. Rather than using the budget process to lead this country into a new era of economic growth, my friends on the other side of the aisle want to cut taxes for very wealthy people, cut programs for everyone else, and then feel like they've set this country on the right track. This is no way to run an economy, no way to run a budget process, and no way to stick up for millions of struggling Americans who need us to focus on improving the economy.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Would the gentleman yield?

Well, now guessing, then why are we mandating 40 years? How in the world are we going to guess and have them predict what 40 years are going to look like?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to my good friend, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.

I yield the gentleman 15 additional seconds.

I'm prepared to close, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I genuinely enjoy working with my good friend from Georgia (Mr. Woodall). He not only brings passion to the job, but an extraordinary intellect. We serve together there on the Rules Committee.

And I don't mean to make light of the fact of what he just got through saying about our telling the American public that we know that there are no large amounts of funds available because we--and I like the fact that he said ``we''--put things off, but I can't ignore the fact that a large part of that putting things off came about by virtue of our being in Iraq and Afghanistan and spending $1 trillion with borrowed money that we did not have and not going to the American people and asking that we sacrifice to pay for them. Seventy-five billion of it came from passing a Medicare prescription plan that we did not pay for. And there are other measures--and I can cite what the Democrats and Republicans are fond of saying and what my mother said to me, which was true. When she was alive, she said, well, if Clinton is going to blame Bush and Bush is going to blame Carter and Carter is going to blame Nixon, why don't you all just blame George Washington and get it all over with if you keep pointing back to somebody else.

But now the rubber has hit the road. With these two bills, Mr. Speaker, my friends on the other side want to drastically reduce essential government programs and, second, to enshrine tax cuts--and I don't like talking about the rich, as it were. My ultimate plan would call for all of us that are better off to try and do everything we can to help those who are vulnerable in our society and those who are the neediest in our society. But there are those who are in the super category that have not been paying the kind of taxes that many of us pay. You have to put this stuff in real terms.

Last year, I paid $41,000 in income taxes. If people don't believe that, I'll bring my taxes down here and show it to them sometime. Now, I don't have investments. I don't have offshore bank accounts. I don't have any stock and any bonds, but the simple fact of the matter is a lot of Americans are in the same category as myself. But they want to give tax cuts to those who are wealthy, who paid less than I did and less than people making $50,000 did. And to my way of thinking, that's just not fair, and that's all that America is looking for is a level playing field, not one that gives the wealthiest more and the poor less.

If they achieve these changes, they'll succeed in creating a budget process that overwhelmingly favors tax cuts

for those that are wealthier while creating near impossible hurdles for ordinary programs to keep pace with the rate of inflation and, thus, stay in business, while Republicans cry that it's still alive. Millions of other Americans will still be struggling to find jobs, to pay off their students loans, to access affordable health care and decent housing, and to survive in an economy that favors those who have the most rather than those who have the least, favors those who are the greediest rather than those who are the neediest.

Dr. Frankenstein was eventually repulsed by the monster that he created. These technical changes to the budget process are equally repulsive, for they add up to a system of government spending that is helpful to those who need it the least and harmful to those who need it the most.

Tying our hands in convoluted knots in order to advance a conservative ideology is not the way to run an honest, objective, transparent, and open budget process. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' against this rule.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the previous question amendment in the Record along with the extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, Chris Van Hollen from Maryland, for yielding.

I, unfortunately, have not been able to listen to all of the debate, but I've listened to enough of it. This week we're playing let's pretend. We're playing the game of let's pretend that if we solve the process, we'll solve the problem.

There's an excellent article that I think everybody ought to read. Stan Collender, who is a real expert on the budget process and who has been involved in this budget process for a long, long period of time, quotes in an article that he wrote--that I hope most of you read--in Roll Call. He quotes Rudy Penner. Rudy Penner was the Director of CBO-- not a partisan individual, in my view--that I've had the opportunity of dealing with for some period of time. And his quote is: A process, no matter how well designed, cannot make difficult problems easy.

I think my friend, Paul Ryan, would agree with that. It's not the process that's the problem. The problem is we don't have the courage to make decisions which are clearly necessary for us to make, and no amount of jiggering around the edges is going to change that.

Now, as all of you know, I'm a strong supporter of a Bowles-Simpson approach to bringing our country to a fiscally sustainable path. Unlike many of you, I believe that revenues have to be part of that process and cuts have to be part of that process and restraints of entitlements have to be part of that process. I've been saying that for 2\1/2\ years now. It's somewhat controversial, but I have three children, three grandchildren, two great-grandchildren. If we don't do that, they're going to be hurting.

But, frankly, we ought not to pretend that the process is the problem. The problem is the problem, as Rudy Penner's said. The problem is the problem, and we ought to address it. And we ought to have the courage to tell the American people that it's not a question of process, not a question that we don't have the right process in place in Washington. The problem is we don't have the votes in Washington.

This Congress is dysfunctional. That doesn't mean we don't pass things. We do. But this week, frankly, what we're dealing with will not affect any of the significant problems that we have, whether it be jobs or fiscal responsibility.

So I'm opposed to this bill. Why? Because I think it's a let's pretend. It's a let's pretend that if you have $100 to spend on defense this year, that you can get that same defense for $100 next year. You can't.

You can't, and the American public knows that.

We talk about, well, we ought to operate like a family. Family understands that. They know their electricity bill goes up, and they know they can't get the same kind of heat this year or next year that they got last year because they know their electric bill has gone up, and they need to know what that is.

So what we said, the Congress said, we want a baseline budget. What does it cost to get that $100 of value next year? And so we get that.

The previous speaker I heard speaking--I don't know who it was; I apologize for that--said, you know, we ought to have an honest budget. Well, you can argue it's honest both ways. Either it's honest that that's what we spent last year, 100 bucks, or it's honest that, in order to do next year what we did last year, you need $101.50. Both of those are honest answers. Nobody ought to think that that's a dishonest answer.

The answer is: Do you want to know what you spent last year? Look at the budgets. Do you want to know what it would cost you to do the same thing? Then you get the baseline. So either one is honest. It's just a judgment.

But you're pretending that you're saving money by having that kind of budget. Baloney. Baloney. The only way you're going to save money is to have the courage to vote to do so.

My friend, Paul Ryan, is shaking his head. He and I have some significant disagreements, but very great respect, I hope, for one another. I know I have great respect for him.

I think we are advantageous as a country having Mr. Van Hollen and Mr. Ryan, who are both very bright, able, committed people dealing with this. The trick is coming to agreement irrespective of process. It's substance that matters. The American public will be affected by the substantive judgments we make, not about whether we do it with a baseline budget or a static budget or dynamic scoring.

I don't believe in dynamic scoring. I think dynamic scoring is a liberal, radical idea. Why? Because it pretends something you don't know.

George Bush said we had $5.6 trillion we could rely on and therefore have very deep tax cuts. Didn't work out. I would much prefer to not use dynamic scoring and have more money than I thought I was going to have that I could apply either to reduction of the deficit or some other priority that I thought was important, rather than find out, oops, I was wrong on dynamic scoring, I have less money and I'm deeper in the hole. Now, you can differ on that, but that's my view.

I'd rather be conservative and say, Gee, I hope investing in infrastructure, cutting taxes, doing whatever you think is going to get better education is going to get you better results; I hope it does get better results. That's the purpose of investing in it. If it does, you're benefited if you didn't count on it because you have more than you thought you would. That's the place to be, not having less than you thought you would.

So I urge my colleagues to reject this bill, to adopt reality. It cost us to do this yesterday, and now it cost us to do it today. I think that's a responsible, smart way to budget.

I thank the gentleman for yielding this time. I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for your light touch.

Will the gentleman yield?

I was just going to kid him that he's just now trying to get to things that we can all agree on.

Will my friend yield?

I thank my friend for yielding.

Frankly, this issue is of such importance, it is a shame we don't have a lot of time to discuss it because I think in many respects we do agree.

Where we disagree, however, is when you say that body that is dysfunctional--the gentleman just referred to that. I kidded about it. Both parties are dysfunctional to the extent that we are not making determinations to spend just the money we have. We haven't done that for some period of time.

Yes. Not spending money we don't have.

From my perspective, we did that when we cut taxes. We didn't pay for that. It wasn't like we had a real surplus. We had a projected surplus. We banked on that; and as I said earlier, we lost on that proposition.

I suggest that whether or not, as I said, you use what you think is the bias towards not spending as opposed to a bias for spending, as someone who served on the Appropriations Committee for 23 years, we all know what will happen. The agency will come in and say this is what we are doing for 100 bucks, and this year we need 150 if you want us to continue to do that.

My point is the Congress has the authority to say, no, we want you to do less. It is the Congress' role to make priorities. I suggest to the gentleman it won't be easier for us to do it under either scenario because it is hard to do. I agree with the gentleman that we ought to do it.

I simply don't think this bill or any other bill will get us to that end if we do not have the courage and, your word, ``discipline,'' to effect that end.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

I am.

Mr. Speaker, this is the final amendment to this bill. It will not kill the bill, and it won't send it back to committee. If adopted, we will then vote on the passage of the bill, as amended.

When families in my district and across the country sit around the kitchen table to try to balance their budgets, they know that costs don't stay the same every year. They know the price of milk and gas and college and health care all go up. Yet H.R. 3578, left unamended, holds the budgetary baseline constant instead of allowing it to reflect increases in costs, making simple inflation adjustments look like increases in spending.

Ignoring increases in costs will dramatically lower program levels in the baseline. Translated, this means that the priorities we support to help sustain the middle class and those aspiring to it, the programs we pay our taxes to support, will be cut as inflation eats into the accounts set in the budget.

The Republican majority argues that America's middle class must make even more sacrifices to address our debt. The majority's mantra is that austerity alone, spending cuts focused only on nondefense discretionary domestic spending with no additional revenue and without closing any special interest tax loopholes, is all they think should be done.

Never mind that it's largely their policies enforced under the last administration, aided and abetted by the then-Federal Reserve Board chairman, that were largely responsible for the debt situation. Never mind that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has since testified that this was wrong, that his ``unconstrained free market'' ``winner- take-all'' theory had never worked in his 80-plus-year life span. Never mind that in the 1970s, we used to spend 5 percent of our national income on discretionary domestic spending, like education, job training, health, research, veterans, and infrastructure; but more recently, we've already pared that back to 2.5 percent.

With this bill, the majority tries to balance the budget on the backs of workers, middle class families, small businesses, and society's most challenged. They refuse to consider a fair distribution of our tax obligations. They even refuse to close special interest tax loopholes.

This bill, if not amended, chooses shielding the extraordinarily well-off from any fair share of taxes over sustaining Pell Grants, student assistance promising opportunity to families. It chooses allowing hedge fund managers the benefit of especially low tax rates over Meals on Wheels for seniors. And it chooses special tax credits to the mature, extremely profitable oil and gas companies over providing the security of housing for homeless veterans returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The austerity-only approach to addressing their largely self-induced debt is not the smart response to our economy's needs. We need to deal with our economic situation in a smart way, as attested by the majority of economists from all across the political divide. We need a gradual approach, balanced between spending cuts and revenue increases fairly distributed. Those need to be appropriately targeted in amount, share and time, not applied in bludgeon fashion like this bill on the floor today.

Choking off the middle class by cutting spending for education, health,

jobs, job training, research, senior care, and our obligations to veterans is shortsighted. Studies and reports from international and national economists tell us that a vibrant middle class is essential for the well-being of our economy; imperative for businesses so they have customers for their goods and services; important to employers so they have the next generation of innovators, inventors, scientists, teachers, engineers, and a generally capable workforce; and important to families and individuals as they seek personal and economic security.

We shouldn't need to argue the moral imperative of meeting our obligations to those suffering from debilitating health conditions and the families that support them; to the care of our seniors, especially those aged, alone and poor; nor to our duty to our military forces, especially the wounded and disabled.

Left as is, this bill is a step to undoing all the progress, however slow, so far made in moving from the near depression caused by the failed policies of 2001-2008. Simply cutting spending on the middle class, at the same time businesses and families have been forced to limit spending, and just as municipalities and the States are trimming back, just adds to the downward spiral of fewer customers for our businesses, less growth for our economy, more layoffs, and on and on in a repeating circle.

Make no mistake, this bill, if not amended, makes the dream of post- high school certificates or degrees or acquired job skills more remote for many; makes the visit of a neighbor and delivery of perhaps the day's only warm meal for seniors less likely; means research on debilitating health conditions or diseases may be delayed, and the cure of cancers a more distant goal; and consigns our veterans to longer periods of homelessness and more difficulty getting the services they need to get a job.

This amendment would allow the effects of inflation to be factored into the budgetary baseline so as to avoid automatic cuts in purchasing power that would otherwise result from this bill. Passing this amendment allows us to at least start on a path to the kind of America most of us envision, or at least it lessens the obstacles to that America that are thrown up by this legislation in its current form.

Let's pass this amendment and start down a path that recalls what makes this country exceptional, the notion that everyone, no matter what economic or social condition one is born into, should have an equal opportunity to reach our goals; to an America reflecting that its people should shoulder and will shoulder any burden, suffer any sacrifice, if shared fairly.

Let's pass this amendment and add back at least a modest degree of balance and fairness.

Mr. Speaker, I would hope that for those who count on us to be fair and just, or to make smart, targeted, and balanced approaches to our complex challenges, we could at least do that.

I urge support of this amendment, and yield back the balance of my time.