Legislative Program

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comments.

Obviously, the health care bill that he and his party seek to repeal had probably more consideration, more open debate, more transparency, more amendments, and more hearings than almost any bill that I have considered as a Member of this Congress over the last three decades--full and open consideration, amendments offered from both sides in committee on a very ample basis; but I am glad to hear that you agree that there has been ample debate time for that. There has not been any debate time in committees--or amendments--on the repeal of that law.

I am certainly hopeful that the gentleman does not mean to say that if the majority party concludes that the American people have already decided on the issue that that will be the exception to the rule that you have put forth in terms of full and ample notice, debate, the amendment process, and transparency. I would certainly hope that that would not be the case. I don't expect it will be the case, and I hope it won't be.

Let me say in addition that I am very pleased that the majority party allowed in order the amendment by Mr. Matheson. As you know, we tried to have a permanent fix to the reimbursement of doctors who took Medicare patients. Unfortunately, the minority party in the Senate, which had the opportunity to do that, precluded us from accomplishing that objective. So I am pleased. That needs to be done. We need to have a stable funding expectation by doctors when they provide services to Medicare patients--to seniors--as we want them to do and as we want them to continue to do. So I am pleased that you allowed that amendment, and I would hope Members on your side will be supporting that amendment as we will on this side.

Let me ask you now, Mr. Majority Leader, as I am very concerned, and I expressed this on the floor. Your rules, in my view, provide for some $5 trillion to be incurred in additional deficits. They allow that because you have exempted almost all of the possible reductions in revenues--tax cuts, reductions in revenues--notwithstanding no reduction in spending. Well, if you reduce revenues and you don't reduce spending commensurately, inevitably, you will create large deficits, which inevitably will be paid by future generations.

That has been the experience that, again, I have had when we had significant tax cuts in the 1980s and in the last decade of 2000--2001 to 2003--when we created very large deficits.

My presumption is that you will be finding commensurate reductions in spending to your tax cuts that you will want to continue. If you don't do that, deficits will inevitably follow. The majority party has not done that in years past. Is it your expectation that that will occur in the future?

The question I want to ask you as well is that you have provided in your rules for essentially ignoring CBO scores--the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which has issued a preliminary score for the Republican Patients' Bill of Rights. They believe it will increase the deficit by $230 billion in the first 10 years by repeal and $1.2 trillion in the second 10 years.

My question is: Having deemed in the rule today a provision allowing the chair of the Budget Committee, Mr. Ryan, to ignore the CBO score, will the majority continue to ignore CBO scores on legislation for the rest of Congress or will we be fiscally responsible, in my view, and adhere to the advice and counsel we receive from CBO?

I yield to my friend.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HOYER. I want to say to my friend, the continuing rhetoric is Washington doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. Americans in every family that I know understand that their revenues directly impact on their spending and vice versa, and if they don't, they have a real problem. If they don't have enough revenue to meet their expenditures, they've got a problem, and if their spending exceeds their revenue, they have a problem.

I tell my friend, I understand what you're saying, and I've heard this rhetoric all of my career here in the Congress. When President Reagan was President, we never overrode a Presidential veto of an appropriation bill because it spent too much. If he vetoed it, it spent too much, he never had a veto overridden. Nevertheless, we incurred an additional $1.5 trillion in deficits. Under President George H.W. Bush, we didn't override any veto of his, and we incurred an additional $1 trillion. That was $2.5 trillion plus.

Under the Clinton administration, of course, in the economic program as you and I both know that your party universally opposed, we had a surplus, the only President in your lifetime and I think in mine, which is substantially longer, that's had 4 years of surplus. Now, I know you say, the response that Mr. Dreier gave to me, is that, well, yes, we took over the Congress in 1995. That's correct. And of course not only did you take over the Congress in 1995, but in 2000, you took over the Presidency as well and controlled the House and the Senate and the Presidency.

And during that period of time, we didn't pass any appropriation bills on our side. You were in full charge during the Bush administration's first six years, and $3.5 trillion of deficit spending was incurred, making a total of over $5 trillion of deficit spending during the time that your party took the position that we didn't have a revenue problem, we had a spending problem.

Well, it ended up being a $5 trillion deficit problem, adding to the deficit for our children and for my grandchildren and for my great-granddaughter, and I'm concerned about that. And that is why I'm so concerned about statutory PAYGO, sticking with CBO scores, and accommodating our spending and revenue. They are both related, obviously, and to ignore that eliminating revenue without eliminating spending does cause deficits I think is to ignore reality.

So I would hope my friend would talk to Mr. Ryan of the Budget Committee and bring us legislation which would, in fact, do what you and I want to do; that is, eliminate the deficit. If we've got two messages during this past election, in my view, it was, A, focus on creating jobs. We've got to get to work. Americans are hurting. We had some good job numbers this month. We've created over 1.3 million jobs this past year as opposed to losing almost 4 million jobs in the last year of the Bush administration. That's progress. But as I've said so often, it's not success. Success will be when every American who wants a job, willing to work, can find a job, and they can support him or her and their families.

But we need to not pretend that revenues and spending are not inextricably related, and that if we give up revenues before we do the difficult thing, the tough thing, the adult thing, as Mr. Boehner said, and cut the spending, then cut the revenues if Americans are buying it, then we ought to be paying for it and not passing along the bill to our grandchildren, and I would hope the gentleman would pursue that.

If the gentleman wants to respond to that, I want to say something about health care briefly.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HOYER. I appreciate the gentleman's comment, and briefly in closing, Madam Speaker, let me say this. I hope we can cooperate, but we do have a divergence, as my friend pointed out, and that's of course the nature of what the House of Representatives does, debates different points of view. Frankly, my experience, as I have said, is that when we diverged in a point of view in 1993, when my Republican friends took the position that accommodating revenues to spending would, in fact, from their perspective, be a job killer--they talk a lot about job-killing legislation. They all voted against that legislation in 1993, and in fact, some of my colleagues on my side of the aisle lost their election because of voting for that piece of legislation. In fact, however, it helped create the most robust economy anybody in this Chamber has experienced in their lifetime. It created over 22 million jobs, as opposed to losing 8 million jobs in the last administration under President Bush, so that there was a substantial difference which you can see, touch, and feel and read about and know about.

So I tell my friend, yes, there's a difference of opinion, but there's no difference of opinion on what happened, and when Winston Churchill, who you quoted before and of whom I'm a great fan, one of the things that Winston Churchill was most known for was trying to remind his British friends: don't forget what dictators and despots do--and I make no aspersions, I want to make that clear. I'm simply saying he believed strongly in learning from the past and not continuing to make mistakes and not continue to do what failed in years before.

So I agree with the gentleman in looking at the past for instruction on how to make the future better and to create those jobs that both he and I want to create and that America certainly is looking for us to create.

I thank the gentleman for this colloquy.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source