John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) who has been a prime mover behind this bill and is the originator of the idea that it should not be a 5 or 10-year bill, but a permanent law.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen).

Mr. SPRATT. Let me simply respond by saying, I'm glad to bring this to the floor. I voted for it in the past, saw it work, and I think it's going to work again. As I said, it's not a panacea, but it's a useful device to have in our arsenal of weapons to deal with the recession we're in. By the way, the recession that we're in, which has caused us to suffer a huge swelling in the deficit, started in December of 2007, on the Bush watch. Wall Street fell apart in September of 2008. The TARP program was initiated in response to that. That too happened during the Bush watch. We're in the backwash of many fiscal policies and economic policies which happened on their watch, and we're now suffering the consequences of them. I now yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bishop).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd).

Mr. SPRATT. I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz), the vice chairman of our committee.

Mr. SPRATT. We have one more speaker, and then I will close. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Let me respond to some arguments that have been made and not responded to during the course of this argument. First of all, the sequestration base, the programs which are subject to across-the-board cuts or abatement in the event that there is a deficit on the scorecard, why is that a narrow selection of programs? Because it's a cross section of programs purposely intended to reach a number of different constituent groups so that we will not use sequestration. Neither the President nor the Congress would want to use a meat cleaver like that. We've said, knowing that it could happen if we defaulted in doing anything else, young people, old people, farmers, miners, a huge cross section of our constituencies are represented in that sequestration base to make it certain, clear that we would never resort to that particular base for making across-the-board cuts to put PAYGO back in balance. Secondly, there's been repeated talk about, You passed PAYGO in the last Congress and look what happened. The truth of the matter is our Republican colleagues have never wanted to vote for PAYGO because it was always double-edged the way we proposed it. Double-edged meant yes, it would apply to mandatory spending increases, but it would also apply to tax cuts, because both have an adverse impact on the deficit bottom line. They would never vote for the second edge, the double-edged sword, and consequently they have to come up with another explanation as to why they do not support it. So they fall back on the economy itself. Look what happened to the economy after the adoption of the PAYGO rule in the 110th Congress. But, come on. This is a case where we have a coincidence, maybe, but not a correlation. The PAYGO rule had nothing to do with what happened to the economy. The Bush administration's economic and fiscal policies had a lot to do with what happened to the economy. The fact that the Bush administration inherited a projected surplus of $565.6 trillion and turned it into a projected deficit of $3 trillion had an impact on the economy. The addition of $5 trillion to $6 trillion to our national debt had an impact on our economy. And don't forget the recession officially started during the Bush administration, December 2007. That's when it started. And when it really got bad, when Wall Street nearly went under in September and October of 2008, that, too, was the Bush administration. And we voted up the TARP, and that's one of the reasons--the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a $700 billion program. When we voted that up, the Bush administration was still in office. So there's the answer to the charge that somehow or another the PAYGO rule didn't do anything to affect the economic situation we find ourselves in. The reason we are seeing the largest deficits in the history is we're in the longest recession since the Great Depression. It's had a profound impact on us. The incubation of those conditions occurred during the Bush administration. So, Mr. Speaker, the facts stand. All during the 1990s, when we had the budget process rules in place, they contributed mightily. We had a good budget and the convergence of a good economy, and we put the budget back in balance by the year 1998. The facts speak for themselves, and facts are stubborn things. The budget process rules worked before. They will work again, if we vote for the statutory PAYGO.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment and yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, so that everyone will understand, what the gentleman is proposing is that we rewrite the budget resolution, which we wrote and passed in both the House and Senate months ago, to go back to square one and basically begin all over again because we will have to change 302(a) and all the work we've done to get the appropriation bills passed by the end of July. We would have to go back and take at least $48 billion out of all those bills to comply with the numbers that Mr. Ryan proposes in his alternative budget resolution today. I will have to say that when I told Mr. Ryan we were not going to have a hearing, that we were not going to have a markup, we were going to bring this matter straight to the floor, I also told him out of a sense of fairness that he could have a substitute, that I would support a substitute. He deserves one. I had no idea that he would offer a brand-new budget resolution as a substitute. I thought it would be a substitute, maybe a cap on discretionary spending. So this came as a surprise. There is a cap on discretionary spending here; but as I read it, there is no cap, there is no PAYGO provision. He has left it out of there completely. That's the way we read over here. I can't find anything in there. In addition, I thought ours was pretty dense; and then I read some of your draftsmanship, if I can share with everyone. Try this on: The percentage required to produce a spending reduction, as ordered by a spending reduction order, shall be calculated by OMB by adding all budgetary resources of the government, and reducing that amount by an amount sufficient to reduce the total amount of outlays of the government to equal, or lower, a level of outlays than the amount set forth in the guideline period. If we are dense, this is turgid, I am telling you. I'm not quite sure what this says, except that it does propose a new budget resolution. It would become a statutory budget resolution if we passed it as part of this particular bill because this is----

Mr. SPRATT. I will.

Mr. SPRATT. It is similar to the PAYGO rule here.

Mr. SPRATT. You set levels for all of those things and then also provide--I believe if they turn out to be wrong, if we had a downturn in the economy and wanted to change those numbers, you would have to have a two-thirds vote in each House in order to do that.

Mr. SPRATT. That loads some cumbersome conditions on the House or the Senate if we find ourselves faced with economic reversal.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Schrader).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Baron Hill.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to yield to the Speaker of the House, the gentlewoman from California, Madam Speaker (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Massachusetts (Ms. Tsongas).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes).

Mr. SPRATT. I plan to use the time left, and Mr. Hoyer will speak as well and share part of the time.

Mr. SPRATT. If I may inquire of the Chair, how much time is remaining?