Congressman Davis Votes No on Misleading PAYGO Bill
Washington,
Jul 22 -
Washington, D.C. — Today, Congressman Geoff Davis voted against H.R. 2920, the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act. The bill passed the House by a vote of 265 to 166.
Upon passage, Congressman Davis stated, “Since the Democrats took control of Congress on January 3, 2007, the national debt has increased by nearly three trillion dollars while the national unemployment rate has reached 9.5 percent. Last month, the budget deficit for fiscal year 2009 surpassed the one trillion dollar mark, and some estimates project that the final deficit for the year could approach two trillion dollars. The title of this bill is deceptive; the legislation includes countless loopholes and completely exempts forty percent of the federal budget from these rules. This legislation makes it easier to raise taxes and does not force Congress to make the same tough budget choices American families are forced to make every day. The American people deserve a more honest approach to fiscal responsibility in Washington than H.R. 2920.”
‘Pay-as-you-go’ is a concept that says that Congress should off-set increased spending in one area by either reducing spending in another or by increasing taxes. However, the loopholes included in H.R. 2920 provide Congress with numerous ways to continue skirting the rules, just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has done for the past two and a half years. Despite paying lip service to the concept of PAYGO, Democrats have only applied it to two percent of all federal spending so far in 2009.
Additionally, the Democrats’ PAYGO bill does not:
- limit unsustainable entitlement spending growth that will occur under current law;
- impose any limit at all on federal budget deficits;
- prevent legislation that increases the federal debt limit— which Congress has done four times since a House PAYGO rule was adopted two and a half years ago;
- impose any limit at all on how much the federal debt can grow;
- prevent Congress from waiving PAYGO by designating spending as “emergency”;
- impose any limit at all on the federal government’s unfunded obligations; or
- require any reforms that would put the federal budget on a sustainable course. CBO, GAO, and many other objective analysts have concluded that the long-term federal budget outlook is unsustainable if the federal budget is simply left on auto-pilot (the maximum constraint PAYGO ever imposes).
House Republicans offered a better solution. Led by House Budget Committee Ranking Member Paul Ryan (R-WI), Republicans offered an alternative that would require that federal spending cannot grow faster than the economy, establish a cap on discretionary spending, reject the practice of chasing higher spending with higher taxes, and reduce deficits. House Democrats rejected this common-sense alternative by a vote of 196 to 234.
