HOUSE Republican Leader John Boehner

Congressional Budget Office Report: Democrats Spend Too Much, Tax Too Much, and Borrow Too Much

Since the start of this year, Democrats have spent money with reckless abandon: first, they passed a $1 trillion “stimulus” that has yet to create any jobs; next, they pushed through a $410 billion omnibus spending bill that contained 9,000 earmarks and raised government spending by nearly 10 percent; and then they jammed a $3.6 trillion budget through the Congress that will double the national debt in five years and triple it in ten.  As if all of that wasn’t enough, just last week the House passed a national energy tax that will punish every American who flips on a light switch or drives a car, and will cost two and a half million Americans their jobs each year.

Last week, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a largely unnoticed report entitled, “The Long-Term Budget Outlook.”  The report notes that: “Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path- meaning that federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run.”  

Earlier this year, the House Budget Committee Republican Staff put together a chart illustrating the unsustainable path the President and his Democratic allies in Congress have put America on:

(under the Democrats’ budget, the debt to GDP ratio will soon exceed 100 percent of our economy, a higher level of debt than even during World War II.)

The Washington Post  noted in an editorial on Sunday that:

To put it bluntly, the fiscal policy of the United States is unsustainable.  Debt is growing faster than gross domestic product.  Under the CBO’s most realistic scenario, the publicly held debt of the U.S. government will reach 82 percent of GDP by 2019 — roughly double what it was in 2008.  By 2026, spiraling interest payments would push the debt above its all-time peak (set just after World War II) of 113 percent of GDP.  It would reach 200 percent of GDP in 2038.

Why should Americans be concerned about the projected $1 trillion-a-year deficits the President’s budget calls for?  The CBO report explains that:

Large budget deficits would reduce national saving, leading to more borrowing from abroad and less domestic investment, which in turn would depress income growth in the United States.  Over time, the accumulation of debt would seriously harm the economy.

And although Democrats blame their reckless spending and budget woes on the current recession, the CBO report states that Democrats are only making the problem worse: “the current recession has little effect on long-term projections of noninterest spending and revenues.”

At a time when unemployment has exceeded 10 percent in many parts of the country, when the jobs the President and Democrats in Congress promised haven’t materialized, and when “71% of Americans are cutting back on their spending and 88% saying they are watching their spending very closely,” as Gallup reported this week, the American people should expect better from their government than to spend money we don’t have on programs that aren’t working. 

House Republicans have consistently proposed better solutions: from a real stimulus package that would have created twice as many jobs at half the cost, to a budget alternative that limits the growth of government while spurring job creation, to an all of the above energy strategy that would increase American energy production in an environmentally-safe way, encourage the use of alternatives such as nuclear and clean-coal energy, and promote new technologies and efficiencies.

As House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said during the national energy tax debate, “The American people expect more of us.  And you know what?  They deserve a lot more from us.”

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My Response to President Obama on National Journal’s Energy Blog

Yesterday President Obama delivered remarks at the White House in support of Speaker Pelosi’s national energy tax, which House Democrats narrowly passed last Friday. In response, I posted the following on National Journal’s energy blog:

The President likes to say this “cap-and-trade” bureaucratic nightmare is a jobs bill, and he did so again today.  But this comes from the same Administration that said its trillion-dollar “stimulus bill” would keep unemployment from going over 8 percent.  This is a jobs bill alright - for China and India.  Here in the United States, it will destroy 2.3 to 2.7 million jobs each year.

Let’s call it for what it is: a huge tax that will punish middle-class families by will raising gasoline and electricity costs.  Even prominent Obama supporter Warren Buffett calls it a “huge” and “regressive” tax.

It creates a slew of new government programs to take and redistribute trillions of dollars from families and small businesses, overseen by a confusing web of government agencies that will ultimately answer to the Environmental Protection Agency.  Even my Democratic colleague from Minnesota, Rep. Collin Peterson, admitted in the Washington Post last Friday that: “The truth is, nobody knows for sure how this is going to work.”  How encouraging.  That night, I went to the House floor and spent an hour raising serious questions about the bill - questions that no one in the House could answer, because the bill was substantially amended at 3 AM, meaning that not one single Member of Congress actually read it. 

Republicans believe there is a better route to clean energy and a clean environment than the national energy tax that passed the House passed on Friday night, and we have introduced legislation embodying our “all-of-the-above” energy reform strategy.  Our American Energy Act will increase environmentally-responsible production of American energy, promote the use of alternative fuels to reduce carbon emissions, such as clean coal and nuclear, and encourage increased efficiencies and cutting edge technologies to maximize America’s energy potential.

Our plan is also the fastest route to a cleaner, more reliable energy future,  by reinvesting billions of the royalties from increased American energy production into development and expanded us of clean, alternative energy across our country like wind, solar, and geothermal, just to name a few.  It’s a strategy that will create American jobs instead of destroying them; one that will lower costs for American families and small businesses rather than raising them at a time of economic hardship.  Unfortunately, Democratic leaders did not allow a vote on our plan.  Instead, they chose an approach that will ensure higher costs and higher taxes for every middle-class family and small business owner.

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Boehner: Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Be the Defining Vote of This Congress

Last Friday, the House narrowly passed Speaker Pelosi’s 1,500 page national energy tax.  At 3:09 am the morning of the vote, House Democrats dropped a 300-page amendment to their massive energy tax legislation.  Clearly, House Democrats didn’t want the American people to understand the true impact of their national energy tax.  So House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) took to the House floor and read portions of it to the American people, explaining how it would raise electricity prices, increase gasoline prices, and ship American jobs overseas to countries like China and India.

The full transcript of Leader Boehner’s remarks are as follows:

Mr. BOEHNER. My colleagues, we’ve been through a very difficult time in our economy. We’ve had the great economic shocks of last fall, and we’ve seen unemployment climbing month after month after month. It is now at some 9.4 percent.

Earlier this year we passed a 1,100-page bill that no one read. It was supposed to be about putting the American people back to work again. It was supposed to be about stimulating our economy. And all we heard during that debate was about jobs, jobs and jobs. It’s pretty clear that what the bill really ended up being was nothing more than spending, spending and more spending, because since that bill passed, some 1.7 million Americans have lost their jobs. So when we look at the legislation that continues to go through here, the American people are seeing an awful lot of spending, an awful lot of money going to government, but they’re not seeing new jobs.

Now we come to what I believe is the most profound piece of legislation that has come to the floor of this House in the last 100 years. It’s hard to say in the first 6 months of the new Congress that this could be the defining vote and the defining bill for this Congress, but I really, truly believe that this is the defining bill.

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Newspapers Blast Pelosi’s National Energy Tax as a Job-Killing Attack on the Middle Class

This afternoon, the House is slated to vote on Speaker Pelosi’s job-killing energy tax.  In a press briefing yesterday, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said: “Mark my words: The American people are going to remember this vote.  This will be a defining moment and a defining vote in this Congress.” 

Newspapers across America have ripped into Speaker Pelosi’s energy tax this week, slamming it as a bill that will raise electricity prices, increase gasoline prices, and ship American jobs overseas to countries like China and India.  A roundup of newspaper editorials from across America follows:

The Denver Post:

The debate on such a transformative issue ought to continue and broaden.  How is it possible the 1,200-page American Clean Energy and Security Act is being rushed through Congress in a repeat of what happened with the stimulus package?  Has anyone read this one?…

Largely left out of the current debate are questions about nuclear power.  House Republicans say reducing CO2 depends on more atomic development.  And for good reason.  Nuclear power generation produces zero greenhouses gases and the technology far outpaces renewables like wind and solar in the amount of electricity it can add to the grid.”

Investor’s Business Daily:

Not since a misguided piece of legislation imposed tariffs that turned a recession into a depression has there been a piece of legislation as bad as Waxman-Markey.  The 1,000-plus-page American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is being rushed to a vote by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before anyone can seriously object to this economic suicide pact.

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Rep. Camp Highlights Staggering Cost of the Democrats’ Government Takeover of Health Care

Yesterday, during a Ways and Means Committee hearing on health care reform, ranking member Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) highlighted a recent independent, non-partisan analysis by the HSI Network which pegged the cost of the House Democrats’ government-run health care bill at a staggering $3.5 trillion dollars.  The study also said that the Democrats’ bill would force 64 million Americans to lose their current health care coverage.

Fox News covered the story on “Special Report w/ Bret Baier” last night:

At his press briefing today, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) commented on the ongoing health care reform battle:

On health care, the president again last night attempted to sell the Democrats’ government takeover of our health care system.  And even the president’s backtracking on his claim that Americans can keep the coverage that they have…

I don’t think Americans want a big government-run program.  They don’t want their care rationed.  And they clearly don’t think they should be paying more…Most Americans think they’re already spending too much on health care, and even the president said, you know, the problem with health care is we’re spending too much.

Leader Boehner also noted that: “Republicans have a common-sense proposal that will help reduce costs, help ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health insurance.”  The principles of the House Republican health care plan, developed by the House GOP Health Care Solutions Group chaired by Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), include five pillars:

• Make quality health care coverage affordable and accessible for every American, regardless of pre-existing health conditions.
• Protect Americans from being forced into a new government-run health care plan that would eliminate the health care coverage that more than 100 million Americans currently receive through their job.
• Let Americans who like their health care coverage keep it, and give all Americans the freedom to choose the health plan that best meets their needs.
• Ensure that medical decisions are made by patients and their doctors, not government bureaucrats.
• Improve Americans’ lives through effective prevention, wellness, and disease management programs, while developing new treatments and cures for life-threatening diseases.

Keep updated on House Republicans’ efforts to save and improve health care HERE.

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Job-Killing Energy Tax Vote Nearing; Will Democrats Support the Middle Class or New Taxes?

Speaker Pelosi will try to ram her national energy tax through Congress tomorrow, with Roll Call quoting one senior staffer saying that “she’s going all out” despite the fact that Republicans and “many moderate Democrats said they still have questions or concerns about the package and either cannot yet say whether they support it or are leaning against it.”

Members of Congress aren’t the only people who are expressing concerns about the Speaker’s job-killing tax; a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this morning found that a majority (54 percent) opposed the Speaker’s energy tax if it “raised your monthly electrical bill by 25 dollars a month” - $300 annually - even if it “significantly lowered greenhouse gases” (question 36).  The fact is higher electricity costs are just one of the consequences of this burdensome national energy tax.

Pelosi’s national energy tax is a 1,201 page convoluted mess of new regulations and punitive taxes, as the following chart illustrates:

Any wonder the Wall Street Journal stated in an editorial today that Speaker Pelosi’s bill “defies the laws of economics.”  The Journal continued:

The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill.  The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less.  These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars.  Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

Speaker Pelosi and her cohorts in Congress won’t admit that their “cap-and-trade” bill is nothing more than a giant energy tax on the middle class.  But many prominent Democrats have spoken out against “cap-and-trade” and aren’t afraid to call it by its name - a national energy tax.  Yesterday, Warren Buffett led the charge in an interview on CNBC where he stated that “cap-and-trade”  is “a huge tax and there’s no sense calling it anything else.”  Even the longest serving Member of the House, former Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-MI), has called Pelosi’s “cap-and-trade” bill for what it is: “a tax and a great big one.”

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said in a press conference today: “Mark my words: The American people are going to remember this vote.  This will be a defining moment in a defining vote in this Congress.  And the real question is:  Where are the Democrats going to stand on this?”

It’s a good question - one the Democrats will have to answer tomorrow.

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Governors Rounds, Douglas and House GOP Leaders Warn Against Washington Health Care Takeover

This morning Governors Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Jim Douglas (R-VT) joined House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN), House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thad McCotter (R-MI), and Rep. Mary Fallin (R-OK) at a press conference on Capitol Hill to warn Americans of the dangers posed by a proposed Washington takeover of health care.  The press conference took place following a meeting of the House Republican Conference, during which Govs. Douglas and Rounds addressed GOP Members of Congress and vowed to express their opposition to a federal government takeover of the nation’s health care system when they participate in today’s White House health care forum.

As Leader Boehner stated during the event:

We’re joined today by Governor Jim Douglas from Vermont and Governor Mike Rounds from South Dakota.  They, like the American people, know that if the government gets involved in our health care we’re going to see nothing but rationed care, higher taxes and less quality in our health care delivery.  So, it’s really important that we allow governors to have the flexibility to deal with this issue in their home states.

Yesterday, another GOP Governor, Haley Barbour of Mississippi, joined Leader Boehner and Chairman Pence at a press conference in the Capitol to issue a similar warning about the dangers of Washington-run health care.  The governors’ appearances are the latest illustration of how reform-minded GOP Members of Congress and governors are joining forces to oppose Washington Democrats’ big government policies and advocate better solutions to the challenges facing the American people.  This is the concept behind the GOP State Solutions project, launched earlier this year by Leader Boehner with Reps. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Mike Rogers (R-MI). 

House Republicans unveiled their health care plan last week, which is designed to:

• Make quality health care coverage affordable and accessible for every American, regardless of pre-existing health conditions.
• Protect Americans from being forced into a new government-run health care plan that would eliminate the health care coverage that more than 100 million Americans currently receive through their job.
• Let Americans who like their health care coverage keep it, and give all Americans the freedom to choose the health plan that best meets their needs.
• Ensure that medical decisions are made by patients and their doctors, not government bureaucrats.
• Improve Americans’ lives through effective prevention, wellness, and disease management programs, while developing new treatments and cures for life-threatening diseases.

To learn more about the House Republicans better health care solutions, visit the House GOP Health Care Solutions Group website HERE.

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Massachusetts’ Health Care Reform: Be Careful What You Wish For

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed a first in the nation “universal” health care bill in 2006.  Massachusetts’ health care plan includes an “individual mandate” and generous subsidies through a quasi-government health insurance plan known as “Commonwealth Care.”  So how well are the Democrats in Massachusetts doing at controlling health care costs?

This morning the Boston Globe reported that: “Overseers of Massachusetts’ trailblazing healthcare program made their first cuts yesterday, trimming $115 million, or 12 percent, from Commonwealth Care, which subsidizes premiums for needy residents and is the centerpiece of the 2006 law.”  The overseers also “eliminated dental coverage for the poorest residents enrolled in Commonwealth Care, roughly 92,000 people.”  In other words, Massachusetts has begun to deny health care for their residents.

Moreover, Massachusetts’ universal health care plan has not reduced costs or eased the burden of health care spending on the state’s budget.  According to a recent Cato Institute study, “Since 2006, total state health care spending has increased by 28 percent.  Insurance premiums have increased by 8-10 percent per year, nearly double the national average.”  The study also noted that: “the increase in the number of insured is primarily due to the state’s generous subsidies, not the celebrated individual mandate.”

Even the state’s treasurer, Timothy Cahill (D), said that the Massachusetts plan shouldn’t be a national model:  “It’s a warning for the federal government as it looks to do something similar…I’m not saying we can’t afford any of it, but it certainly doesn’t appear that we can afford all of it.”

Out of control costs have not been the only causality of universal coverage.  Rationing appears to be creeping into the health care system in Massachusetts, as Sally Pipes noted recently in the New York Post:

20 percent of residents are having trouble securing a doctor. The Health Safety Net fund, which pays hospitals to care for the uninsured, still spent $410 million in 2008.  Most startlingly, to control costs, the state is considering ‘payment reform’ that resembles a giant HMO.  Price controls and explicit rationing will surely follow.

Massachusetts’ experience confirms what House Republicans have been arguing: a government-run health plan puts bureaucrats between patients and doctors and lets pencil-pushers decide what medical procedures or prescription drugs the government will allow its citizens to use.  Massachusetts, with its exploding health care costs, is already starting to ration care - and Democrats in Washington want to take the Massachusetts plan and expand on it by imposing a “public option” on all Americans, which will force millions of Americans into government-run health care.

Yesterday, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) rejected the Democrats’ march towards government-run health care:

Today the President again claimed that the Democrats’ government takeover of health care would not force Americans off of their current plans, yet independent analysts have reported that at least 23 million Americans would lose their coverage under the bill drafted by Senate Democrats.

House Republicans have a better solution: a plan that ensures all Americans who like their health care coverage can actually keep it.  For information on the House GOP health care reform proposal, visit the House GOP Health Care Solutions Group website HERE.

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Democrats’ “Public Option” = Government-Run Health Care

Last week, House Democrats unveiled their 852-page health care “reform” bill, the centerpiece of which is a plan for a government takeover of the American health care system.  It also proposes “a series of new taxes and subsidies that would penalize businesses and individuals for failing to purchase insurance” including an “8 percent payroll tax on employers that do not provide health insurance to their employees, a new 2 percent tax on individuals who do not buy health insurance [and] other taxes still to be determined,” according to a Roll Call story published last Friday.  Democrats in the Senate have dueling plans, each weighing in between $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The prevailing theme among all the Democratic plans, which the President himself echoed at his news conference today, is that they include a “public option” - code for government-run health care that will make health care more expensive, put bureaucrats between doctors and patients, and ration care. 

Today, at a press conference with Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN), House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said of the Democrats’ health care plans:

When it comes to health care, I think most people want to preserve the doctor-patient relationship and not have some government- run system where you’ve got bureaucrats here in Washington telling doctors just what types of prescriptions they should write…House Republicans have a better solution, a solution that will preserve the doctor-patient relationship, reduce cost, and increase affordability of health insurance for all Americans.

The Democrats’ “public option” is nothing more than a veiled attempt to have the government take over the American health care system.  In a column published in Sunday’s Washington Post, George Will unmasked the Democrats’ “public option” for the farce that it is:

Assurances that the government plan would play by the rules that private insurers play by are implausible…Competition from the public option must be unfair because government does not need to make a profit and has enormous pricing and negotiating powers.  Besides, unless the point of a government plan is to be cheaper, it is pointless: If the public option conforms to the imperatives that regulations and competition impose on private insurers, there is no reason for it.

Perhaps Gov. Barbour said it best:  “if the government runs something, it usually costs me more and gives me less.”  That’s exactly what the Democrats’ “public option” would do.

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Speaker Pelosi Will Bring Job-Killing National Energy Tax to the Floor this Week

Speaker Pelosi is barreling ahead with her national energy tax by bringing the bill to the floor of the House of Representatives by the end of the week, The Hill reported this morning.  The Democrats’ energy tax will strike a blow to American families and small businesses, costing jobs and raising taxes in the midst of a deep economic recession.  House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) wrote in an op-ed in today’s Washington Examiner that: “under the guise of reducing carbon emissions, Democrats are poised to force anyone who drives a car, buys an American-made product, or flips on a light switch to pay a national energy tax.”

Even President Obama has admitted that the Democrats’ energy tax will cost the middle class jobs, when he stated in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle during the campaign that: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”  The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that under the Democrats’ national energy tax: “by 2035 gasoline prices would increase 58 percent, natural gas prices would increase 55 percent, home heating oil would increase 56 percent, and worst of all, electricity prices would jump 90 percent.”

Speaker Pelosi is trying to sell her new energy tax on the grounds that it will reduce carbon emissions - but the only thing it will reduce is the amount of jobs created here in America.

Americans need to look no further than to Europe to see the effects that implementing a national energy tax has on job creation: “According to GAO, observers have said that the first ETS [Emissions Trading Scheme] phase, which ended in 2007, did not decrease emissions, imposed high costs on both consumers and industry, and may have decreased the international competitiveness of European industries.” (Source: Republican Staff, Oversight and Government Reform Committee)  Even with their energy tax, European carbon emissions still grew by 4.9 percent from 2000 to 2006.

Liberals seem fine with promoting policies that result in an inverse relationship between job creation and protecting the environment.  Certainly, their disastrous “cap and trade” proposal would result in millions of Americans losing their jobs.  One estimate, by Heritage Foundation scholar David Kreutzer, puts the number at three million jobs lost in the manufacturing sector alone by 2029. 

House Republicans don’t buy the notion that we cannot protect the environment and create jobs here in America at the same time.  The House Republicans have introduced the American Energy Act, which will increase production of American-made energy in an environmentally-sound manner; promote new, clean and renewable sources of energy such as nuclear, clean-coal-technology, wind and solar energy; encourage greater efficiency and conservation by extending tax incentives for energy efficiency and rewarding development of greater conservation techniques and new energy sources; and, cut red-tape and reduce frivolous litigation.

If Democrats believe that the American people will support imposing a new tax on the middle class, they are sorely mistaken.  House Republicans are opposed to new taxes on job creation, and will continue to propose better solutions to the Democrats “tax, spend, and borrow” agenda.

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