Date: 2014-04-04
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Chairman. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Just to respond to the last point of the chairman of the Budget Committee with respect to the appropriations process. as I indicated earlier. this bill specifically exempts those pieces of legislation even if they meet the threshold with respect to the other legislation in here. Again. it is. perhaps. not surprising. I think the American public knows that we have a shortterm budget agreement. the MurrayRyan agreement. but if you look at the budget that Republicans in Congress are proposing. it calls for a 24 percent cut to the current services in the recent bipartisan legislation over a 10year period. Lets just take one category of investmentsin our kids. That means about an $18 billion cut in early education. It means about an $80 billion cut in K12 education. It means about a $205 billion cut in current policy higher education. It calls for charging college students higher interest rates for the period of time when they are in college. That raises about $40 billion at a time when that same budget doesnt ask for anything from the highestincome individuals and doesnt raise one penny to reduce the deficit from closing special interest tax breaks. So it is no surprise to me that they would want to exclude the economic impacts of those investments that they are dramatically cutting. As I said earlier. the CBO. in its most recent analysis of the House Republican budget. says it will slow down economic growth in the next couple of years. It is very interesting that they dont want that quantified with respect to the appropriations bills. At the same time our Republican colleagues are saying they want more information. they specifically limit the information to certain areas. The other thing I want to mention. Mr. Chairman. is immigration reform. We want the CBO to give us an analysis. when they have a specific bill. so they can determine the economic benefit and the impact of it. That is a good thing. and the CBO has done that for immigration reform. In fact. of all of the pieces of legislation that are before this House right now. one of the things that could have the most immediate economic growth benefit is the bipartisan immigration bill before this House. The Congressional Budget Office has looked at that. They say that will generate a lot more economic activity. In fact. they say. over year 10. it will actually boost economic growth by 5 percent compared to what it would otherwise be. They say it will reduce the deficit in this 10year window by almost $200 billion and. in the 20year window. by almost $1 trillion. That is an analysis that we all should benefit from. Interestingly. while that would provide great economic growth. based on CBO reports. and when Democrats the other night proposed an amendment in the House Budget Committee to adopt that bipartisan immigration reform bill which would generate economic growth. all of our Republican colleagues voted "no." We want more informationthe more the betterbut it needs to be information that the economists say they can usefully provide us. I get back to the fact that. when it comes to the tax reform proposal. for example. that Chairman CAMP put in. they said that they couldnt narrow it down to one answer. They gave eight different models based on different assumptions. Our Republican colleagues are trying to say to professional economists. We really dont care what you say. you come up with a particular answer. Whereas. we think we should be asking for information in every case where it can be plausibly provided. Unfortunately. our Republican colleagues dont want it everywhere it can be plausibly provided because they specifically exclude the economic benefit of important investments in our economy and jobs. I reserve the balance of my time.