Date: 2012-02-02
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may consume. I think its important to underscore the point. and I think the author of the bill would agree. that this legislation didnt save the taxpayer one dime. Thats not what were talking about. This bill. when you pass it. doesnt save one penny. Every year. with respect to the discretionary budget. we have Appropriations Committees in the House and the Senate who go through the budgets. and they decide whats appropriate and whats necessary to be budgeted for those agencies and those accounts every year. They can cut them. They can increase them based on the needs that are perceived by Members of Congress who are acting on that. Thats not the issue. We need to tighten our belts. In fact. back in August. we made some significant savings. We need to continue to find savings. In fact. my view is. if were really going to be serious about reducing the deficit and the debt. weve got to do this in a balanced way like bipartisan commissions have suggested. Youve got SimpsonBowles. youve got RivlinDomenici. All of them have said weve got to do a combination of cuts. and we also need to deal with the revenue. We can no longer afford to have tax breaks for the folks at the very top. that we cant keep all of these tax loopholes open that disproportionately benefit certain people over others. and tax breaks that actually encourage in some cases the export of American jobs when we want to be encouraging the export of American goods and American services. So thats a very important debate that we should have. but thats not what this does. This just has to do with how we present the baseline as to what can be purchased in terms of goods and services for certain dollars. And moving to this will create a very misleading perception. everyone knows. Lets say it took a certain amount of money to buy an aircraft carrier today and we wanted to know how much it was going to take to purchase an aircraft carrier 5 years from now. Lets assume over the next 5 years were in the midst of rising inflation. What this would do is create the idea that since the number was the same this year as 5 years from now. hey. we can buy the same number of aircraft carriers. Thats not true. Youre going to get a quarter of an aircraft carrier. and that isnt going to do anybody any good. So again. Americans know that when theyre comparing dollars and the value of their dollars over time. you have to take into account inflation. [- 1750 It happens every day in terms of financial transactions all over the country. So. again. this bill doesnt save a penny. This has to do with just how you present the budget in terms of a picture for the American people to look at and whether its realistic in comparing what you can buy for a dollar today versus what you can buy for a dollar 5 or 10 years from now. And what were saying is you should compare apples to apples so people know what the purchasing power of those dollars are in terms of goods and services. Then we. as the Congress. can decide whether we want to increase that amount or cut it. as we do every year. But this bill doesnt mandate any kind of cutting of that nature. With that. I reserve the balance of my time.