Date: 2014-04-04
Speaker: JACKSON LEE (democrat)
Chamber: H

In the context of this particular legislation. a budget bill led by Mr. RYAN has now given a $200.000 tax cut already to those who hold most of the wealth. but yet cutting Medicaid and cutting food stamps to give an opportunity for soldiers families to be able to eat. I am against this bill because I think CBO has an effective structure to give us the information we need. and cutting taxes is not going to move America forward to be the greatest Nation in the world with research. with infrastructure rebuild. education. and good health care. I ask my colleagues to oppose this bill. Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to explain my amendment to H.R. 1874. The ProGrowth Budget Act of 2013. My amendment requires the Congressional Budget Office to include as part of their macroeconomic analysis. estimates of the potential impact. if any. on HUBZone areas as defined by the Small Business Act. My amendment only seeks to look at the effect. should this measure pass. on HUBZones. as defined in the Small Business Act. In all actuality. Mr. Chairman. this bill could very well be entitled the Revenge of Dynamic Scoring Champions Act. because thats in essence whats going on here. Dynamic scoring is an attempt to measure the macroeconomic effects of policy changes before they happen. and continues to pop up everywhere. in fact. even in negotiations of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. also known as the Super Committee. Dynamic scoring finds its roots in the antitax movement. Dynamic scoring is problematic for the agencies that score and estimate the cost of legislation. and has been soundly rejected. It is clear from the bills language and approach that it is designed to make it easier to enact deficitincreasing tax cuts. The bill requires CBO to produce supplementary estimates of the economic impact of major bills using dynamic scoring. an approach that involves more uncertainty and subjectivity than current scoring rules. None other than Former Republican Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle opposed moving to dynamic scoring. noting that CBO "generally have done a better job than some of the dynamic scorekeeping. That has been part of the challenge of moving to something called dynamic scoring is that we have not found anything that was any more accurate than the current way." Believers in dynamic scoring argue that tax cuts pay for themselves. generally by spurring so much economic growth. to the extent that revenues will actually increase. If I didnt know any better. Mr. Chairman. Id think they were talking to us about trickledown economics. Mr. Chairman. where have we heard that before? I recall that the Bush administration attempted to impose the use of dynamic scoring to estimate the cost of its tax cuts. asserting that tax cuts would increase revenue enough to pay for themselves. sort of a trickledown form of budgeting. Unfortunately Mr. Chairman. the Bush tax cuts did no such thing. but instead caused our national debt to explode. My amendment only seeks to look at the effect. should this measure pass. on HUBZones. as defined in the Small Business Act. The Small Business Administration (SBA) administers several programs to support small businesses. including the Historically Underutilized Business Zone Empowerment Contracting. better known as the HUBZone program. The HUBZone program is a small business federal contracting assistance program "whose primary objective is job creation and increasing capital investment in distressed communities." It provides participating small businesses located in areas with low income. high poverty rates. or high unemployment rates with contracting opportunities in the form of "setasides." solesource awards. and priceevaluation preferences. According to the Congressional Research Service. in FY2010. the federal government awarded contracts valued at $12.7 billion to HUBZone certified businesses. with about $3.6 billion of that amount awarded through the HUBZone program. Mr. Chairman. thats the gist of my amendmentjob creationbecause thats what we should be talking about in this Committee today. The Budget Committee has held hearings on the general topic of budget process reform and the recommendations crossed party lines. Former Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle. a Republican witness. testified that. "It may not be that the budget process is broken. It may not be. in other words. that tools are broken. but it may be the fact that the tools are not even being used." Similarly. Dr. Philip Joyce. former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) staff member and a Democratic witness. testified that "My main message is that most of the tools that you need to solve the budget problems faced by the country are already in your toolbox. If the goal is to deal with the larger fiscal imbalance that faces us. the most important thing to do is to make use of them. not search for more tools." Mr. Chairman. dynamic scoring is the wrong tool at the wrong timethoughin the interest of fairness to the small businesses in distressed communities around this country. I ask my colleagues to support my amendment. even though I have serious reservations about dynamic scoring.