Date: 2011-07-19
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Ill end where we started today. which is to say that our Republican colleagues are playing a very dangerous game with the economy and with jobs. What this legislation before us says is that unless we graft onto the Constitution a preference for their way of addressing the budget deficit. unless we do that. they will prevent the United States from paying its bills. with all the terrible economic consequences for American families. So lets see what it is that theyre demanding in exchange for letting the economy go. Its the same old plan that we saw in the House before. It does end the Medicare guarantee. it slashes Medicaid. it cuts education. and it protects special interest tax loopholes. But what makes this particularly egregious. what should. I think. upset every American. is theyre trying to engineer those changes through the Constitution. We keep hearing this is just a plain old balanced budget amendment. 49 out of 50 States have it. Not true. This would put into the Constitution of the United States. embed in our Constitution. a provision that makes it easier to cut Medicare or Social Security or education. a 50 percent vote. but if you want to cut a special interest tax loopholeI dont care whether its oil and gas subsidies. corporate jet. you name itthat a lot of Washington lobbyists work overtime to get inserted into our Tax Code and which amounts to spending through the Tax Code. if you want to do that. you need a twothirds vote. They put another mechanism into the Constitution. They would make it unconstitutional to balance the budget if were having expenditures at the rate of 19 or 20 percent of GDP. according to the provision that came out of their amendment. In other words. the American people cannot choose a level of expenditures that would allow us to meet our obligations under Medicare and Social Security. Since 1966. our Federal expenditures have been above 18 percent of GDP. in other words. since we enacted Medicare. So they want to prevent us by constitutional fiat from balancing the budget at a higher level of expenditures. Let me make one last point on Medicare. because weve heard about the Democrats cut $500 billion. What we did was we eliminated the 114 percent subsidy that was going to Medicare Advantage plans. We did do that. And. you know what? Republicans say. What a terrible thing. But if you look at their budget. they assume that change. They keep that change. What they dont do is what we did. which was to use the savings to close the prescription drug doughnut hole. The Republican budget would immediately reopen that doughnut hole. So they took the savings that theyre complaining about. but they didnt use any of it to close the doughnut hole. Again. the fundamental question is this. We all understand that weve got to reduce the deficit. Weve got to bring the budget into balance. The question is how we choose to do that. And why would we implant into the Constitution a mechanism that stacks the deck in favor of choosing to cut Medicare and Social Security and education over choosing to cut corporate tax loopholes or asking the folks at the very top to pay more? But they would do that to our Constitution. The Founders made it difficult to change the Constitution for good reason. This. I believe. is a corruption of the constitutional process. because it would place these mechanisms into our founding document that essentially graft the Republican budget plan into that document. And thats what this vote is all about. And what theyre saying is that unless twothirds of the House and twothirds of the Senate adopt that kind of constitutional amendment. were not going to pay our bills. bills which the Speaker of the House and the majority leader and people on both sides of the aisle should pay because they are the consequence of decisions that were made by this body. And right or wrong. when you bring up a bill. you cant say youre not paying for it. And if we take the position that were not going to pay for it. the economy will suffer. interest rates will go up. That will hurt every American family. and it will make it harder for us to reduce the deficit. So lets come together around a balanced plan. The Presidents put a proposal on the table: $4 trillion over 10 to 12 years. patterned after the bipartisan SimpsonBowles commission. $3 in cuts. $1 in revenue. Lets take a balanced approach. Thats the way we did it the last time our budget was in surplus.