Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend my friend, Mr. Scott, for bringing forward a budget on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus. I think it's important that we have all sorts of options here on the floor to be able to discuss as they relate to a budget.

I would note a couple of items that he conveniently left out. One is that the budget that the CBC brings to the floor--this will come as no surprise, Mr. Chairman--never gets to balance, which means it continues to spend more money than the government takes in, continues to spend more money than Washington takes in. The people of this great country understand that we can't continue going down this road over and over and over and over.

A couple of points that Mr. Scott made regarding the Republican budget, which is the budget that is the base budget here that we're bringing to the floor that, in fact, does get to balance in a responsible way:

It saves and strengthens and secures Medicare, as opposed to the misinformation that was provided by the other side;

It makes certain that States have the kind of flexibility so that they're able to provide the highest quality of health care to their Medicaid population;

It doesn't, as a matter of fact, address in a specific way the issue of Social Security because it provides for a reserve fund so that that is able to be addressed in a more specific way through the committee structure, which is also the important thing to recognize about the issue of taxes.

Our friends on the other side are so specific about what they accuse us of regarding taxes, but, in fact, as you know, Mr. Chairman, it's the Ways and Means Committee that will ultimately define that.

A couple of items that he conveniently left out on the budget that he is proposing is that they do raise taxes. In fact, they raise taxes by $2.8 trillion--$2.8 trillion over the next 10 years--and much of that increase in taxes is in the area of those who create jobs. We all know that if you tax something, you get less of it. So by taxing job creators, we'll get fewer jobs, and, Mr. Chairman, that's the last place we need to be heading right now. They spend $5.7 trillion more than the Republican budget that's being proposed, and they add another $2.9 trillion to the debt relative to the base budget that we're working on today.

I also want to address the issue of business taxes. They talk about removing the incentives that move jobs overseas. Well, Mr. Chairman, the biggest incentive to moving jobs overseas is that the United States now has the highest business tax rate in the industrialized world. If you're a business and you're planning on either expanding your business or you're thinking about starting a business here in the United States and you go to the line that says taxes, the other side of that says, no, go somewhere else, get out of here, because taxes are lower elsewhere, which means that jobs are being created elsewhere. We're driving jobs overseas by virtue of our current tax structure, and our friends on the other side of the aisle, especially with the CBC budget, actually increase that as opposed to decrease that.

I do, however, want to commend them, once again, for bringing a budget forward because, as you've heard earlier today and in the conversations around the budget, the President has not. We did find it. I found the President's budget. Here it is. Not a doggone thing on this poster, Mr. Chairman, because the President hasn't brought anything to us.

Now, that might be amusing to some, but the fact of the matter is that the law states that the President of the United States is required to present a budget to Congress by the first Monday in February. That was February 4 this year. We're a little over 6 weeks beyond that. The President has flagrantly--flagrantly--ignored his statutory responsibility to bring to the United States Congress a budget.

Now, some folks on the other side say, Oh, it happens all the time. Don't worry about that. It happens all the time. Well, as a matter of fact, Mr. Chairman, in just one term, President Obama has missed the budget deadline more than any other President. He's now missed it four out of five times.

In the 90 years between 1923 and 2013, President Obama is the only President to miss the deadline 2 years in a row. He's the only President who's missed the deadline 3 out of 4 years in his first term, and he holds the record for the longest delay--98 days. Maybe that's the record he's trying to beat, Mr. Chairman.

So I want to commend, again, my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus for bringing forward a budget. As I say, I think it's extremely important that we have all sorts of different ideas out here on the floor to be able to debate and have people take a perspective on and have the opportunity to vote ``yea'' or ``nay'' on. I would respectfully suggest, however, that their budget moves this country in the wrong direction, not the right direction, and we'll urge opposition to their budget proposal.

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