Motion to Instruct Conferees on S. Con. Res. 13, Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2010

Floor Speech

MOTION TO INSTRUCT CONFEREES ON S. CON. RES. 13, CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2010 -- (House of Representatives - April 22, 2009)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BOYD. I thank my friend, the chairman, Mr. Spratt.

Madam Speaker, I am always intrigued by the rhetoric that comes when we start talking about budgets. And I am so grateful for a gentleman like Mr. Spratt who is not a rhetorical person, but he is a person who wants to practically get things done and get a budget that makes sense for the American people and how we collect and spend and do our government functions.

Madam Speaker, a budget is supposed to be a roadmap that shows where you are going, how you are going to get there, what your priorities are, how you are going to pay for those priorities. Unfortunately, over the last 8 years, under the leadership of the previous administration and the other party, we didn't have that. A budget was used as a sort of rhetorical tool to say we are going to balance the budget, but then they would come back a day later and say, well, we have got all this emergency stuff that we didn't put in the budget, but we knew all along we needed to do.

For the first time in 8 years you have before you an honest document, which is an honest roadmap that explains our situation and lays out an avenue to get to a better place. Now, honestly, it's not a pretty picture, but it is an honest picture. We haven't had an honest picture in 8 years. It is an ugly picture when it comes to the numbers. But the numbers are honest, and it lays out a roadmap to get us out of this economic mess that President Obama has inherited. I am proud of Mr. Spratt and the work that he has done, and the House of Representatives, and their work in passing this budget.

Now, what does that roadmap say and what does it do? It says, first of all, we are in an economic mess; revenue collections are going to be down, economic activity is down, we all know about that. That wasn't the fault of this sitting President; he inherited that mess. But what it does is say, these are the problems that exist and have to be resolved for us to come to a better place.

President Obama believes strongly in a couple of things, and we are trying to outline how we deal with those things in this budget.

Number one is he thinks that you can't really fix the economic mess until you deal with the health care issue. Health care accessibility is a problem in this Nation when you have 48 or 50 million people who cannot access the health care system, and it's also a problem in that costs are rising at the rate of 3 to 5 percent above inflation. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that doesn't work too long.

It only carries us deeper into the economic mess. So he says we got to deal with that problem, and this budget lays out that avenue, that blueprint to deal with that problem.

Secondly, and this is another important factor relative to how we got into this economic mess, and that is the energy crisis, the energy situation. When you got a run up in the cost of oil to $145 a barrel when it traditionally had been below $30, that was one of the catalysts that took us into this economic collapse. And we have known for a long time as a Nation that we had to deal with this energy crisis, climate change, energy, all sort of interconnected.

So this budget also lays out an avenue or a roadmap to get to this energy legislation. It doesn't go into details. The President hasn't even talked too much about details. He wants to leave that to Congress.

I do know one thing. To solve those two problems, Madam Speaker, it has to be a bipartisan work. Madam Speaker, Mr. Ryan knows that every major piece of legislation that has ever come out of this Congress to be effective must be bipartisan. We need bipartisan cooperation and support. We need constructive ideas.

We, as a minority, need to be inclusive, but the majority party, when it comes to the table, needs to be constructive and not obstructive. And I think that's what we, as Blue Dogs, who consider ourselves the most fiscally conservative, constructive folks in the Congress, 51 of us--and I serve, have been a part of that group for a long time--we would like to work with the people on the other side of the aisle in a constructive manner. But up to this point our attempts have been thwarted.

So we again thrust out that olive branch to work on both sides of the aisle to solve these problems. You can't get out of this economic mess without dealing with the health care problems and the energy crisis that we have in this Nation.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. SPRATT. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. BOYD. So in that process the President believes in health care reform, he believes in energy reform, he believes in education reform, and, fourthly and most importantly, fiscal responsibility.

As the folks, Mr. Ryan and others have said consistently, we have to get back to being fiscally responsible. It's something we completely threw out the window over the past 8 years. We have to go back to a path that leads us down to a balanced budget.

Can't get there overnight, but this budget developed by Mr. Spratt, which we would like to get in a conference mode, will do that. And I want to be a part of that.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BOYD. You make a fair point, but I would remind the gentleman again that reconciliation is probably being insisted upon because of the obstructive nature, the ``just say no'' nature of the minority party.

And what we would like to see is some constructive engagement in the process about how we solve some of these problems.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source