Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. PASCRELL. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this legislation. This is an illusion, another one.
The NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship game is tonight. I know that many of my colleagues are looking forward to watching some high-level competition from these two great squads. However, at some point, you can be assured, you will see one team's coach yelling at the referees. Guaranteed. They will be screaming in their faces, convinced that they are calling too many fouls and that they are being biased against their team. You can be assured that the coach yelling at the refs the most will be the one whose team is losing.
This is basically the same thing that is happening here on the floor today, Mr. Speaker, on this bill, and all the other so-called budget process. You can't get away from process. You don't want to talk about results. You are always talking about process, process, and process, trying to work the refs because you are losing this argument.
The ref in this case is the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. You referred to that many, many times, nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The bill before us today, offered by my colleague from New Jersey, would require the Congressional Budget Office to score Federal loan guarantee programs in a way that makes them appear more expensive than they actually are. That is what you are all about.
I have served on this Budget Committee for the last 4 years. We can't do our job right if we don't have accurate estimates of what Federal programs really cost.
This bill will absolutely make our job harder by making us work with inaccurate data. In fact, all in all, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that this bill, your bill, would have increased the estimated cost of Federal credit programs in 2014, would have increased them by $50 million, all by waving your magic wand.
Now, this isn't really about finding the best technical way to measure the costs of each program. That is what you say. It is working the refs in a way that would make even Coach K proud.
It is nothing but a dishonest attempt to make worthy government programs appear more costly, so that those who are ideologically opposed to government and government spending can more easily undermine those very programs. That is what this is all about.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. YARMUTH. I yield the gentleman an additional minute.
Mr. PASCRELL. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't like the Federal loan guarantee programs that help first-time homebuyers, that help less fortunate Americans pay for their education. They are willing to cook the books in order to make a better case for their elimination.
Mr. Speaker, we could do better than this. We can argue about these programs on their merits instead of resorting to budgeting sleight-of-hand, process.
I am strongly opposed to the bill. We could be voting to raise the minimum wage and give a raise to 27.8 million Americans to $10.10 per hour. That is what we should be debating on this floor.
We could finally consider the immigration reform legislation that the Senate passed nearly a year ago. We should be debating the UI--unemployment insurance--rates to restore unemployment benefits to more than 2 million Americans, including 125,000 in our own State of New Jersey.
But, instead, we are here today considering a bill that does nothing except enable the majority's fringe ideology, pave the way for even more cuts to the most vulnerable in the future.
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Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you very much to my colleague from New Jersey.
First of all, no one on this side of the aisle ever suggested that we need no rules.
See, what you are trying to do is put everyone at extremes, and that is where we are many times because you are the majority and we are the minority. And I respect that.
But don't say we don't want the rules. We fought for rules.
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Mr. PASCRELL. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Speaker, this isn't as complicated as one would pretend it to be. First of all, the CBO says, if this was the law of the land, in other words, if this bill would have been passed by both the House and the Senate when it first came up, it would have cost us $50 billion more in the 2014 budget.
Now, I find that hard to believe that you would accept that, when you practically, the gentleman that I am speaking to right now, through the Chair, has voted ``no'' on everything under the Sun. So I find that difficult to believe.
There need to be rules, particularly in all financial matters. Those rules have a purpose.
I am telling you, this is a process question and this does not, in any manner, shape, or form enhance the passage of a budget that we can live with, we Americans.
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