Baseline Reform Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. GOHMERT. I am immensely grateful to my friend Rob Woodall.

Madam Speaker, it was back in the 1990s when I heard what apparently was a loveable, old fuzzball who turned out to be Rush Limbaugh. He was talking about the absurdity of the United States Government doing something that no person, no family, no business, no charity in all of America could do.

With due respect to my friend who just spoke, Mr. Van Hollen says businesses would go out of business. I would challenge anybody in this room to show me a business, to show me a family, to show me an individual, to show me a charity that has an automatic increase in every year's budget, because America can't do that. I was shocked that this was going on. I mean, in the Army, I helped with the budget. In the private sector, I prepared budgets. As a district judge, I prepared a budget. It had to be approved. We never got an automatic increase. You had to justify any change in anything. If you needed an increase, you had to show why that was important.

I got to Congress, never dreaming that that would not have been taken care of when Republicans took the majority, but in my freshman term in 2005 and 2006, the Republican chair of the Budget Committee said we have to do the automatic increases. I said, Why? He said, Because it is the law. I was shocked. We make the law. We can change the law. Then, of course, our friends across the aisle took the majority, and for 4 years, there was no chance of eliminating the automatic increase in every Federal department's budget, but then we got the majority back.

For all of the disagreements I have had with the Speaker, Speaker Boehner agreed that if Paul Ryan passed a zero-baseline budget--ending the automatic increases--out of committee, then he would bring it to the floor. It meant we would have to have the right guy marshaling this bill. Some tweaking was done, and I will be forever grateful to my friend Rob Woodall, who is as brilliant as his predecessor, a dear friend, John Linder. He took this bill, and he marshaled it through. Paul Ryan kept his word, and I will be forever grateful for that. It came to the floor, and we voted it through, and the Senate wouldn't take it up.

For those who want to talk about the children, I am not hearing a lot of that talk today because, when I talk to college students, high school students, junior high students, they are wondering why they are going to have to pay the debts that we were not responsible enough to pay ourselves. There is not a good answer. It is absolutely immoral and negligent--it is self-indulgent--to say that one generation like ours is so much more important that we have to spend future generations' money. Yes, if there is inflation, let's deal with it that year, but I have heard enough stories from people who are talking about, gee, this department is apparently out there, saying, Spend all your money. Don't leave any because, if you don't, you won't get as much next year. Of course, they get automatic increases every year, so they have got to spend their money. That is no way to run a country. It is not right.

There are some issues I have with the budget, but I know the heart of the man who was behind that, and I know he wants future generations not to be burdened with our negligent handling of our money. So it is time that we end the automatic increases in every Federal budget. When my friend across the aisle was talking about, gee, you could end up with half an aircraft carrier--good grief--we have lost aircraft carriers because of those automatic increases every year for decades now. There are aircraft carriers that won't be there because we couldn't control ourselves as we had to automatically increase everything we spent.

Madam Speaker, it is time we did the responsible thing and ended the automatic increase in every single Federal budget for next year, and I will be continuing in my gratitude to my friend Rob Woodall.

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