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HR 70 PAYGO Reinstatement Act
Topic Started: 14 Jun 2013, 11:20 AM (521 Views)
Heather Holson
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48 hours for debate

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Congressman Peter J. Lucas, for himself, Congressman E. Herbert Johnston, Congresswoman Grace Hollingsworth, Congressman Patrick Callaghan, Congressman Michael Brewer, Congressman Rick Thomas, Congresswoman Melissa Sanchez and Senator Andrea Martinez proposes

A BILL TO reinstate PAYGO requirements.

Be it Enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress Assembled as Follows

Section 1 PAYGO

(1) No Bill shall be considered by the US House of Representatives or the US Senate that is not PAYGO compliant.

(2) A Bill is PAYGO compliant if

(a) the Bill does not require or authorize the spending of any money, or

(b) the amount of money reasonably estimated to be saved by the Bill is equal to or exceeds the amount of money required or authorized to be spent by the Bill

(3) Costs involved in the passage of a bill through Congress, including any reports on the Bill by the Congressional Budget Office and similar agencies, shall be disregarded, as shall the costs of signing ceremonies and the publication and archiving of the passed Act.

(4) Costs involved in taking steps reasonably expected to realize savings that exceed the cost of taking those steps within a period of 5 years shall be discounted.

(5) No person presiding over debate in the US House of Representatives or the US Senate may bring up for debate any Bill that is not PAYGO compliant, nor may such a Bill be brought up by a motion to suspend the rules or by any other mechanism.

(6) If a Bill is passed by the US Congress that is not PAYGO complaint, it shall be treated as if the President had vetoed that Bill at a time when Congress was not in session following the bi-annual Congressional elections.

(7) Any spending resulting from the passage of a Bill that is not PAYGO complaint shall be deemed unlawful. Any Congressman or Senator who voted for or supported such a Bill, knowing the Bill to fail to comply with this Act, may be liable to the Federal Government personally following appropriate due process of law for the reimbursement of a portion of that sum reflective of his contribution to its passage and his ability to pay.

(8) The Congressional authorities shall arrange that all Members of Congress undergo appropriate training on the requirements of this Act.

9) All legislation filed after the date of lawful enactment of this act shall include a "PAYGO Analysis" which will note the estimated net effect of the legislation on the Federal Debt, the time frame being covered, and if not readily apparent, an explanation of how the numbers were derived.

Section 2 Offset

In order to offset spending required under Section 2 (8) of this Act, Funding for Doctoral Dissertations by the Department for Housing and Urban Development shall be terminated (annual saving $230,000).

Section 3. Emergency Override

The provisions of Section 1 of this legislation, for a specific bill, may be suspended by a 60% vote each of the House and Senate. This shall be referred to as a "PAYGO Override Vote", and must occur to bring the legislation to the Floor of each body for debate.

Section 4 Enactment

This Act shall have effect upon being signed into law. It shall not affect any Bill already being debated on that date.
Edited by Heather Holson, 16 Jun 2013, 01:37 PM.
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Matt Urbana
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Madam Speaker,

This is a commonsense piece of legislation that will ensure that Congress adheres to it's duty to be fiscally responsible.

I move for unanimous consent for passage.

I yield.
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Heather Holson
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Motion recognized. 24 hours for objections.
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Edward Kensington
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Madame Speaker,

I have an objection to this legislation.

This legislation would, by nature, prevent us from stimulating and supporting economic growth and job creation during cyclical downturns. Imagine the condition we would be in if this law had been in effect during the 2008 Financial Crisis. This law would have prevented us from stabilizing the U.S. Economy. This law would have found us in another Great-Depression similar to how Hoover's fiscal policies paved the way to the Great-Depression of the 1930s.

Furthermore, our economy will still need sensible stimulus. The Interest Rate on a 10Y Bond has reached a historical low and we know that investment in education and infrastructure will yield a profit for us because the return on those investments will exceed our low borrowing rate.

Posted Image

This isn't the time to institute this kind of restriction. After all, would any of you recommend that we institute the same kind of restriction on consumers and businesses? No, you would not. The truth is that, in the world of business, you should borrow and make growth oriented allocations if the return on those allocations will exceed the expense of financing them. PAYGO should be held until such time as market interest rates have returned to the historical norm.
Edited by Edward Kensington, 14 Jun 2013, 01:47 PM.
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Heather Holson
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Objection noted. Debate continues.
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Edward Kensington
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Madame Speaker,

Don't get me wrong here. I do believe PAYGO is well intended and does have practical application. The issue here is that this is the wrong time for PAYGO.

The financing situation is too favorable and our economy remains below potential. We have a prime chance here to modernize our infrastructure, improve our R&D and innovation and provide much needed attention to education and education reform.

Edited by Edward Kensington, 14 Jun 2013, 01:51 PM.
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peter
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Lucas for President: Take Back America!
Madam Speaker

We have a deficit of somewhere in the ballpark of $800 billion. I think its about time we stopped borrowing and spending money we don't have. The gentleman from [please put your state in your sig] talks of businesses and individuals being restricted in this way. Yet businesses and individuals CAN NOT spend more than they earn unless they can get a loan on commercial terms. Only government has the luxury of issuing an unlimited amount of bonds to finance ever increasing spending.

I yield.
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Edward Kensington
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Madame Speaker,

That's pure rubbish. We have to borrow on commercial terms to. Financial institutions and investors and foreigners all purchase our bonds. We have to sell bonds to raise capital the same as a business will issue bonds to raise capital. International investors and our own American people have judged our bonds as safe, guaranteed and secure.
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Edward Kensington
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Madame Speaker,

The deficit is so large because our economy is operating below potential. We need to be investing in infrastructure, science and education and overhaul our anti-growth, bureaucratic tax code. We need to be investing in growth since interest rates are so low. We need to return the economy to full potential and then, and only then, will PAYGO make sense.
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peter
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Lucas for President: Take Back America!
Madam Speaker

Governments do not borrow on commercial terms because investors know the government will always be able to pay its debts, even if it means passing that burden on to the taxpayers. We should remember when we sit in this chamber that when we spend money, it is not our money it is spending. It is everyone's money, or rather it is everyone's debt. Right now, the national debt is equivalent to $53,368 for every man, woman and child in this country. That needs to go down. It is not the legacy we want to leave behind us. We can't afford any more of these so called "stimulus" programs. If we decide there is something we need to spend money on, we need to be spending less somewhere else. That's just the cold, hard truth of the situation.

I yield.
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Edward Kensington
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Madame Speaker,

The kind of investments that I have mentioned yield a return greater than 2.5% which means we, as a nation, stand to gain a positive return from borrowing and investing in and for them. New jobs and the corresponding economic growth associated with those investments will reduce the deficit in the medium to long term because the economy will return to full potential, more people will be working, more people will be paying taxes and fewer people will need welfare and assistance.
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Edward Kensington
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Madame Speaker,

The deficit is much lower than it would have otherwise been if we had not rescued our financial sector and injected aggregate demand into our economy when that demand was needed. We would be in a Great-Depression were it not for TARP and the Economic Recovery Act. Austerity hasn't worked for Europe and it won't work for America.
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peter
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Lucas for President: Take Back America!
Madam Speaker

The sort of projects the gentleman mentions have a return rate that is speculative at best. There is no real way to know whether investment in education or science will yield any return at all. It might, it might not. Now I'm not saying we should or shouldn't invest in any one thing or another. But there are an awful lot of things the government is paying for that we just don't need to. We were talking about one earlier today: beach nourishment. That's a good example right there, we find something we want to do, then we find something that we don't need so much to fund it. It simple and it works and in business people do this all the time.

I yield.
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Patrick Callaghan
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New England Republican >:D
Madame Speaker,

I rise in support of this legislation as a commonsense way we can finally begin to bring our deficit under control. Families back in my district every month do exactly what this bill expects we as representatives of the people to do. If there is a program that requires funding we should follow the example of the hard working people of this country and learn to cut from one place when we need more in another. It's that kind of commonsense that has been absent from Congress for years and it's that absence that has this Congress as one of the most unpopular in the history of this body's existence.

In response from the gentleman who spoke against this bill let us look at the claims of reckless government spending saving the economy. We were promised that the stimulus would keep unemployment down, it didn't. They said it would leading to strong job growth; it didn't. What we actually got was stagnant economic growth and a massive amount of debt that is saddled on the backs of hard working families like those in Massachusetts. The addiction to debt here in Washington continues to raise prices, keep real wages artificially low, and hurts economic growth. I stand up today in front of this body and send a message from my constituents; enough is enough!

I absolutely support this legislation and reject the calls from those who are content with politics as usual in Washington.
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Edward Kensington
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Madame Speaker,

Yes, I admit there is too much governmental waste and we need to prioritize. So, let us find those wastes and let us purge them. Let's focus on efficient spending. We don't need a blind one-size-fits-all model which will tie our hands and prevent us from responding to real world circumstances. Do you think we should have used PAYGO in 2008 when the entire financial system was on the edge of total collapse? Do you think we should have avoided economic stimulus which provided hundreds of billions in tax relief and savings to small businesses and consumers?
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Edward Kensington
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Madame Speaker,

Furthermore, there has never been a single Republican in the White House that believed PAYGO was the way to go in every and all circumstances. Let us not forget that the Republicans and the Bush Administration trashed PAYGO in order for us to be able to finance the War on Terror and tax reform measures which followed the 2001 and 2002 NASDAQ Crash and Recession.
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peter
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Lucas for President: Take Back America!
Madam Speaker

The 2008 bank bailout was one of the most reckless decisions in recent history and is the cause of a large part of our current debt. Ironically, that bailout cost a figure similar to the current deficit. What a waste of money. But that's behind us. In the future, we need more sensible economic decisions to make up for the poor ones made in the past.

I yield.
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peter
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Lucas for President: Take Back America!
Edward Kensington
14 Jun 2013, 02:26 PM
Madame Speaker,

Furthermore, there has never been a single Republican in the White House that believed PAYGO was the way to go in every and all circumstances. Let us not forget that the Republicans and the Bush Administration trashed PAYGO in order for us to be able to finance the War on Terror and tax reform measures which followed the 2001 and 2002 NASDAQ Crash and Recession.
Madam Speaker

The gentleman really makes my point for me. If Congress and the President feel that money needs to be spent on a particular project, that money has to come from somewhere. If we enforced such a rule, our leaders would think far more carefully about what projects are worth spending money on.

I yield.
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Edward Kensington
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Madame Speaker,

I agree TARP was mismanaged and could have been used in a far more efficient manner.

Nonetheless, TARP did save us from a Great-Depression. America's banking sector would have failed and the economy would have crashed and burned without intervention. You'd have to be insane to think we would be better off had it not been for TARP. I can't think of a single well regarded economist who didn't support some kind of intervention to save our leading commercial banks and restore confidence in our financial sector.
Edited by Edward Kensington, 14 Jun 2013, 02:42 PM.
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Matt Urbana
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Madam Speaker,

The attitude here is typical of tax and spend liberals. The government cannot continue to spend money that it does not have. I know that some members of this body believe that the country has an unlimited credit card to spend with, but the truth is that we do not. Why any member of Congress would object to this bill, which will ensure fiscal responsibility for years and years, is beyond me.

I yield.
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