- 7 months ago
In remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) spoke about the Big Beautiful Bill.
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00:00I'm calling from Massachusetts for laying out how families lose and billionaires win
00:06on this not-so-beautiful bill that Trump has put forward.
00:13It's really a big, beautiful betrayal.
00:16Betrayal because Trump campaigned for helping families.
00:20But as we've seen with the details in the end, this is about helping billionaires.
00:26The bottom 20%, the less affluent, they get tax benefits of about $90 a year.
00:33Somebody who earns a million dollars gets $90,000 a year tax benefit.
00:39$90,000 for an already well-off rich individual and $90 for an ordinary family struggling to
00:51get on its feet.
00:52Mr. President, I'm going to talk about a different aspect of the reconciliation bill.
00:58But before I do so, my heart is with the people of Minnesota who have lost Melissa and Mark
01:08Hortman.
01:09Melissa, Speaker of the House, is a former Speaker of the House in Oregon.
01:14I know the type of effort that goes into coordinating a legislative session, the commitment to so
01:20many different policy issues, striving to build a better state, the state, a better state of
01:27Minnesota.
01:28And Melissa and Mark are no longer with us because of an act of hate, an act of violence.
01:38It's something that so goes against the vision of free speech and free assembly in America,
01:45where we can come together and argue our points and disagree profoundly with each other.
01:53But out of that big stew of ideas comes policies that hopefully take us forward, not violence that
02:04takes us to the grave.
02:06So again, my heart is with Melissa and Mark's family and the people of Minnesota.
02:13And I hope we can all work together.
02:15The end, the type of rhetoric, the type of framing that suggests that the differences that we have,
02:24though large on policy, that neither side is coming from an evil point of view, bringing
02:33different differences that have to be worked out in legislatures like the U.S. Senate.
02:39And now turning to an issue that has to be worked out in our U.S. Senate, is the challenge
02:46of having honest budget numbers for the conversation over the reconciliation bill.
02:55Back in 1974, the Senate and House were alarmed over the growing deficits.
03:01They were microscopic compared to the type of deficits we have today.
03:05But still, people said, let's not get on that path of expanding the national debt.
03:10Let's create a real budgeting process where we lay out a vision at the front end so that
03:15the bills that are passed by the committees, the revenue bills and the policy bills, fit
03:21into that budget framework.
03:23So we will have control over the result, whether it's a surplus that we want, or whether we
03:30want to spend more and run up some deficit because perhaps it's a year in which the economy
03:35is dipping and we need to provide some stimulus.
03:39But the point was a front end budgeting process into which we could put the effect.
03:45effect of all these different bills in the course of the year.
03:49So it was an act designed to bring planning for revenue and spending levels into a coherent
03:55framework by laying out a budget and holding committees accountable to that budget vision.
04:03In this budget act, Congress created two significant tools for very different and separate purposes.
04:10One of them is Section 312 of the Budget Act.
04:14Section 312 says that the Committee on the Budget will establish estimates of the levels
04:19of new budget authority, outlays, direct spending, new entitlements authority, and revenues for
04:25a fiscal year.
04:27So there's the framework.
04:29To clarify, for most of the work that's done, the Committee depends on the Joint Committee
04:37on taxation for revenue projections and depends upon the Congressional Budget Office for the
04:43cost of programs.
04:46But this Section in 312 has also been interpreted to give the Chair of the Budget Committee the
04:52authority to resolve complex scoring questions that come up or technical ambiguities that come
05:00up on particular programs or particular revenue measures during normal legislating.
05:06I emphasize, during normal legislating has nothing to do with reconciliation.
05:13Now Congress created a second tool that was specifically about reconciliation.
05:19That is presented in the Budget Act, and for a very special purpose.
05:25This section, reconciliation, was to be a filibuster-free pathway in the Senate for one reason, and one
05:33reason alone, decreasing the deficit.
05:37And you can imagine, there's Robert Byrd, who's the champion of the filibuster, wants everything
05:43to have to go through a supermajority vote.
05:47It was often used against civil rights bills, but it was often used in other ways as well.
05:53And he would not let go of that for any reason, except the special role of reducing the national
06:01deficit.
06:02A hundred senators said yes to that vision.
06:05All the Democrats, all the Republicans.
06:08So we have, in that act, a section 313, affectionately known as the Byrd Rule, that lays out some
06:16very specific details for how to handle that reconciliation process.
06:21So we have section 312, normal budgeting, for non-reconciliation bills.
06:28And we have section 313 with special rules for reconciliation bills.
06:33Now why am I coming to the floor to make such a detailed examination for issues that we wouldn't
06:41normally, well, wrestle with in a public forum?
06:45Well, the answer is because there is a plan afoot to take this tool that was always used and
06:55framed for regular budgeting to give a bit of flexibility to the budget committee through
07:00the budget chair.
07:02To resolve complex technicalities or abnormalities issues on small issues in normal bills and
07:12apply it in a completely corrupted version to section 313 overruling the foundation for
07:21reconciliation.
07:24Two very different tools, two very different purposes, but taking one and applying it to
07:29the other destroys the integrity of the reconciliation process.
07:36And I'm going to lay that out in some detail.
07:44Section 312 allows the budget chair to be a referee to find bipartisan common ground to
07:50resolve those ambiguities in the budgets, but, again, never used in reconciliation because
07:58it wasn't intended for that purpose.
08:02Now, if you're going to have a special process to reduce deficits, you have to agree to have
08:12honest numbers.
08:15So therefore, the act created the Congressional Budget Office to give us those honest numbers
08:22on what programs cost.
08:25And then you have honest integrity with numbers on revenue coming from the Joint Committee on
08:34Taxation.
08:35So you have these two institutions and a commitment in section 313 to honest budgeting numbers.
08:42So we'll quit fooling ourselves and we'll quit fooling the public because the goal was to
08:47reduce the deficit.
08:49And you can't reduce the deficit if you're lying about what new measures will cost, whether
08:56they be revenue measures or they be policy measures.
09:02So it would completely defeat the purpose of reconciliation to simply have the budget chair who could resolve
09:11a technical ambiguity in a normal bill, be able to say, well, that is such a power.
09:16I'm going to transport it from a normal budget bill over to reconciliation.
09:20Instead of using honest numbers from CBO and from the Joint Committee on Taxation, I'm going to
09:26just create my own hall of mirrors, my own smoke, and my own baseline to pretend that things don't cost what they really cost.
09:35It's a complete obliteration of the responsibility for integrity in the reconciliation process which
09:45again was designed only to decrease the deficit.
09:49Now, there's been a bit of a journey for the House and Senate since 1974.
09:55And that foundation that this reconciliation process would only be used to reduce the deficit
09:59got blown up in 1996.
10:02My colleagues across the aisle decided that, well, they wanted to pass a big tax bill, and
10:10they knew they couldn't do it through regular order, so they repurposed a process designed
10:17to reduce the deficit and said it could also be used for a tax bill that increases the deficit.
10:21Well, that was a painful blow to fiscal responsibility.
10:26Because each and every one of their tax bills has vastly increased the deficit.
10:33But they retained two other things.
10:36A pillar, a second pillar that said after 10 years, every title has to either be deficit
10:44neutral or reduce the deficit, so after a 10-year frame, and that they would continue to use
10:49honest numbers.
10:51Okay.
10:52Well, so now we have another situation where we've arrived here using reconciliation, not
10:59for its original purpose to decrease the deficit, but for a tax bill.
11:04But pillars two and three were still in place up until this moment.
11:08No deficits in any title after 10 years.
11:11But the chair of the budget committee is saying, I don't want to keep pillar two and three.
11:24I don't want to keep pillar two that says everything after 10 years has to be a deficit neutral, deficit
11:31reduction.
11:32And I don't want to use honest numbers because it lets the world see how expensive this bill
11:38is and kind of destroys our reputation for fiscal responsibility.
11:43So we want to create some magic math, some false baseline to pretend that the bill does
11:51not have a lot of deficit.
11:55Well this is a huge mistake.
11:57And I'm just here to say, let's not let this happen.
12:01Let's not destroy the second and third pillars.
12:04Let's not destroy the second pillar which says no deficits after 10 years.
12:08Let's not destroy the third pillar which says we'll use honest numbers from joint taxation,
12:13joint committee on taxation and the congressional budget office.
12:18There are two reasons that my colleague who chairs the budget committee wants to take this
12:24provision from section 312 for normal budgeting that gives some flexibility to the budget chair
12:29and bring it over and create this new fake baseline so this bill doesn't look like it will run
12:36up the debt that it obviously runs up.
12:40One is that he wants to make the tax cuts permanent, meaning deficits will be run far beyond the 10
12:48year period.
12:50And second, he wants the American people to believe that this is not going to create huge massive
12:56additional deficits and debt.
12:59Well those are not good reasons.
13:02We should all work together to maintain the second and third pillars of no deficits after
13:0610 years.
13:07The third pillar that in fact we will use honest numbers and not lie to ourselves and not lie
13:12to the American people about the cost of a bill.
13:19He calls this new fake baseline current policy baseline.
13:24And part of what the little twist is to say, hey, the law says that a tax provision ends,
13:32but we'll pretend that it doesn't say that.
13:34The law doesn't say that and that it just continues on forever.
13:37And since we're now pretending that the law was written differently than it was really written,
13:42it's really not a new provision that costs anything.
13:45Because all these new extensions or new tax provisions cost because they reduce the revenues,
13:51we'll just pretend they don't.
13:53But you know it's that side of pretending that got us into this trouble to begin with.
13:57That's what the 1974 bill was about.
14:00Let's quit lying to ourselves.
14:02Let's quit lying to the public.
14:03Let's quit pretending that we're not creating deficits when we are.
14:07Let's have honest, honest budgeting.
14:13So the irony is that you can even see how this philosophy fails even within the Republican
14:22bill.
14:24Because of this philosophy that every bill or measure that the law says ends actually continues,
14:32then there would be no reason to have in the bill what my Republican colleagues have put
14:35in the bill, which is to end a bunch of tax provisions in the middle of the 10-year period
14:40so they can say the bill costs less.
14:42So the old laws that are going to expire, we pretend they continue.
14:49But the new laws that we're creating at this very moment that end within the 10 years, we
14:54pretend they actually end.
14:56You can see how phony this situation is.
15:01And we need to do better.
15:04Now let me just go through how modest the use of Section 312 in general budgeting was.
15:11The first is, it was always bipartisan.
15:17It was bipartisan in 2017.
15:21It was bipartisan in 2023 and 25 and 24 and 25.
15:27Each of these times, it was bipartisan.
15:30But this new proposal is to use it in this partisan fashion.
15:35It's a complete deviation from a budget chair working out a gnarly problem in order to be
15:43able to figure out how should we really resolve how this individual policy should be evaluated.
15:52And instead turn it into an instrument in which you fake the numbers and do it in a partisan
15:59way.
16:00So that's not the only way that this would break protocol.
16:06The second is that each time it was used, it was used on a very narrow provision.
16:13It was routine, or in 2017, on the Crime Victims Fund, on the Power Market Administrations,
16:23on the preventing double counting of a dairy program, of adjustments to the Fiscal Responsibility
16:29Act.
16:30It was always on a very narrow provision.
16:33Not creating a whole new baseline out of thin air in order to fake the numbers over deficits
16:39and debt.
16:43One example on this is 2017.
16:47Republican Chair Mike Enzi directed CBO to use the original current law baseline for the
16:52Crime Victims Fund rather than a new baseline with updated numbers because essentially if
16:58you have a baseline at the start of the year and then a few months pass and numbers change
17:02slightly.
17:04And if you keep inventing or having to use a new baseline that's changing just small amounts,
17:10it makes no sense because they aren't significant changes.
17:12So it was an issue to say, no, let's go ahead and use the baseline from the start of the year
17:17rather than updating it every single time every week goes by.
17:21So a narrow, very narrow issue.
17:26And as I noted before, it was to resolve an ambiguity.
17:29Each time it's been used, it's to resolve an ambiguity.
17:33But in this case, it's to create ambiguity.
17:36It's to create confusion.
17:37It's to create smoke and mirrors.
17:38It's to create a phony baseline lie to ourselves and to the public about what this bill costs.
17:48And that is just wrong.
17:49Let me give you an example.
17:50In 2000, a deal had been struck on how to score activities of the Power Marketing Administration.
17:55But over the years, the Congressional Budget Office has started scoring the program differently
18:00from the 2000 arrangement.
18:02In 2023 and 2024, Senate Budget Chair Sheldon Whitehouse and House Budget Chair Jody Arrington
18:08invoked Section 312 to have CBO remember and observe the original 2000 agreement.
18:16It was an example of Section 312 being used to resolve a technical ambiguity.
18:22Let's look at one other way that it's been used in the past.
18:28It is never used on reconciliation.
18:31It was not used on reconciliation in 2017.
18:35It was not used when they addressed the Power Marketing Administration.
18:38That was not in reconciliation.
18:41Preventing the double counting of a dairy program was not in reconciliation.
18:45Adjusting the Fiscal Responsibility Act was not in reconciliation.
18:49This provision wasn't designed for reconciliation.
18:53Reconciliation has its own set of rules in Section 313.
19:00And those rules say each provision, the word is provision in the proposed law, is accounted
19:08for in terms of estimating accurately through these numbers from CBO and the Joint Committee
19:15on taxation, what its real effect will be.
19:19So that's the story.
19:20And to give you an example, in 2023, Senator Whitehouse and Rep Arrington again worked together
19:26to resolve an issue in the Farm Bill in which CBO was scoring for a dairy program, reducing
19:32the cost of extending the program by $105 million over 10 years.
19:36But CBO didn't include it in the new Farm Bill's baseline, meaning the Ag Committee has
19:42to pay for the program a second time out of the funding allocated to their committee.
19:48That didn't make any sense.
19:51So they fixed it.
19:53That's an example.
19:55Very narrow, bipartisan, and we're talking small numbers.
19:59Let's turn to those issues over small numbers.
20:03Well, they aren't so small when you think about this in terms of our normal trip to the
20:08grocery store, $73 million or less than $200 million.
20:14In one case on the Fiscal Responsibility Act, again, a bipartisan, specific provision, $2.8
20:20billion.
20:21What is this bill about?
20:22What is this fake baseline being used to hide in this case $37 trillion of additional
20:29debt?
20:31This is absolutely a crime against fiscal responsibility.
20:38It's blowing up the last two pillars from the 1974 Act, no additional debt or deficit past
20:4610 years in any title, honest use of numbers from CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation,
20:55making a provision to allow taking on small ambiguities to be wrestled with in a bipartisan fashion
21:02and resolved, taking that flexibility and using it in a wholesale destruction of responsible
21:08budgeting.
21:09So let's not do this.
21:13Colleagues, the deficit now annually is sizeable.
21:19It's about 6% of our gross domestic product.
21:22Remember the end of the Clinton administration?
21:25We were raising in revenue about 21% of GDP, we were spending about 21%, we were actually running
21:30a surplus.
21:32Now, we are spending 6% more of GDP than we're bringing in as revenue.
21:37We're no longer bringing in 21% of GDP in revenue, we're bringing in 17%.
21:41We're no longer spending 21%, we're spending 23%.
21:46And this bill, by the way, will crank up that gap between revenue and spending even more
21:52as time passes.
21:54It is a pathway to not only destroying the current programs that my colleague from Massachusetts
22:00was talking about, 16 million people losing health care, 4 million children growing hungry
22:06to give tax breaks to billionaires, it's not only a pathway to destroy current programs,
22:11but it runs up debt to destroy the ability to provide fundamental programs in housing and
22:17health care and education for the next generation.
22:21And that is wrong.
22:23And that's why I say to you, colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let's be honest about
22:29the numbers, let's not corrupt the process by bringing a measure that belongs in the regular
22:36budgeting world, not in the reconciliation world, in order to destroy reconciliation as
22:42a process that will not reduce or will not increase deficits after 10 years and will honestly
22:50convey the effect of each provision in the bill as to whether it raises revenue or spends
22:57money.
22:58Preserve honest budgeting.
23:01Let's do that.
23:02It will serve us well.
23:04It will serve the nation well.
23:07Thank you, Mr. President.
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