General Debate on Pay-As-You-Go Rules on House Floor

... table. for what purpose does the gentleman from myland rise? mr. hoyer: madam speaker, pursuant to house resolution 1065 i call up house joint resolution 45 with the senate amendment thereto, and i have a motion at the desk. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the joint resolution. the clerk: designate the senate amendment and report the motion. the clerk: house joint resolution 45, joint resolution increasing the statutory limit on the public debt. senate amendment, mr. hoyer of maryland moves that the house concur in the senate amendment to the house joint resolution 45. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to house resolution 1065, the motion shall be debatable for one hour equally divided and controlled by the majority leader and the minority leader or their disegg knees. the gentleman from maryland, mr. hoyer, will control 30 minutes. the gentleman from michigan, mr. camp, will control 15 minutes. and the gentleman from wisconsin, mr. ryan, will control 15 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentleman from maryland. mr. hoyer: i thank the speaker. i yield myself one minute. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman virginia tech. mr. hoyer: ladies and gentlemen of the house, as we have on numerous occasions we just raised the liability -- or the ability to b the -- those obligations, of course, come from actions america's already taken. those actions cannot be changed. so was necessary to pay the bill. but we can and must confront our record debt going forward. we must set a responsible path fiscally for our country. a ""new york times"" analysis found that 90% -- the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. hoyer: i yield myself three additional minutes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. hoyer: a ""new york times"" analysis found that 90% of our deficit was due to the policies of the previous administration. the extensioof those policies and the economic downturn. however we believe america got into this mess, this congress can begin getting america out of it. that is why congress must pass one of the most proven deficit cutting rules that we know, statutory pay-as-you-go legislation, or as affectionately known, pay-go. now, let me point to the chart to my right, your left. the deficits are when we did no have statutory pay-go in effect. now, when statutory pay-go was put into effect in 1990 we still had deficits, but you can see that we started reducing those deficits almost on a straight line. and then in 1997 we went into surplus, fiscal year 1998. and we went into surplus for the next four years under pay-go. unfortunately you will see that in 2001 it was decided that we would waive pay-go, and then in 2003 it was decided by the then majority party that we would eliminate statutory pay-go. and you can see the result. we were turned to deep deficits. so what we are voting on on the floor has demonstrablely made a difference, has demonstrably made america discipline its finances and bring surpluses. as i said, when george bush took office from president clinton, he -- his administration, based upon the past record of the clinton administration said we had a ...