Van Hollen on Bloomberg: We need infrastructure investment, ambitious 10-year deficit reduction plan

Sep 7, 2011 Issues: Economy, Health Care, Social Security, Taxes, Transportation

 

Washington, DC – Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen, Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee, today appeared on Bloomberg’s “In The Loop” to discuss the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. Video of the interview is available here and the transcript is below.

BETTY LIU, BLOOMBERG: Congressman Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, is joining us. Also joining us from Washington is Peter Cook, who as you know has been following this story from start to now, he is joining us as well from the bureau. Congressman, thank you very much for joining us. As I mentioned, you will be meeting for the first time this week. What is on the top of your list to meet that $1.5 trillion goal to cut the deficit?

REP. VAN HOLLEN: Well, you’re right, we’re going to be meeting tomorrow morning for the first time. There are two parts to the answer. First, we have to get the economy moving again, so we’re very interested in hearing what the President has to say, because every day the economy is stalled is a day that not only people are out of work, but it’s a day where our deficit gets bigger. Second, a package has to have a balanced approach to the long-term deficit reduction. That’s what every bipartisan commission from Simpson-Bowles to Rivlin-Domenici has told us. So I hope we will be ambitious on both fronts. I hope we will do whatever we can to support the President’s efforts and other Congressional ideas to get the economy moving again, but also come up with an ambitious 10-year deficit reduction plan.

LIU: But Congressman, I want to know though, what is on the top of your list?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, what is on the top of my list is, again, making sure we accomplish that goal, because we want to make sure that we restore –

LIU: Well we know that, we know that, but what programs are on the top of your list to get to this target goal?

VAN HOLLEN: Are you talking about in terms of reductions? I think that we need –

LIU: Yes, reductions.

VAN HOLLEN: Look, I think there are subsidies in the farm areas. I think there are other programs where you’ve got room for cuts; in the Biden group, we identified a number of those areas and I mentioned one, the farm subsidies. But I think we also need to look at areas in the corporate tax code and the other parts of the tax code where you’ve got certain kinds of deductions, for example, in the corporate tax code the oil and gas provisions that have been much talked about. Now those are some examples, but I don’t want to pre-judge anything. I want to make sure that the whole idea is to have people from both sides of the aisle come together and have a conversation.

LIU: Alright Congressman, hang on. We’re going to have you after the break to talk more about the deficit, as well as President Obama’s speech tomorrow on jobs.

LIU: Well, we are back with Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen, member of the supercommittee to reduce the budget deficit, also the Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee. Also with us is Peter Cook from the Washington bureau, and Peter, I know you want to jump in here.

PETER COOK, BLOOMBERG: Congressman Van Hollen, thanks for joining us. I want to ask you about the President’s speech. We’re reporting he’s going to talk about $300 billion, a total jobs package that will include payroll tax cut extensions, infrastructure, as well as some aid to states and localities. My question to you is: is this a plan that you and the House Democratic leadership can support, is this a plan that can pass?

VAN HOLLEN: Yes, I think it’s certainly a plan that we can support from the details that I know about it. We’re going to have to work with our Republican colleagues to see how much of this we can get passed. I would hope they would agree with us and the President that we need to make that infrastructure investment. You’ve got 14 percent unemployment in the construction area. At the same time, you’ve got a lot of bridges that are failing, a lot of schools that are crumbling, so there is a lot we can do in the infrastructure area. With respect to payroll taxes and the holiday, that is something Republicans have supported in the past. Everybody has told us that businesses need customers; they need consumers who have more money, a little more disposable income in their pockets. Extending and expanding the payroll tax holiday is a way to do that, so that is another area where I hope our Republican colleagues would come together and push with us to accomplish.

COOK: And Congressman, if they insist that this $300 billion be paid for with other spending cuts in other areas in the short-term, what happens then?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, the key is that it is paid-for, but I think the important thing is that we look at this over a period of time. Both bipartisan commissions and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, have all warned us about the costs of taking measures that would actually hurt a very fragile economy. You don’t want to be doing the payroll tax holiday to try to get the economy going on the one hand, and at the same time take actions that slow the economy down. So from a budget perspective, we need to look at the long-term. It is very important that we put the budget on a long-term sustainable fiscal path. The exact timing of those measures something we will have to work out, but we would not want to do it in a way that would hurt the very fragile economy.

LIU: Right, and job creation. Congressman, I want to just get back to the supercommittee because certainly it will be an immense and difficult task for you and the other 11 members of this committee on finding those cuts to reduce the budget deficit. I was asking you before what was of the top of your list. What I want to know is the entitlement spending, the entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – are those going to be on the table for this committee?

VAN HOLLEN: I think we’re going to have a full discussion of all those areas. We cannot limit ourselves to any one part of the budget. We’re going to look at everything from the spending side to the revenue side. Let’s take Medicare, for example. There are areas where we can modernize the Medicare system. Right now we have a fee-for-service system that rewards the volume of care. Every time you go to the doctor or hospital, they get paid. What we're looking for is ways to design the system to focus more on the quality of care to try to incentivize these accountable care organizations. Improving the coordination of care for Medicare patients is a way we can both save dollars and make sure people get better care, and there are a lot of good ideas out there. Some of them were started in the Affordable Care Act, but there’s certainly more room there. So, yes, I think we are going to take a look at that. Are we going to take a look at the proposals like the ones that, you know, the House Republicans put forward that would end the Medicare guarantee? That is certainly not something that a lot of us will support, but our colleagues are free, of course, to talk about that approach if they want to.

LIU: Is there anything in regards to the entitlement program that is off the table for you?

VAN HOLLEN: No, all of this is part of a discussion. When we're talking about things like Social Security, it’s important to look at that to strengthen the Social Security system itself. I don’t think that we should balance the budget on the backs of Social Security beneficiaries. What we should be doing is making sure that, come the year 2037, that we’re able to make sure people can get their benefits, and that means we will have to look at different parts of that program to strengthen it and make sure that it’s solvent in the future. Whether that becomes part of the work of the supercommittee at the end of the day or not, I don’t know, but it’s certainly something we will talk about. We’re going to have witnesses that talk about all of these issues. There’s going to be witnesses to talk about Medicare, Social Security, the revenue side of the equation and the discretionary side of the budget.

LIU: Congressman, thank you very much.