Congressman Doyle Opposes Seriously Flawed Budget

Washington, DC – U.S. Representative Mike Doyle (PA-14) voted against the federal Fiscal Year 2007 budget resolution that was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on a party-line vote early this morning.

“Under President Bush’s leadership, the Republican-controlled Congress has squandered a $5.6 trillion budget surplus, added $3 trillion in debt, and endangered our nation’s economic future,” Congressman Doyle said after the vote.  “This budget continues the Republicans’ record of abysmal fiscal stewardship by making the deficit worse and leaving a crippling legacy of debt to our children.”

“Moreover, the House Republicans’ budget would stick it to lower- and middle-class households in order to pay for more tax cuts for millionaires,” he added, “and they don’t even have the guts to ‘fess up to it.  They’ve used world-class accounting gimmicks to hide the extent of their duplicity.”

The House-passed budget resolution, H.Con.Res. 376, would authorized $2.7 trillion in federal spending in Fiscal Year 2007.  It anticipates $2.4 trillion in government receipts that year, which would result in a deficit of $348 billion.  The actual deficit will most likely be significantly larger because the budget includes only $50 billion for the ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan – less than half the amount appropriated for fiscal year 2006. 

This budget resolution calls for $228 billion in new tax cuts over the next five years and $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.  Remarkably, while providing such a massive volume of tax cuts, much of which would go to households with income of more than $200,000 a year, the House-passed budget fails to protect millions of middle class families over the same period of time from the Alternative Minimum Tax, which in the next few years is expected to substantially increase the tax burden on working families – some with incomes as low as $50,000.

“I find it hard to believe that at a time when we’re engaged in two wars overseas that have so far cost over $300 billion, this administration continues to propose tax cuts for the most affluent – and the Republican-controlled Congress rubber-stamps them,” Congressman Doyle stated in explaining his opposition to the bill.  “I also find it hard to believe that the Republicans place a higher priority on tax cuts for millionaires than on essential safety net programs for poor children and the elderly.  On second thought, maybe it’s not so hard to believe, but their main argument – that these tax cuts stimulate the economy and benefit all of us – is completely bogus.”

The budget resolution passed by the House on a party-line vote would freeze domestic programs now and cut them drastically in future years.   The GOP budget cuts these programs by $10 billion in 2007 and $160 billion below the amount needed to maintain current services over five years.  The cuts including reducing veterans’ health care by $6.0 billion, education by $45.3 billion, public health by $18.1 billion, and environmental protection by $25.0 billion.

The GOP budget also includes another round of $6.8 billion in reconciliation cuts to mandatory programs, mostly within the Ways and Means and Education and the Workforce Committees.  $39 billion in similar cuts were made in Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, Food Stamps, and child support enforcement funding in the FY 2006 budget process.

Moreover, like last year, this budget relies on accounting gimmicks to get projected deficits down.  It fails to include a realistic amount for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, which if included would put the deficit over the $400 billion mark.  It fails to include the costs of fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax in subsequent years (over $800 billion over ten years), and it fails to show the massive deficits that making the President’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent would produce in the years after FY 2011.  The federal revenue loss associated with making these tax cuts permanent are so big that they would more than offset the shortfall projected for the Social Security program over the next 75 years.

Contrary to the Republican claim of “cutting the deficit in half,” the House-passed budget continues a legacy of deficit spending and debt, producing $1.1 trillion worth of deficits over five years.  The budget resolution would also call for a debt limit increase of $653 billion to $9.6 trillion – the fifth in six years – putting the federal government on a path to a total of $3.7 trillion in debt increases under President Bush.

“The Republicans’ fiscal policy is nothing short of madness,” Congressman Doyle stated today.  “It’s only a matter of time until the other shoe drops, and when it does, people are going to ask Republican Members of Congress how they could have been so foolish and so irresponsible for so long.”

“I will continue to work in Congress to enact more responsible fiscal policies that address the needs of my 500,000 constituents – not a handful of millionaires,” Congressman Doyle promised.

With that end in mind, Congressman Doyle voted for a Democratic alternative budget that would have avoided harmful cuts to domestic priorities while balancing the budget by 2012.  It would have produced smaller deficits each year than the Republican budget, accumulated less debt, and repealed the House rule providing for automatic debt limit increases.  It would also have reinstated the effective pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) rules that helped turn record deficits to record surpluses in the 1990s.  Unfortunately, this alternative budget was rejected before the House passed the Republican budget by a narrow margin of 218 to 210. 

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