On the recordApril 8, 2014
I appreciate my friend from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) for kicking off this debate. As he indicated earlier, as we debate the budgets, there will be differences of opinion and differences of philosophy, but when it comes to math, there is not a Republican math, and there is not a Democratic math. When you run a math equation, you get the same result whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. What this bill attempts to do is to legislate away inflation. Gee, that would be so nice if we could pass a law and inflation would go away. What is worse is this bill then says that we are going to put together budgets on the assumption that there is no inflation, on the assumption that the price of goods and services doesn't change over time, and if you do that, you will get very misleading results in your budget. Now, the gentleman talked about Washington math. Madam Speaker, I would just like to show you the change in the cost of a hamburger from the last 10-year period. We do our budgets in 10-year windows. The price of a hamburger in 2004 was $2.71. The price of that same hamburger 10 years later, in 2014, is $4.62. That is not Washington math. That is reality-based math. Here is what this Republican proposal would do. It wants to take that fantasy land math and apply it to our budgets. Here is the chart.…
