Debbie Dingell: “once again I rise in opposition to the irresponsible budget conference report before us today. This conference report…”

“once again I rise in opposition to the irresponsible budget conference report before us today. This conference report, for the first time in over twenty years, only provides us with a one-year budget plan. In the first version of the bill, my colleagues attempted to use a five-year budget instead of a ten-year budget to hide the massive fiscal irresponsibility of their plan. Now, because even a five-year plan was too much, they have reduced it even further to merely one year. There is no plan to reduce the deficit or to provide funding for this Nation's most important domestic programs, for our veterans, our seniors and our children. This rascality on the part of my Republican colleagues is unacceptable. The American people deserve to know the outrageous bills the Bush Administration is racking up in their name and with our children's credit. Further, this bill included $55.2 billion in additional tax giveaways which will only add to the already ballooning deficit. My Republican colleagues will not even apply the ``pay-as-you-go'' (PAYGO) method to these tax giveaways because they know we cannot afford them. The PAYGO enforcement rule is a mere common sense attempt to steer clear of unnecessary excessive spending. This is especially necessary to afford the tremendous costs of war which we face today. In this budget, the PAYGO rule is only applied to entitlement spending for one year, and in reality would only apply to legislation in the Senate.”