Celia Israel: “My amendment is very simple. It would direct the CBO to analyze the impact of our major bills here in Congress on some…”

“My amendment is very simple. It would direct the CBO to analyze the impact of our major bills here in Congress on some of the Nation's most critical institutions, our State and local governments, and State and local taxpayers. The State Budget Crisis Task Force is cochaired by former Lieutenant Governor of the State of New York Richard Ravitch and the former Federal Reserve Board Chair Paul Volcker. They spent a great deal of time analyzing the impacts of what we do here on State and local governments and taxpayers. What did they find? They found that fiscal stress runs downhill, and very often, local taxpayers are the recipient of that stress. Everything we do here in Congress, Mr. Chairman, or everything that we don't do has significant implications on broader levels of government and local taxpayers. But no mechanism exists at all to assess the fiscal impact of Federal actions on those taxpayers. I am offering this amendment today because if we are going to analyze how our fiscal actions affect the economy, we need to make sure we are not just pushing off the hard decisions to local taxpayers. Let me give you an example. The Republican budget, offered by my good friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin, cuts over $50 billion from road repair and infrastructure investments. {time} 1215 And so the implication of that budget is that the Federal Government does less but local taxpayers have to pay the bill to fill in the potholes. That is just fundamentally wrong.…”