Bill Pascrell: “While I am pleased that this Congress is looking at reforming the budget process, I do not believe this legislation is…”

“While I am pleased that this Congress is looking at reforming the budget process, I do not believe this legislation is the solution. The biggest problem with the budget is that, while the game may not be perfect, the players are the reason it is not working. Even Jim Nussle, former Republican Chairman of the House Budget Committee and Director of the Office of Management and Budget for President G.W. Bush, testified that, ``It may not be that the budget process is broken. It may not be, in other words, that the tools are broken, but it may be the fact that the tools are not being used.'' It is no surprise that since Day One of this Tea Party Congress, the majority has pushed forward with an array of anti-worker, anti- environment, anti-oversight, and anti-growth agenda, that serves the politics of their caucus rather than the citizens of this great Nation. The Pro-Growth Budgeting Act of 2011 encompasses this perfectly. As a Member of the Committee on Ways and Means, I'm very familiar with the ``Dynamic Scoring'' song and dance. Dynamic Scoring seeks to skirt the fundamentals of Economics 101: less revenue means less money and higher deficits. Instead, under this bill and its dynamic scoring, we will assume tax cuts produce fantasy levels of economic growth and pay for themselves. The proof is in the pudding. We don't have to look far to see what happened with Bush tax cuts.…”