Bill Pascrell: “With regard to the title of this legislation, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act, maybe they should have stopped…”

“With regard to the title of this legislation, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act, maybe they should have stopped there, Madam Chair, because the rest of the bill is not transparency at all. We still want to deal in the mist, we still want to believe that if we don't pay our bills and if we don't pay the bills that we have, the Federal Government, that everything is going to be all right. The bond rating agencies don't think so, nor does anyone else. So when you put the country in jeopardy of not paying its own bills, here is who you hurt: you hurt the middle class, you hurt the working poor, and you hurt the poor. This bill is nothing more than a backdoor method to politicize and eliminate important Federal investments. They've been trying to do that, Madam Chair, for 4 years. It hurts the middle class, hurts the working folks, and it hurts the economy. The use of the fair value accounting is the ax that these extreme methods will take to spending on our education, our small businesses, and the next generation of clean technology. This bill that we are discussing right now requires that certain programs that make loans, whether they be student loans, Small Business Administration loans, or Department of Energy loans for clean energy projects, be scored to cost more than the government actually spends. And you don't even deny it. In short, fair value accounting doesn't call a nickel a nickel, it calls it 10 cents.…”