Bob Menendez: “back in 1990, Congress instituted the pay-as-you-go rules with bipartisan support, including the support of the first…”

“back in 1990, Congress instituted the pay-as-you-go rules with bipartisan support, including the support of the first President Bush. However, those rules were based on the principle that if you are digging yourself deeper into a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. And the 1990 rules which required that both mandatory spending increases and tax cuts be offset helped keep the deficit hole from getting deeper, and eventually helped produce record budget surpluses. Unfortunately, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle evidently have completely forgotten this sound concept. The Republican bill we debate here today is a deeply flawed and ineffective version of the earlier pay-as-you-go requirements. Specifically, this legislation lets the Congress keep digging deeper to make the deficit bigger. By covering only mandatory spending, tax cuts would not have to be paid for, and entitlement increases would ultimately have to be paid for by cutting other entitlements. That is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In essence, this is the way in which they mask the dismantling of entitlement priorities. In addition, the measured spending caps would be set at unrealistically low levels, which would lead either to devastating cuts in domestic spending, in education, in health care, in research, or, to the ignoring of the caps. Record deficits are not due to discretionary spending.…”