John Spratt: “To supplement my remarks about statutory PAYGO, I would like to include in the Record the attached section of the bill.…”

“To supplement my remarks about statutory PAYGO, I would like to include in the Record the attached section of the bill. Madam Speaker, at the outset of the 1990s, the Congress passed the Budget Enforcement Act for a simple purpose: to ensure that the Budget Summit Agreement we just passed was actually carried out. Among its provisions was a new rule called PAYGO, pay-as-you-go. I can remember how our critics disdained our resort to budget process instead of making hard substantive decisions. They said we were dodging the hard choices, choices we had to make if we were going to wipe out the deficit. But by the end of the 1990s, the budget was in surplus for the first time in 30 years, and it was clear that for the budget process, rules we would put in place like PAYGO played a big part in our fiscal success. Republicans were in the majority in 2002 when the Budget Enforcement Act expired, and they chose not to reinstate PAYGO because they knew it would impede passage of their tax-cutting agenda. Without these process rules in place, the budget plunged from a surplus of $236 billion to a deficit of $413 billion in the year 2004. When Democrats took back the House, we made PAYGO a rule of the House the first day we convened the 110th Congress. The Obama administration, the current Congress have inherited an economy in crisis and a colossal deficit, swollen by recession and recovery measures both.…”