Mike Conaway: “I want to talk first about PAYGO, and then I want to talk about something a little closer to home for Texans, and that…”

“I want to talk first about PAYGO, and then I want to talk about something a little closer to home for Texans, and that is the way sales taxes are treated in the budget and under the current Tax Code. For the entire time I have been here in Congress, which is a relatively short period of time, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have pounded away this idea, using the term ``PAYGO.'' ``Pay as you go'' is the phrase, which rolls easily off the tongue but can have a multitude of definitions. And most of the folks in District 11 who hear the term ``PAYGO,'' in other words, that you are going to pay for something as you go along, it really makes a lot of sense to them under a more traditional definition of that phrase. This past week we had an interesting parliamentary ploy that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle used in order to get a vote on whether or not the delegate from Washington, DC would have voting privileges. And that is, it was debated at length last week, and it did pass. But it had a fiscal limit attached to it. It cost money.…”