On the recordMarch 31, 2014
I appreciate the work of Senator Wyden and others on this problem. It is a matter we need to fix. The Senator from Maryland said the fix is signed off by the House too, so I guess we are supposed to know the fix is in. We are just going to take care of the doctors who need their money and we are not going to pay for it. We are not going to do it within the budget, again. As ranking member of the Budget Committee, I feel I have a responsibility to report to this body the plain financial truth about the legislation that comes before us. The bill offered by our Democratic colleagues is worse than this one. I guess this is a Reid- Boehner bill that is before us now. But the Democrats' bill would claim to pay for it with OCO--the Overseas Contingency Operation--which couldn't be anything worse than the pay-for in this bill. The Reid-Boehner doc fix legislation we are about to consider violates the spending limits we passed in December, the Ryan-Murray- raised spending limits--by $6 billion only 3 months after those limits were signed into law. Think about that. Bloomberg News released an analysis today concluding that: Since December 2013, the Republican House and the Democratic Senate have approved more than $40 billion worth of spending ``offsets'' in the form of cuts that would take place in 2023 at the earliest or timing shifts in policy to bring savings into the 10-year window.…





