On the recordFebruary 7, 2012
I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Chair, I rise today to join my fellow Democratic members of the House Budget Committee to express my confusion and disbelief over our colleagues' decision to make a spectacle out of the so-called budget process reform bills rather than using our time to wisely address serious economic policy and make long-term, overdue process improvements. I admire my Republican colleagues for raising the issue of the need to have a better budgeting process. But these are just spectacles. This so-called Budget and Accounting Transparency Act is an example of that. H.R. 3581 would change the way we budget for government loans by requiring that estimates for these loans--examples are student loans, energy loans, housing, small business loans--be done on the so-called fair value basis. {time} 1510 These estimates account for so-called ``market-based'' risk. Now, experts argue that so-called fair-value estimates overstate the true cost of government credit programs because the estimates include a risk premium that never materializes in the government's cash flow. It's also critical to note that in every single discussion of H.R. 3581 and fair-value estimates, that if we applied this policy not just to credit products, but government-wide--like to Medicare or to ag programs, or some of the other favored programs of the majority--it would increase estimated subsidy costs to the government for all loan programs by more than $50 billion.…
