Bobby Scott: “This amendment points out the difficulty in the one-way PAYGO. If we have a crunch, we can only deal with it by cutting…”

“This amendment points out the difficulty in the one-way PAYGO. If we have a crunch, we can only deal with it by cutting spending. We cannot deal with it any other kind of way. With the one-way PAYGO, if we want to deal with the problem through tax cuts, if we have health care we want to deliver, we can do it in tax cuts. Just give tax credits. There is no limit to what we can do. But if we have a crunch and the budget is tight, we have got to have this mindless across-the-board cut. If we do it through tax cuts, we could have tax cuts at the same time that we are cutting the spending. This is what happens when we have a two-way PAYGO, that is, if we are going to cut taxes, we have to cut spending. If we increase spending, we have got to raise taxes or any combination. This just says we have got to cut mindlessly across the board with spending. If we have a crunch and we have a new need, we cannot make it; we cannot meet it. This is why we need a two-way PAYGO and a more sensible way to deal with our budget, not mindless across-the-board tax cuts.”