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Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

Date: March 25, 2015
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Government Budget and Spending

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Mr. ROKITA. I thank the chairman for this process.

All day today, we have been considering substitute budgets, laid bare, in the people's House, in this Chamber, for everyone to view and critique; and I think that is a good thing.

Considering the Democrat substitute amendment, their budget, it adds an additional $4.7 trillion to the debt versus our budget. As we stand here today, we already have $18 trillion worth of debt and another at least $100 trillion on the way over the next several decades, completely unsustainable.

This comes despite, under their plan, a $1.9 trillion tax hike that we have already talked about. This shows, once again, that you can't solve our debt problems by chasing ever higher spending with ever higher taxes.

The fact of the matter is, right now, we take in, as a Federal Government, over $2.5 trillion of the people's property. It is the people's property that we confiscate, some of it rightly so, to run the things that we need--but $2.5 trillion, Mr. Chairman, we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem when you consider that we--excuse me. It is probably nearly $3 trillion now when we kick in nearly $3.5 trillion of spending also.

When you analyze this, if you look at it, the CBO said--and this was in a letter to former Chairman Ryan--that tax rates would have to nearly double by 2030 if we are to stabilize our debt by using tax increases alone, as this Democratic substitute would do.

Now, here is what CBO says about rates. By 2023, everyone's income tax would have to increase by 33 percent; by 2030, rates would have to increase by 48 percent, and by 2050, rates would have to increase by 86 percent in order to account for the debt load that the Democratic budget wants to put not only on us, but our children and grandchildren.

We stand here today as the first generation in American history that, by any objective measure, is going to leave the next one worse off.

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Mr. ROKITA. We cannot let that happen. This is what we came to Congress to solve, at least for many of us, hopefully, Republicans and Democrats, so that we are not the first generation in American history to leave the next one worse off.

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