Dems: GOP looking to 'wish away inflation' with budget reform bill

By Pete Kasperowicz - 02/02/12 07:37 PM ET

House Democrats on Thursday accused Republicans of looking to "wish away" inflation with a budget reform proposal that would end the practice of setting budget baselines that are equivalent to the prior year's budget plus inflation.

"The concern is that this creates actually a very misleading picture of what we can purchase in terms of goods and services with our dollars, and it gets more misleading over time," House Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in debate over the bill, H.R. 3578.

"And what this bill does is, it tries to kind of wish away inflation," he said.

Other Democrats tried to wrestle the debate back to the issue of jobs. "This bill will do nothing to spur economic growth, it will do nothing to bring us closer to a balanced budget, although it could greatly confuse and complicate the budget process," argued Rep. David Price (D-NC).

But Republicans pressed ahead, and said ending the practice of using prior budgets plus inflation as a budget baseline has led to excessive government spending. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said changing this would lead to a more honest budget process, since in the past, Congress has been able to pretend it cut spending when really it set spending at a level that is below the inflation-adjusted baseline.

"We think, for honesty and for transparency, if we spend X dollars this year, that is the base on which we ought to consider next year's budget," Ryan said. "So what we're simply saying is, let's err on the side of the taxpayer.

"Let's not err on the side of assuming every government agency automatically needs a spending increase one year to the next. If we think they need more money, then we should measure it on an honest basis and then legislate more money for those agencies."

Ryan credited Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Rob Woodall (R-Ga.) with pushing to get the bill on the House floor. Gohmert said he could not believe Congress has yet to fix this decades-old problem.

"This is a great day for America, when Congress, after all of these years… is dealing with a financial issue that should have been dealt with long ago," he said.

The House debated the bill Thursday evening, but members are expected to hold a roll call vote on the bill Friday.