Pelosi Joins President Obama In Urging Passage of Pay-As-You-Go Legislation

Pelosi Joins President Obama In Urging Passage of Pay-As-You-Go Legislation

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Contact: Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami/Drew Hammill, 202-226-7616

Washington, D.C. - Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined President Barack Obama and Democratic Members of Congress at a news conference at the White House this afternoon as the President expressed his strong support for legislation that would reinstitute statutory pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) rules, which will restore fiscal discipline to the federal government. Afterward, Speaker Pelosi issued the following statement:

â€Å"Pay-as-you-go budget accountability has been a centerpiece of Democratic budget discipline since the early 1980s. In the 1990s, when a Democratic Congress and President Bill Clinton were able to implement this discipline, we reversed the huge deficits of the Reagan-Bush years and produced four years of budget surpluses while funding American priorities. That fiscal discipline helped produce an economic boom with rising household incomes for millions of Americans.

â€Å"But when President George W. Bush came to office, he and Congressional Republicans abandoned the PAYGO rule. A projected surplus of $5.6 trillion was allowed to collapse into more than $5.8 trillion in deficits- a turnaround of more than $11 trillion in the wrong direction.

â€Å"Since the first day Democrats reclaimed the majority in 2007, PAYGO has been part of the rules that govern how the House conducts its business. Now we are fully committed to enacting PAYGO rules into law with enforceable consequences.

â€Å"As we have shown before, we can fund America's priorities while abiding by the strict rules of pay-as-you-go accountability. Working with President Obama, we will establish PAYGO as the discipline for all future spending and tax policy. And when we do, our economy, our citizens, and our future generations will achieve greater stability and greater security.”