{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://web.archive.org/web/20150103055424/http://chaffetz.house.gov/press-release/myths-vs-facts-cromnibus-edition", "Myths vs. Facts: CRomnibus Legislation", "2014-12-17", "2014", "2014-12", "Republican", "House", "UT", "Jason Chaffetz", "C001076", "web.archive.org", null, null, "legacy", "Many of you continue to have concerns about the omnibus bill passed last week.\u00a0 I understand your concerns.\u00a0 The bill is an imperfect compromise with the problems and budget gimmicks typical of all appropriations bills.\u00a0 However, I believe passing this bill was important to Utah and represents our best strategy for fighting the President\u2019s agenda.\u00a0 There is a reason the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren voted against this bill.\u00a0 There is a lot of misinformation circulating about this bill. Let\u2019s talk about some of those myths.\nMYTH:\u00a0 Voting against the CRomnibus would put an end to executive amnesty.\nFACT:\u00a0 False.\u00a0 If the CRomnibus had been defeated, the President\u2019s executive orders would still be carried out. During the last shutdown, just 15% of DHS employees were furloughed.\u00a0 The rest - 85% - were deemed \u201cessential\u201d and continued to work through the shutdown.\u00a0 A shutdown would not stop executive amnesty.\u00a0\nFurthermore, the agency carrying out the President\u2019s orders is primarily funded by user fees.\u00a0 In a government shutdown, those fees are still collected.\nI believe we must change the equation.\u00a0 Can that be done with a Harry Reid-led Senate?\u00a0 Unfortunately,\u00a0 no.\u00a0 With a new Senate, I hope and expect we can and will.\nRep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, explains, \u201cThe CRomnibus actually presents the best possible chance of stopping executive amnesty, as not even a government shutdown will stop the President\u2019s executive actions. The CRomnibus provided just two months of funding for the Department of Homeland Security so that our border patrol can keep the border secure through the end of February. One of the first things that House and Senate Republicans will tackle - TOGETHER - is to create a budget for DHS that includes our tough House border security bill and specific language to stop the use of any funds, appropriated or gathered via fees, to implement the President's executive amnesty plan. While the President and Democrats were hoping to force a government shutdown debate early next year to detract the public's attention from his unlawful immigration executive order and discredit the new Republican Senate, thanks to the CRomnibus we sidestepped their trap and strengthened the new Republican Senate's ability to put a bill on the President's desk forcing him to choose between protecting our border or protecting illegal immigrants.\u201d\nMYTH:\u00a0 A vote for the CRomnibus was a betrayal of Utah voters.\nFACT:\u00a0 A vote against the bill would have been the real betrayal.\u00a0 Failure to pass this budget would have cost rural Utah counties a substantial portion of the funds upon which they rely to provide public safety, infrastructure and other critical services. A vote that could financially devastate the counties I represent would have been a true betrayal.\u00a0 Because the federal government pays no property taxes on the millions of acres it controls in our rural counties, those counties are forced to rely on PILT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) to run local government.\u00a0 The omnibus, along with the National Defense Authorization Act, fully funds PILT at $442 million. This funding will provide certainty and badly needed stability for rural counties in Utah and across the West.\u00a0 There is no funding vehicle for PILT payments \u2013 the only way Utah ever gets this money is if the bill is attached to an appropriations bill.\u00a0 The Utah delegation worked hard for our constituents to get PILT payments into the omnibus bill.\nFACT:\u00a0 Voting against the sage grouse provision would have been a further betrayal of Utah voters.\u00a0 Because the CRomnibus prohibits the US Fish and Wildlife Service from issuing rules to place the Western and Gunnison Sage Grouse on the Endangered Species List for a year, Western states gained a huge concession. We can now demonstrate once again that states can manage endangered species without the one-size-fits-all policies of federal agencies that hurt our local economies and have a low rate of success. Utah's state plan has been successful and proves that habitat protection can co-exist with grazing, mining, drilling and other land uses.\u00a0\nThe CRomnibus contains numerous other provisions important to Western states.\u00a0 The Western Caucus has provided an excellent summary of those provisions here.\nMYTH:\u00a0 The CRomnibus empowers environmentalists and the EPA.\nFACT:\u00a0 The CRomnibus cut EPA funding by $60 million. The Western Caucus reports, \u201cOverall, EPA funding has been reduced by $2.2 billion \u2013 or 21% since Republicans gained control of the House in 2010.\u00a0 The agreement rejects $66 million requested by the President for EPA regulatory programs and creates exemptions for livestock producers from onerous greenhouse gas regulations.\u201d\nMYTH:\u00a0 The CRomnibus is full of pork and giveaways.\nFACT: Budget authority for 2015 is even lower than the budget authority for 2008, despite seven years of inflation, population growth, and GDP growth.\u00a0 This bill dramatically slows the growth in discretionary spending.\u00a0 In actual dollars, total discretionary spending will have decreased for the fifth consecutive year. Total discretionary budget authority, including disaster, emergency, and war spending, will be about $1.1 trillion in fiscal year 2015, which is lower than 2008.\u00a0 This appropriations bill continues the trend of reducing total discretionary spending relative to GDP. Discretionary spending relative to GDP has fallen dramatically since the stimulus was enacted and is now even lower than it was prior to the stimulus. In 2007, total discretionary spending equaled 7.5% of GDP. In 2009, total discretionary spending peaked at 10.4% of GDP. However, in 2015, total discretionary spending will approach 6.1% of GDP. These figures include all discretionary spending such as base, disaster, emergency, and war spending.\n\u00a0\nMYTH: The CRomnibus fully funded ObamaCare through September.\nFACT: The CRomnibus cut another $10 million from IPAB atop the $52 billion we have cut from Obamacare since 2012. \u00a0I have voted more than 40 times to repeal Obamacare.\u00a0 Unfortunately, Democrats intentionally designed Obamacare to function independent from Congressional discretionary appropriations specifically to prevent us from cutting the funding.\u00a0 Even the government shutdown did not stop Obamacare because of the way it was funded. \u00a0We have repeatedly blocked funding for implementation.\u00a0\nRep. Brady (R-TX), who is the most senior Republican on the House Ways & Means Committee, writes, \u201cThe CRomnibus blocks the White House from using the Prevention and Public Health Fund as a slush fund for ObamaCare, removed $10 million from the IPAB rationing board and blocked taxpayer funds from being used to bailout insurance companies faltering in the exchanges. To sum up, we did not fund ObamaCare through the Cromnibus. As the author of the ObamaCare chart and leader of the Health subcommittee my goal is to repeal ObamaCare as soon as possible (we'll need a new President) as that's the only way to fully defund it, and replace it with a free-market alternative driven by patients, not Washington. In the meantime, we'll continue to repeal and defund as much of it as we can and now with the Senate working with us, not against us.\u201d\nMYTH:\u00a0 The CRomnibus shows Republicans aren\u2019t serious about tackling the debt.\nFACT: \u00a0\u00a0This bill only addresses discretionary spending \u2013 which is about1/3 of the federal budget and is not the main driver of our debt.\u00a0 Even if you reduced discretionary spending to 0, we would still run massive deficits.\u00a0 Mandatory spending \u2014 which is NOT addressed in this or any other appropriations bill \u2014 is the primary threat to our nation's economic future. Congress should be focusing more on reforming programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which are by far the biggest drivers of our debt. Three years ago, I introduced a Social Security reform proposal. You can view this proposal on my website at\u00a0http://chaffetz.house.gov/issue/social-security\nMYTH:\u00a0 The Y Mountain bill should never have been part of the CRomnibus.\nFACT:\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 I was able to pass it through the House in each of the last two sessions \u2013 first in July 2012 and again in June 2013.\u00a0 Senator Hatch carried the bill in the Senate.\u00a0 He wisely attached the legislation to the NDAA and consequently was able to pass it.\u00a0 It is now on its way to the president\u2019s desk for signature.\u00a0 You can read more about what it accomplishes here.\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://web.archive.org/web/20150103055424/http://chaffetz.house.gov/press-release/myths-vs-facts-cromnibus-edition"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9469739161431789, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}