{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.enzi.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ContentRecord_id=B23DC249-9660-4ED8-B3B6-A8813FF09845", "Congress is fooling itself when it comes to balancing the books", "2016-07-19", "2016", "2016-07", "Republican", "House", "WY", "Michael Enzi", "E000285", "www.enzi.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Congress has a spending problem and sometimes it tries to use budget gimmicks to make it look like it has more money to spend than it actually does.\r\nU.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., introduced legislation recently that would end one of the tricks that Congress uses to pretend that it is balancing the books.\r\n\u00a0\u201cSaying that you have the money to pay for a project when the money isn\u2019t there is just wrong and an example of bad bookkeeping,\u201d Enzi said. \u201cAs a former small business owner and accountant, I know that I wouldn\u2019t have been able to get away with this type of accounting trickery, and neither should Congress. My legislation would force Congress to be honest with itself and the American taxpayers about how it is spending money.\u201d\r\nThe Pension and Budget Integrity Act would ensure that the premiums paid to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) cannot be used to offset other spending when it comes to balancing the federal budget. This would eliminate the motivation for Congress to increase the amount businesses pay into the pension fund in order for Congress to \u201cpay\u201d for unrelated programs, like it did for highways and infrastructure projects in 2012.", 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://www.enzi.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ContentRecord_id=B23DC249-9660-4ED8-B3B6-A8813FF09845"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.955045223236084, "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"}