(REMARKS AS PREPARED)

Thank you for yielding, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Director, as I noted yesterday with Secretary Geithner, your budget places a new $646 billion energy tax on the American people.  Or at least that is the most your budget admitted to in the plain type.

Upon closer inspection, I found that footnote 3 to table S-2 in the President’s budget states that there are assumed revenues beyond the $646 billion.  So much for a return to honest budgeting.

Mr. Director, I agree that honesty is the best policy, and that the American people should know what is included in the federal budget.  However, telling only half the story, as you have done, is not the same as being honest. 

I trust you are aware that when you were heading the Congressional Budget Office, you scored the Lieberman-Warner bill as raising nearly a trillion dollars, and that legislation had less ambitious emission targets and did not auction 100% of allowances as the President proposes to do.

How much revenue beyond the initial $646 billion do you really expect the American public to pay?  How much of a burden will you put on American employers to raise these new monies?  Why is the true cost of this tax increase hidden from the public and the media?

Beyond this new, massive tax, I hope we get the chance to talk about the President’s approach to health care reform. 

Per capita health care spending in the U.S. is already twice as high as the spending rates in Canada and two and one half times higher than those in the UK.  While health care is expensive, the issue is not that we aren’t spending enough today, it is that we spend it inefficiently.

Yet, the President’s budget proposes a $634 billion “Health Reform Reserve Fund” to serve as a partial “down payment.”  First and foremost, I worry that you have confused increased spending with real reform that delivers enhanced care.

Second, half of this money will come from a massive tax increase, the rest from drastic changes in Medicare and Medicaid.  But yet again, you have not told the whole story to the American public.  If $634 billion is the “down payment” what is the full costs and why is that number not in this budget?

Given that most estimates place the cost of your health reform plans at more than $1 trillion, I assume you have hidden somewhere another $400 billion in tax increases and Medicare cuts you will be sharing with this committee.

Mr. Director, to honor the passing this week of Paul Harvey, I hope you will tell this committee and the American public “the rest of the story.”

With that, I yield back the balance of my time. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.