[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 22 (Thursday, March 3, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 3, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
             INTRODUCTION OF THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT

  Mr. SCHAEFER. Mr. Speaker, later this month, the House will debate 
and vote on a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I 
have long supported a balanced budget amendment, because I believe 
that, unless we control the deficit, our Nation will soon face a fiscal 
crisis of unimaginable proportions.
  The Clinton administration has recently been crowing because the 
deficit will be only $171 billion next year. But as this chart shows, 
any benefit we gained from the Clinton tax increase will be very short-
lived. Within only a few years, the deficit will pass its current 
level, and skyrocket on to new record highs.
  Well, those annual deficits mount year after year, adding to the 
public debt--which is simply all the deficits over the years added 
together. As everybody knows, if you borrow money, you have to pay 
interest. And the more you borrow, the more substantial the interest 
burden becomes.
  This chart illustrates just how vicious that cycle has become for our 
Federal Government. In 1970, about 16 cents of every dollar of personal 
income taxes went to servicing the national debt. Today, 40 cents out 
of every income tax dollar goes solely to pay interest on that debt. 
Every year that we run a budget deficit, the debt will continue to 
grow. And, as the debt itself continues to expand, interest charges 
servicing it will inevitably swallow the Federal budget.
  If we want to stop this fiscal insanity, there are many hard choices 
to be made, and passing a balanced budget amendment is only the first 
step. We still need to make the tough spending choices to actually 
balance the budget.
  Many Members of Congress and outside groups have advanced partial and 
comprehensive plans to reduce the deficit. Some simply call for across-
the-board spending reductions and set lower spending caps, without 
spelling out the policy changes necessary to achieve those lower caps. 
A few have made wish lists of preferred spending cuts, but then leave 
it at that.
  What no one, in or out of Congress, has ever done before is conduct a 
comprehensive survey of all those specific spending cut ideas, find 
those that are workable, and then draft them into a legislative package 
that actually approaches achieving a balanced budget.
  I am proud to announce today that Congressman Tim Penny and I have 
done just that. We have just introduced an actual bill that lays out, 
program-by-program, line-by-line, how to all but eliminate the deficit. 
The Fiscal Responsibility Act, the product of nearly a year's work, 
contains over 150 specific, narrowly defined, spending cuts. This 
legislation will reduce the deficit by over $550 billion over the next 
5 years--without raising taxes.

  Mr. Speaker, no one is spared in this package--from agricultural 
subsidies, to transportation, to defense, to Congress and, yes, even 
sensitive entitlement programs and COLA's. Everybody is asked to 
sacrifice a little today to avoid the inevitable need to inflict much 
more severe financial pain tomorrow if we do not solve this crisis.
  I am the first to say that there are, indeed, many hard choices in 
this package. Faced with an up or down vote on many of the specific 
provisions, Congressman Penny and I might very well oppose them. But, 
as a package, the Fiscal Responsibility Act is a true deficit solution, 
fairly and honestly achieved. I encourage my colleagues to take the 
first step toward a balanced budget by cosponsoring the Fiscal 
Responsibility Act.

                              {time}  1740

  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota, [Mr. Penny].
  Mr. PENNY. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I compliment the gentleman from Colorado for his work in 
developing this package of spending cuts. As he just described, this 
proposal represents 550 billion dollar's worth of spending reductions 
over the next 5 years. That gets us much the way toward a balanced 
budget, and that certainly ought to be our goal here as national 
policymakers.
  I also want to agree with his observation that in order to come up 
with the spending cuts required to balance this budget, we all have to 
swallow hard because there is no easy package.
  In this instance, there are individual items in this package that may 
not be terribly popular in Colorado or in Minnesota, but we have to 
challenge our constituents to look at the larger needs, reducing the 
deficit by $550 billion, even though it includes some sacrifice on the 
part of the constituents of the gentleman from Colorado and on the part 
of my constituents in Minnesota, that is what we have to be willing to 
endorse if we want to ultimately solve this problem.
  We discovered that last fall as we developed the Penny-Kasich 
spending reduction plan, including $90 billion in spending cuts over a 
5-year period. That package of cuts might have been hard for Members to 
vote for if they had to cast a vote individually on the 90 separate 
cuts within that package. But by putting it together, people could say, 
``Most of these cuts are required. I am willing to swallow hard on the 
few that hurt my own back yard.'' That is the way you have to solve 
this problem, and that is what we tried to demonstrate with this plan, 
and we urge our colleagues to cosponsor this effort.
  Mr. SCHAEFER. I thank the gentleman for his comments.

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