[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 7, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1285-H1286]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                     75 SPECIFIC DISCRETIONARY CUTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, today I present my annual list of specific 
spending cut suggestions. I introduced these yesterday in the Record. 
Today I want to talk a little bit about them and elaborate on them.
  These are 75 discretionary cuts which would save an estimated $275 
billion, those are taxpayer dollars, over the next 5 years. That is 
just about double the amount of spending cuts the President has offered 
us in his most recent budget package.
  These savings could be produced without touching a single 
nondiscretionary item. Let me put that into English for the rest of 
America. Nondiscretionary item would mean entitlement, and that 
translates into Social Security, Medicare and so forth, Medicaid. This 
list of budget cuts I am submitting does not touch Social Security, 
Medicare, Medicaid or any of those items that we call entitlements. It 
is only the discretionary items, the things that we control the purse 
strings on here in the House of Representatives, the power of the purse 
as it were.
  It is imperative that before we ask Americans to sacrifice any of 
their earned benefits we demonstrate an ability to root out the 
hundreds of billions of dollars of wasteful spending in this 
Government. And that is not just rhetoric. That is something that the 
Grace Commission, the GAO, anybody who has looked at our spending here 
will tell you, that every year we have waste by the billions, by the 
tens of billions, by the hundreds of billions.
  How in the world are we going to balance the budget and do all of 
these things we have promised if we have 
 [[Page H1286]] that kind of waste at that level? The answer is we are 
not until we get at it, and the hard work of pinning down the specifics 
has got to start somewhere. That is why we submit our list of what 
could be cut.
  Mr. Speaker, an administration official was quoted in Sunday's 
Washington Post as saying that ``While the deficit is not optimal, it 
is not out of control.'' Let me tell my colleagues, the national debt 
is $4\1/2\ trillion. The debt service on that is about $250 billion 
every year, every year, $250 billion, so that is a trillion every 4 
years just in interest payments. Put simply, this empty rhetoric does 
not put, in my view, the administration in a very good light. I wonder 
what an optimal debt situation would be.
  The White House has consistently ignored the tremendous waste and 
duplicative spending in the Federal budget and our Federal Government. 
We have seen that in the budget that they sent up. Instead of opting to 
try to reduce the deficit through tax hikes and on the backs of senior 
citizens, they should be looking at cuts, not raising taxes.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people sent a powerful message to this 
Congress that was loud and clear, and it was cut spending, and do it 
now, get rid of the waste, the redundancy, the out of date, the off-
target, the things we do not need anymore. The American people did not 
say trim a little here or trim a little there. The American people did 
not say move with caution and go slow. The American people told this 
Congress to look for any and all wasteful spending and get rid of it, 
take it out.
  The Vice President complained yesterday that ``Republicans haven't 
put any cuts on the table.'' Well, they cannot say that anymore, 
because the cuts are out there for all to see, a list of 75 totaling 
$275 billion over the next 5 years. I stand before this Congress with 
most of the same cuts I introduced in the past two terms, and some of 
them which we have made some progress on, but most of them have gone 
untouched. So we are still able to come forward with a list of waste of 
75 items.
  I invite the administration to debate us on the specifics. Tell us 
why we need to be spending $140 million on grants to prepare youths and 
adults to be homemakers. Explain to the American people why when 99 
percent of America's farmers have electricity and 98 percent have 
phones we need to be spending billions of dollars in assistance to 
rural electric and telephone utilities.
  The American people deserve better. They need answers. They deserve 
full debate on these and other programs that serve narrow special 
interests rather than the collective good of our country and all 
taxpayers.
  Mr. Speaker, we must strive to move beyond the rhetoric, to achieve 
the fundamental change that we talk about here with real action and 
with specifics. It is time to debate real spending cuts and real fiscal 
reform, and I am confident if we do we actually will have taken a very 
important step toward restoring fiscal responsibility and, perhaps even 
more than that, retaining, restoring some of the credit that this 
institution needs to build with the American people.
  We have done the balanced budget program in the House. We have passed 
it. We have done that unfunded mandates program in the House. We have 
passed it. We did the line item veto. We did it yesterday, we passed 
it. We are going to be talking about and going to introduce a 
supermajority to raise taxes. Those are all critically important tools 
to get a handle on spending, to make sure we do the right thing.
  But the proof will come. Do we have the courage, do we have the 
wisdom to pick out the things that are true waste and start chopping 
them? That is actually the easiest part of the job. If it is not doing 
much for very many Americans, then why are we spending a lot of money 
on it? Usually the answer is political. ``Well, it's in my district,'' 
or ``I hate to do something to that program to cut it.'' That is 
something we cannot be doing anymore. We cannot afford it, and it is 
not good expenditure of money.
  Accountability time has come, and we welcome accountability time, and 
I welcome the American people to take a look at our list of 75 cuts.


                          ____________________