[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 38 (Wednesday, March 1, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H2476]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                   WE ARE GOING TO BALANCE THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SHAYS. Madam Speaker, I wanted to take this time to kind of just 
register my concern and to just discuss a little bit the commitment I 
think we have on this side of the aisle to get our financial house in 
order, and my purpose for speaking is not to take a partisan tone, but 
to just express a tremendous amount of concern about what is really 
shaping up to be a battle between the White House and Congress over 
something that, if we work together, would be extraordinarily helpful 
for our Nation. I speak of the fact that, when President Clinton was 
elected, he found that he had a national debt of $4.3 trillion, and he 
felt that he had worked out a plan to bring our annual deficits down, 
but we are going to see under his 5-year plan that he presented to 
Congress just last month that our national debt by the year 2000 will 
be $6.7 trillion, that it will go up $2.3 trillion, or 54 percent, 
during this period of time.
  What concerns me is the fact that there are some who are saying, 
well, this is a smaller percentage, but it is a smaller percentage on a 
larger base, and so this two trillion, 2.3 trillion, will be the 
largest increase ever experienced at any time in our history, and I 
look now and think what are we going to do to resolve this? What 
opportunities do we have as Republicans and Democrats to get together?
  One of the things that the President deserves high marks on is the 
fact that we have, in fact, started to get a handle on what we call 
discretionary spending, what we vote out of the Committee on 
Appropriations, and this has resulted in some hope for the fact that at 
least with what we spend in defense and what we spend in nondefense 
that we are starting to show the kind of restraint that we need. We 
have simply decided that we will not add to discretionary spending. We 
have not in the last few years, and we are destined to keep it at a 
freeze for the next few years, but where we see the challenge is with, 
in fact, entitlements which constitute half of our budget, Social 
Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and what we refer to as other 
entitlements.
  The concern that I have is that the President has really taken a hard 
position that he is not going to touch entitlements, which is really 
the same old story. Republicans have not wanted to cut defense, and 
they did not. Democrats have not wanted to slow the growth of 
entitlements, and they did not. And Republicans and Democrats for 20 
years got together and voted out budgets with large deficits so that we 
saw the national debt just continue to go up, and up, and up, and up.
  The challenge we have today is that the fastest part of our budget 
are entitlements that are growing at 10 percent annually. I am talking 
particularly of Medicare and Medicaid. We need to slow the growth of 
Medicare and Medicaid to about 5 percent annually. We are going to 
spend 5 percent more next year than we did the year before, and 5 
percent the year after. We are going to see Medicare and Medicaid grow. 
But if we cannot get those numbers down, we will never ever get our 
financial house in order.
  I look at this budget, and I see that our foreign affairs 
expenditures are actually going down each year. I see the defense is 
going down each year. I see the domestic discretionary spending is 
basically at a hard freeze. Then I look at Medicare, and Medicaid, and 
other entitlements, food stamps, AFDC, and they are going up at triple 
the amount of inflation. What an opportunity we have to work together 
as Republicans and Democrats to get our financial house in order, but 
the kind of response we are getting when we start to try to make 
logical changes.
  I happen to think the welfare state is dead. I think that 12-year-
olds having babies, I think that 14-year-olds who are out selling 
drugs, 15-year-olds killing each other, 18-year-olds who cannot read 
their diplomas, 25-year-olds who have never had a job, 30-year-olds who 
are grandparents, is the legacy of the welfare state. It is dead. It is 
not going to be allowed to continue, and what I am pledging as one 
Member of Congress is that I believe that we Republicans in particular 
are going to get our financial house in order, and I speak as someone 
who is a moderate Republican, and I would like to think I am extremely 
moderate, someone who comes more from the center than from the right or 
left, and I can tell you that we have absolute conviction that we are 
going to work together to get our financial house in order. We are 
going to balance the budget.


                          ____________________