[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 44 (Thursday, March 9, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H2984-H2986]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                  GETTING OUR FINANCIAL HOUSE IN ORDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Longley). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 1995, gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] is 
recognized for 30 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for the dialogue they 
had. This is going to be a long process and hopefully when we are done 
we will find some common ground.
  Mr. Speaker, I am speaking tonight on an issue that to me is 
extraordinarily important and that is getting our financial House in 
order. And I think in terms of this, what I have looked at as I have 
served now in Congress for 7 years and have been a State legislator 13 
years before, I see a society where we have 12-year-olds having babies; 
a society where we have 14-year-olds selling drugs and 15-year-olds 
killing each other; a society where our 18-year-olds who have diplomas 
cannot even read their diplomas. I see a society where we have 25-year-
olds who have never worked and 30-year-olds who are grandparents.
  That is a society I see in our country, and I believe a society like 
that cannot long endure.
  I also am seeing a society where we have had for the last 20 years 
extraordinarily large budget deficits. We have seen the national debt 
go up and up and up, our annual deficits adding to the national debt 
each year.
  And I do not single out any one party. We all shared in that to the 
extent that we were a part of it. I would like to think that I was a 
force for restraint in this, but we had Republicans who did not want to 
cut defense and we had Democrats who did not want to control the growth 
of entitlements.
  And Gramm-Rudman only focused in on what we called discretionary 
spending. It never dealt with entitlements. What we had was a 
Republican President, and now a Democratic President, who are willing 
to have the status quo continue.
  And I have often been asked what do I think about a balanced budget 
amendment. I think it would be great if we did not need it. And we do 
not need it if we have a President who submits a balanced budget, be he 
a Republican or Democrat. We would not need it if we had a Congress 
that decided to reject unbalanced budgets. And we would not need it if 
we had a President, who was receiving a budget that was not
 balanced, that would simply decide to veto it.

  But that has not been the case and that is why I have become 
convinced that the only way we are going to see some sanity to what we 
have is to require a balanced budget amendment. The White House to 
submit a balanced budget and Congress to vote out a budget that is, in 
fact, balanced.
  I thought long and hard about how much have I, as a Member of 
Congress, or in the State House, been a part of the solution and a part 
of the problem. And when I was elected 7 years ago, I was determined 
that I could look my family in the eye and my constituents, go to a 
town meeting and say, I have voted to control the growth in spending. I 
have voted to get our financial house in order.
  I am finally going to see the opportunity to have that come to 
fruition in a real way. When I first started out, there were about 30 
of us who were voting to control the growth in spending. That number 
grew to about 60. It then got to be about 80, including Republicans and 
some Democrats. And then there were times that we were up to about 160 
during the last session.
  In fact, during the Penny-Kasich debate, when Republicans and 
Democrats, 15 Republicans, 15 Democrats, got together, led by Mr. 
Kasich and Mr. Penny, the Democrat, Mr. Kasich the Republican, and we 
put together a package of $90 billion of cuts in spending.
  And I went to the White House and spoke to Leon Panetta and asked him 
to support this proposal and I said, ``If you cannot support it, at 
least do not oppose it.'' I received my answer a week after my visit 
when the White House decided to oppose, for the very first time in 
Congress, a bipartisan effort to control spending.
  I will tell you that was probably one of the most disheartening 
things that has happened, because I thought you want to nurture that. 
You want, if you 
[[Page H2985]] have Republicans and Democrats who are willing to cut 
spending in Congress, no less, you want to nurture that. But it was not 
nurtured. It was an attempt to stamp it out. The vote failed by just 
four votes.
  So I guess I could take some real satisfaction we came so close. And 
how encouraging that would have been to have seen that bipartisan 
effort succeed. It did not succeed and our deficits continue and 
Congress still is wrestling with how we get our financial house in 
order.
  I often think about whether we are a caretaking society or a caring 
society. And I describe it this way: a caretaking society is a society 
that tries to take care of people, and then those who vote for the 
bills that take care of people feel good that they have voted for 
something that takes care of someone, without asking what are they 
actually doing.
  To me, the preferable one is the caring society. The caretaking 
society gives the food; the caring society shows someone how to grow 
the seed so it becomes food and feeds them until they get to that 
point.
  Now, the stereotype I have of a liberal is an individual who sees 
someone drowning 50 feet out and runs to the end of the pier and grabs 
100 feet of rope and throws that rope out to the person who is drowning 
50 feet out.
                              {time}  2300

  The person who is drowning is trying to grab onto the rope and make 
it taut, ready to be pulled in. The stereotype liberal, when the line 
is taut, drops the line and says, ``I have done my good deed. Now on to 
the next good deed.''
  I have just as discomforting a view of the stereotyped conservative 
who sees someone drowning 50 feet out, grabs 25 feet of line, throws it 
to the individual, it does not quite reach him, and says, ``You swim 
halfway, and I will do my part and I will pull you in.''
  I have to feel that somewhere between that stereotype of the liberal 
and the stereotype of the conservative is a sensible program that tries 
to reach out to the person who is drowning, takes the temporary step of 
pulling them in, throwing them enough line to work, making sure the 
program works, not walking on to the next program, pulls the individual 
in, and then just does not part company, but teaches that person how to 
swim.
  Mr. Speaker, what I wrestle with is the fact that as I look at this 
budget chart, and the task that I have as a member of the Committee on 
the Budget, what is in the dark green is basically what we call 
entitlements; Social Security. Entitlement is not a bad word, it means 
someone is truly entitled. It has gotten to mean something that is not 
always positive, but someone who has paid into Social Security is 
entitled because they put money into a system and expect to receive it 
back in retirement.
  In the shades of different green there is Medicare, that is 10 
percent of the budget; there is Medicaid, which is 5.7. Then there are 
other entitlements that are 121.3 percent. These entitlements add up to 
50 percent of the budget. They are on automatic pilot.
  I have been here since 1987, and I rarely get an opportunity to vote 
on these, because they are in the law, and if the law is not changed, 
they just keep happening. The numbers keep growing, and the costs keep 
growing. They begin to consume more and more of our Federal budget.
  No one, Mr. Speaker, Republican and Democrat, has yet to truly 
address entitlements. We also have something else that is on automatic 
pilot for the most part. It is in yellow, and it is interest in the 
national debt.
  Collectively, entitlements, 49 percent of our budget; interest on the 
national debt, 15 percent of our budget--and by the way, interest on 
the national debt is $234 billion--two-thirds of our budget are on 
automatic pilot.
  What do I vote on? I get to vote on 36 percent, which is in the 3 
tones of pink, domestic discretionary spending. It funds the judicial, 
legislative, executive branch, all the departments of the executive 
branch, all the grants of the executive branch, minus the Defense 
Department.
  The Defense Department is so large that we just isolate it as a 
similar expenditure. It is almost identical, it is 1 percent more than 
discretionary domestic spending. Defense is 1 percent more. Then we 
have what we call international, about 1.4 percent. That is the State 
Department and foreign aid.
  I vote, when I get the Committee on Appropriations expenditure bill, 
I vote on one-third of this entire pie. Two-thirds has been on 
automatic pilot, and growing.
  Mr. Speaker, what do we need to do? We need to take an honest look at 
what we can control. Democrats
 and Republicans, candidly, have done a pretty good job of trying to 
control the growth in discretionary spending, both defense and 
nondefense. You see a good example of it right here.

  You see the growth in spending for each of the next, from 1995 to the 
year 2000, and you see the annual growth. What was in the solid greens, 
the entitlements, different shades, they are growing at extraordinary 
rates: Social Security, 5.2; Medicare, 9.6; Medicaid, 9.1. The numbers 
we have from CBO, Congressional Budget Office, are higher, but I used 
the President's own numbers. Other entitlements are at 6.1 percent.
  What is happening is interest on the national debt is going up nearly 
6 percent. The entitlements are growing, they are 50 percent of the 
budget. They are on automatic pilot. What I vote on, defense spending, 
will go down three-tenths, will go down less than a percent, three-
tenths of 1 percent. Foreign aid and the State Department will go down 
about 1.9 percent during each of the next 5 years. Domestic spending is 
only going to go up a tenth of 1 percent.
  So what I vote on, what we debate, the discretionary spending out of 
Committee on Appropriations is basically, for the next 5 years, at a 
standstill. This is what we have to address. We have to address the 
extraordinary growth of Medicare and Medicaid.
  Mr. Speaker, there was discussion earlier on about the food and 
nutrition program. I will use this as an example of what makes the 
debate difficult. What makes the debate difficult is that people simply 
are not leveling with the American people about what is truly 
happening. We may disagree with the WIC Program and the School Lunch 
Program as proposed by the Republicans, but we know that the School 
Lunch Program is going to go up at 4.5 percent during each of the next 
5 years. This is in the solid blue. The black is the number that it 
would grow without our program. It would be slightly more expensive, 
ever so slightly. You probably cannot even see it.
  The program devised by the Republicans will allow spending on the 
School Lunch Program to go up 4.5 percent during each of the next 5 
years. The WIC Program is seen in the red. It also will continue to 
grow at that basic rate of over 4 percent a year. We can call it a cut 
in spending, yes, I guess you could call it that. It would not be 
accurate, but you could call it.
  What you can call it is a growth in spending, a significant growth in 
spending of 4.5 percent as it relates to the School Lunch Program.
  The problem we have in Washington is, and I did not have it when I 
was in the State House, we could never get away with it in the State 
House, but when I came down here I would always hear how we were 
cutting spending, yet I was finding that spending was continuing to 
grow. I could not figure out how we could call it a cut in spending if 
it was continuing to grow.
  Then I learned after just watching this process for a while that if a 
program cost $100 million to run this year, and $105 next year, and we 
appropriate $103 million, Washington, the White House, Congress, both 
parties, have historically, and the press, have historically called it 
a $2 million cut in spending. Even though it went from $100 to $103 
million, they are going to call it a $2 million cut in spending, 
because they said it should have gone up to $105. What most people 
would call it is a $3 million increase in spending.
  We are not going to succeed in balancing our
   budget unless we are able to get a handle on the entitlement 
spending that is on automatic pilot and slow the growth.

  What we anticipate by the year 2002 is that spending, without our 
taking any action, will grow over $3 trillion of new money. We want to 
bring that down to a level of growth of about $1.9 trillion, almost $2 
trillion. We want it 
[[Page H2986]] to grow, we just do not want it to grow as quickly.
  The reason we want it not to grow as quickly is we want to eliminate 
the deficits. We want to make the interest of what we pay on the 
national debt smaller. I think of the generations that have preceded me 
in Congress, the Members that preceded and voted out these large 
deficits, and those that were here while I was here who continue to 
vote out large deficits.
  We now spend $234 billion on interest on the national debt. Think of 
what we could do with that money if it was not interest on the national 
debt. Think of the programs that we could do, that would be meaningful.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not think we are going to succeed in slowing the 
growth of Medicare and Medicaid unless it is bipartisan. I'm not sure 
how that is going to happen, because the dialog to date has not been 
encouraging. We have not had the President come in with a 
recommendation on how he would suggest we slow the growth in spending; 
still spend more, just not spend as much.
  We are having a dialog now where Republicans are saying we need to 
take tough stands on some of these programs, tough; we are going to 
allow the nutrition program to go up 4.5 percent, instead of 5.2 
percent. I guess we could call it tough. I think it makes sense.
  I think it makes sense to block grant the program. I think it makes 
sense to spend more of the money on the poor children in our school 
districts. I had some of the school nutrition people come to my office 
and tell me they did not want that to happen, they want to subsidize 
lunch for all students. I said ``I want it to go to the students who 
cannot pay for it.''
  They said ``We do not want two lines in our school system, the poorer 
kids, and the kids who can afford that.'' I said ``Do not have two 
lines, have one line, but give one of the students a voucher, a coin, 
something that enables him to have a subsidized lunch.''
  So as I think about this debate, and wonder if we are going to 
continue the way we are going, or whether we are going to have change, 
I am encouraged. I think that there are a number of Republicans who are 
willing to take some tough votes and take responsible votes. I think 
there are going to be a number of Democrats who will as well. I think 
we are going to have an honest debate about what was discussed earlier 
about taxes. To me, deficit reduction comes before cutting taxes.
  I might have a disagreement as to what the tax cuts do. I happen to 
think a capital gains cut makes sense. I happen to think that what we 
need to worry about is what happens to the money once it is provided to 
that taxpayer, what do they do with it.
  If we can provide tax cuts where a person takes the money and invests 
it in new plant and equipment and increases productivity, and it means 
more jobs for Americans, I think it makes sense. If it means that it is 
not going to encourage growth, then I have a question mark.

                              {time}  2310

  The jury is still out as to what is going to happen to the tax cuts. 
They will be funded. I think they will pass, but ultimately what the 
Senate will do for me, I am going to vote to control the growth in 
spending. I am going to allow my Government to spend more money on 
these very needed programs. I am just going to have the growth be more 
sensible and not so out of control. And I am going to vote to make 
rational controls as well to some of the discretionary spending that we 
see.
  We need to slow the growth in spending. We are going to spend more, 
we are just not going to spend as much as we have been spending.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you and the staff who 
are here staying up late to allow us to share our views on what we 
think are some very important issues.


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