[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 106 (Tuesday, June 27, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H6314]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE FEDERAL BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] is recognized during 
morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about the Federal budget 
and to talk about the context in which it is being discussed both by 
the President and in the media and on the floor, and I particularly 
want to thank my good friend, the gentleman from New Mexico who spoke 
before me in his remarks regarding highlighting what the fundamental 
problems are in the way that we talk about the budget itself.
  Let me just share a couple of numbers with you that may be helpful. 
Total spending for 1995 was $1.531 trillion; that is, $1.531 trillion. 
The projected spending for the year 2000, under the Republican 
conference bill that was just approved by the conference committee, 
will be $1.778 trillion, that is, $1.778 trillion. Let us go over those 
again:
  In 1995, $1,531,000,000,000, in 2000, $1,778,000,000,000: More than 
$350 billion more will be spent in the year 2000 by the Federal 
Government under the Republican plan that gets us to a balanced budget 
than was spent or is being spent right now in the fiscal year 1995.
  Now, let me put that in the context of something that the President 
said on the CBS This Morning program about 2 years ago, May 27, 1993. 
He was being interviewed by Paula Zahn, and he said in response to a 
question about the budget he said, ``We have about $100 billion in 
cuts, but they are still going up very rapidly.'' I will say that 
again: ``We have about $100 billion in cuts in various entitlement 
programs, but they are still going up very rapidly.''
  Now, what does that mean? Think about those words. How can we have 
$100 billion in cuts but they are still going up very rapidly? That is 
the problem with Washington doublespeak. We talk a lot about Orwellian 
language. We talk a lot about the problem that George Orwell so 
brilliantly talked about and exposed there is his novel ``1984,'' and 
it is the problem of the debasement of language, the abuse of language 
and the use of language in a way that, in fact, confuses people instead 
of bringing clarity and light, and that is the problem we have got with 
the budget, because the reality is that we talk about money inside 
Washington in a way that is very different from how we talk about it 
over kitchen tables in Cleveland, OH, or over corporate board tables in 
corporate boardrooms or the way that people in churches discuss their 
budget for the next year or the way that people with nonprofit 
foundations and corporations and universities and institutions of that 
sort discuss their budget. The fact is that we can talk about money in 
Washington in terms of a projected amount of growth that was created by 
a bureaucratic agency known as the Congressional Budget Office, and 
that budget office, the CBO, talks about we are going to have this much 
growth projected; therefore, if you project spending less than that, 
that is a cut, and if you project spending the same as that, then you 
have not spent more money, but the reality is that in Cleveland, OH, if 
you are going to spend $5,000 on food and clothing in 1996 and you 
spent $4,700 on food and clothing for your family in 1995, that is a 
$300 or 6 or 7 percent increase in spending. It is not a cut. It cannot 
be a cut under any circumstances, and until and unless we begin to use 
language in Washington the same way that we use
 language in the rest of the country, the public is going to continue 
to be confused about this.

  Let us look at Medicare as an example, because this is where you will 
hear the greatest exploitation of these projected increases in terms of 
political exploitation, and these numbers will be used to inject fear 
into the debate, to scare senior citizens and, frankly, to confuse for 
political gain. The reality is that in 1995 we are spending $178 
billion on Medicare. In the year 2000, under the Republican budget 
plan, if that is what is finally approved and passed by both the Senate 
and the House and then signed into law this coming August or September 
by the President of the United States, we will spend $214 billion, $178 
billion in Medicare in 1995, $214 billion on Medicare in the year 2000.
  Does that or does that not sound like an increase? Clearly, it is an 
increase, and yet you will hear it described as a cut.

                          ____________________