[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 139 (Friday, September 8, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H8720-H8724]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BALANCING THE BUDGET
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fox of Pennsylvania). Under the
Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from
Connecticut [Mr. Shays] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of
the majority leader.
Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address this
Chamber in a special order, and to say that I am interested in talking
on a very different issue than the previous speaker, and to say for
those who are in staff and want to know what time we are going to end,
I do not intend to use the full hour. Twenty minutes is my goal.
Mr. Speaker, I have been in public life for 20 years. I have served
13 years in the statehouse and now 8 years in Congress, but I was in
the statehouse and I looked at Congress, an institution that I revered
as someone who in high school and college was an American history
major, and wondered why Congress would not do its most basic
responsibility, and that is to get its own financial house in order. I
knew we had to do that at the State level, but I saw Congress
continually deficit spend and wondered why it was happening.
I realized it was not the fault necessarily of one party or the White
House versus Congress or the Congress versus the White House.
Republicans did not want to control military spending, and Democrats
did not want to control the growth of what we call entitlements,
Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, other programs. By law, you were
entitled to the benefit, entitlements never being voted on by Congress
on automatic pilot.
So Republicans did not give on defense. Democrats did not give on
entitlements, and then they got together each year to vote on budgets
with large deficits, Republicans and Democrats together, the White
House and Congress.
During these 8 years I have served in Congress, I have noticed and
felt a real privilege of being part of a small group really championed
by John Kasich, our Budget Committee chairman, who 8 years ago
introduced budgets to get our financial house in order and only 30
Members at that time supported it.
But each year I notice something very distinct. Each year I notice
that more and more Members were troubled by the fact that we were
increasing our national debt to such a point. It went up in the last 20
years from $800 billion to now $4.9 trillion.
{time} 1415
Each year I would notice 30 would vote for it, then 50, then 70, and
during the last Congress, we had a hard core of 160 who were concerned
about getting our financial house in order. In fact, at one point,
there was a bipartisan effort, unique in this Chamber, comprised of
Democrats and Republicans, called the Penny-Kasich proposal, which
sought to make over $100 billion of cuts in Government spending.
I went to the White House to encourage them to support this proposal,
and if they could not support it, to at least not oppose it. They
opposed it. It was defeated by only four votes, Republicans and
Democrats uniting to get our financial house in order. We needed 218
votes, and we had about 213.
We now as Republicans have an opportunity to lead Congress, and it is
the first time in 40 years. We have, under our watch, the opportunity
to get this country back in balance. We have three basic goals. One of
our goals is, first, to get our financial house in order and balance
our Federal budget.
Our second is to preserve, protect, and strengthen our trust funds,
particularly Medicare, which we will see shortly is going bankrupt in 7
years. It is
starting next year to go bankrupt. The Medicare trust fund is the
trust fund that working people pay into, 1.45 percent is their share;
if they are self-employed then they pay double that, 2.9 percent, into
a trust fund that pays for the hospital costs of Medicare.
Our third effort is to transform our social and corporate welfare
state into an opportunity society, where the most disadvantaged in our
communities can have a better future.
Mr. Speaker, as a moderate Republican I am very comfortable using an
opportunity society, because that is what we need and that is what we
are seeking to have. When we try to get our financial house in order,
this first chart basically shows that overall, we are going to spend
more money. When we talk about cuts, we are going to cut some programs.
Foreign aid is going to be cut. We are going to spend less next year
than we spend today. There are certain programs in what we call
discretionary spending that are going to be cut. We are going to spend
less in those programs than next year. We are going to eliminate some
programs. We are going to consolidate some departments.
There are some programs that are going to stay even. Defense spending
[[Page H 8721]]
under our proposal stays even. I would like it to be a reduction, but
it is a hard freeze for the next 7 years. In real dollars it is a cut.
In absolute dollars it is the same.
In some programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, we are going to spend
more dollars. We are not cutting Medicare and Medicaid, we are
increasing it. It is only in Washington, when we increase spending but
do not spend as much as some people say we should spend, we call it a
cut.
One of the ironic things that I found when I became a Member of
Congress 8 years ago was that if Congress spent $100 million for a
program, in the next year to run the same level of service it has to
spend $105 million. If we spend $103 million, even though we were
spending $3 million more, Congress, the White House, and the press
would call it a $2 million cut in spending, whereas most people I know
back in my district would say, ``My gosh, you spend $100 million this
year, next year you are going to spend 103, so that sounds like a $3
million increase.''
In our original spending we are at $1.5 trillion. Under our proposal
in the seventh year we are going to be spending $1.8 trillion. We are
going to be spending more dollars in the seventh year than we spend
now. We are going to change, though, the spending line, which is in
red, so it automatically, in 7 years, will intersect revenues, which is
in blue.
That green line is our conference agreement. We are tilting down the
spending level of Government, still allowing it to increase, but
knowing that it will intersect revenue and therefore have a balanced
budget in 7 years.
The challenge for us when we balance our budget, and in this pie
chart it illustrates it quite well, the purple colors are what we call
entitlements: Social Security, which we are not going to change at all;
Medicare, Medicaid, other entitlements. If you fit the law, you get the
benefit of the program.
What you see in yellow is interest on the national debt. Because of
Congress' and the White House's failure to control spending, having
annual deficits, at the end of each year the annual deficits are then
brought over to the national debt, the national debt keeps increasing.
These added deficits added to our national debt that have meant we
spend $235 billion this year in
interest on the national debt, 15 percent of our budget, is interest
on the national debt. We cannot spend it on programs for children, we
cannot spend it on programs for the middle class, we cannot spend it on
programs for the elderly. We are having to spend $235 billion on
interest on the national debt.
Interestingly enough, now, we pay more in interest on the national
debt than we have as a deficit. If we did not have to pay so much
interest on the national debt, we would not have deficits. What I vote
on as a Member of Congress is about a third of the budget. I vote on
defense spending, which is about 17 percent; foreign aid and the State
Department, about 1.4 percent of the budget; and I vote on 16 percent
of the budget, domestic discretionary spending, all what we call, in
the pink, discretionary spending, and what we vote on in the Committee
on Appropriations every year, I just vote on the pink, it is a third of
the budget.
Then I am making decisions on what we spend on defense, what we spend
to run the executive branch and the administration in its entirety, all
the branches. I vote on what we spend for the judicial branch and what
we spend for the legislative branch. In the executive branch, I am
voting on all the grants that I have to make decisions on, but it is
only, basically, one-third of the budget I vote on.
The blue I do not vote on. It just happens. It is on automatic pilot.
We refer to what is in blue and what is in yellow. Two-thirds of the
budget is mandatory spending, and we have not touched it in years.
When people say how come those of you who remember Gramm-Rudman, you
were going to control deficits and eliminate them and not keep adding
to the national debt. The reason Gramm-Rudman failed is that it only
focused in on the pink, it only focused on domestic discretionary
spending and defense spending, foreign aid. It ignored all the
entitlements.
Now what we are looking to do is to focus in on other programs,
Medicare and Medicaid in particular Medicare and Medicaid are 17
percent of our budget. These areas here, 17 percent of our budget, just
two programs, are equal to all domestic spending. We are not looking to
slow the growth. We are looking to not have Medicare and Medicaid grow
at 10 percent a year. For a few years it actually grew at 20 percent a
year.
As these programs become larger and larger, and they are mandatory,
they are entitlements, what is in the pink, what I vote on every year,
becomes smaller and smaller.
The budget is just simply getting out of control. We want to improve
and protect and strengthen Medicare and Medicaid. We think, and we
believe with all our heart and soul, we can have a better Medicare and
Medicaid Program at an increased cost, but not have a 10-percent
increase each year.
What is our budget doing? Our budget is having an annual decrease in
domestic discretionary spending of 1.6 percent a year. We are having an
annual decrease in foreign aid of 4.5 percent a year. Defense spending
is not going up, and it is not going down. Some people would say, ``How
can you have such a large program and not cut it at all, just keep it
constant?'' I would like it reduced, but there is one serious issue
that we are faced with. The Congressional Budget Office says that the
defense budget in the next 7 years is over $100 billion oversubscribed.
We have weapons system that if we funded all the weapons system that we
have authorized, we would have $100 billion over what we are going to
be allowed to spend. The Government Accounting
Office, the GAO, says we are $150 billion oversubscribed. We are going
to have cuts in defense spending just to stay at a constant no increase
in spending.
Finally, we have interest on the national debt, which under our plan
is going to grow at 2.7 percent a year. That is the interest payments
that we have to pay. By the way, when we pay interest, we are not
reducing the national debt, we are just carrying the cost. If it was
your home mortgage, you are setting some aside on interest in the
national debt and you are paying off some of the principal. We are not
paying off the principal, we are just paying off the interest and
trying to stay harmless. Other entitlements are going to grow at 4.1
percent a year, Medicaid, and going to grow at 4.9 percent a year,
basically 5 percent each year.
We are not cutting Medicaid. Medicaid is health care for the poor, it
is nursing care for the elderly. It is going to go up at basically 5
percent a year. Medicare, health care for the elderly, is going to grow
at 6.3 percent a year. You have heard that Republicans intend to cut
Medicare and Medicaid. It is not true. What we intend to do is slow
their growth. In the process, we are looking to change these programs.
Basically, Social Security is going to grow at 5.3 percent a year. We
have not looked at Social Security. We are not going to touch Social
Security. We are going to focus in on these other parts of the budget.
What are we looking to do with Medicaid? We intend to have Medicaid go
from $89 billion in this year, to the year 2002 when it is going to go
up to $124 billion. That is a significant increase in the seventh year.
It continually goes up, but what we have done is we have reduced the
rate of increase. We are not cutting Medicare, we are increasing
Medicare spending quite significantly. In fact, Medicaid spending in
the next 7 years, we are going to spend $773 billion. In the last 7
years we spent $444 billion. We are going to spend $329 billion more in
the next 7 years than we spent in the last 7. Only in Washington, when
you spend $329 billion more, do they call it a cut. I know nowhere else
in the country, when you spend more money do people call it a cut. We
are going to spend $329 billion more.
With Medicare part A, which is health care for the
elderly, money that goes to hospital costs, what we know from the
trustees report, five of the members were appointed by President
Clinton, three of them are Cabinet officials, and one is head of Social
Security, all appointed by the President, and they issued a report
earlier this year. They said conservatively that Medicare will start to
have more money going out of the fund, Medicare part A trust fund,than
comes into the fund. Remember, what comes into the
[[Page H 8722]]
fund is what you pay, that 1.4 or 1.5 percent every week or every 2
weeks or every month out of your paycheck. That goes into a fund and it
should be building up, but we have 136 billion this year, it is going
to go down $1 billion, and by the year 2002, 7 years from today, that
blue line goes to zero. There will be no money in the trust fund. Then
the only way we fund Medicare would be as the money comes into the
fund, it immediately gets taken out. The Medicare part A trust fund is
going bankrupt.
We have four ways to save this fund. We can affect the beneficiaries,
those that get the service, we can affect the providers, those who give
the service, we can decide to raise taxes on those who are working
today. However, we must realize that if you are self-employed, 15
percent of your paycheck--before--you pay your income tax is going into
Social Security and Medicare. We have intention whatsoever in
increasing that tax. We are not going to increase the tax.
We have one other choice. We can change and transform the system and,
in the process, benefit beneficiaries and benefit providers. We are
looking to transform the system. We are looking to protect it. We are
looking to preserve it. We are looking to strengthen it. We are looking
to allow Medicare patients to have the same kind of health care that
everybody else has. What their children and their children's children
have, we want for seniors. If they want to stay in traditional fee-for-
service, the traditional Medicare program, what they have now, they
will be able to do that, but we are going to try to encourage more
Americans in Medicare to get into the private sector, where they can
have a variety of new services, and we believe at less cost. Medicare
part A is going bankrupt. We are looking to preserve, protect, and
strengthen that program.
Are we going to spend less on Medicare? We are going to slow its
growth. We are going to spend more on Medicare. We are going to have it
go from $178 billion to $274 billion in the seventh year. We are
looking to spend 50 percent more, over 50 percent more on Medicare than
we spend today in the seventh year. It is going to go up that much.
{time} 1430
In fact, in the last 7 years, we spent $926 billion on Medicare and
we are looking to spend $1.6 trillion, $1,601 billion more, in the next
7 years. That represents $675 billion of new money. Only in Washington
when you spend $675 billion of new money do they call it a cut. We are
not cutting Medicare. We are going to spend $675 billion more, a total
of $1.6 trillion, in the next 7 years. It goes up from the sum of $178
billion to the sum of $274 billion.
The President had at first said that we should not, quote-unquote,
cut Medicare and Medicaid. He described the efforts of Congress to slow
the growth of Medicare and Medicaid as a cut. But then a few months ago
he came in with what he called his 10-year budget.
I want to say without any hesitation that I am very grateful, and I
mean this sincerely, that the President has weighed in and said, yes,
we need to balance the budget, we said 7 years, he said 10 years. But
there are some of us who believe it should be 5 years, not 7, some of
us stretched out into 7, but the President said we should balance the
budget in 10 years.
He also said that we should slow the growth of Medicare and Medicaid.
So he has weighed in on admitting and acknowledging that we need to
slow the growth of these two programs, and he said we are going to
spend more but we cannot spend as much as we were originally intending.
What was interesting, though, was when the Congressional Budget
Office looked at the President's 10-year plan, they said it does not
get balanced in 10 years. They said he is more optimistic on revenue
than he should be, he is more optimistic that we can control other
costs than he should be, and they said his budget never gets in balance
in those 10 years.
One of the reasons why I am here today is the President constantly is
referring to his 10-year budget and that he has weighed in on the
balanced budget. The Congressional Budget Office says it is not
balanced.
How does he say it is balanced? Because the Office of Management and
Budget with their numbers, done out of the White House, have said that
it is a balanced budget. They are using different economic projections.
When the President was at that dais there when he spoke to us, he
said that it was important for us to sing out of the same hymnal, he
said it was important for us to use the same referee, the same umpire,
and he said it should be the Congressional Budget Office. We have dealt
with the conservative projections of the Congressional Budget Office,
in part because that is our obligation, in part because the President
said that is who it should be. When we look at what the Congressional
Budget Office has said about what is under current law, current law is
what passed last year and the year before, if you remember, there were
tax increases 2 years ago, there was a lot of disharmony, there was the
thought that tax increases would slow the deficits, the Congressional
Budget Office has weighed in and said under current law, the national
debt is $175 billion today, the deficit, excuse me, will be $175
billion. Remember, deficits are the annual difference between revenue
and spending, and they say it will be $175 billion. They say the next
year under current law it will go to 210, to 230, to 232, to 265, to
296, to 310, to 340, to 372, to 408, to 454. That was the President's
tax plan of 2 years ago. It does not begin to head us in a balanced
budget. It is the top line, it is in black, it is current law, it goes
in this direction. That is the whole debate. We have got to get that
line which is headed up to head down so it gets to zero and does not
keep going up.
The President's budget of February, which is hard to see, it is just
below the current law, and it is only a 5-year projection, they say
that the President's February budget, which the President asked us to
act on, would have a deficit of basically $177 billion, 211, then it
goes to 232, 231, 256, 276.
The President's budget of February keeps going up. What do they say
about the President's 10-year budget? That is in red. When CBO scored
the President's budget, they said it goes from 175 to 196, 212, 199,
goes down, then it goes up, 213, 220, 211, 210, 207, 209, 209. It never
gets below $200 billion a year. That is the President's 10-year budget.
That is the budget that he says balance in 10 years.
He can say it because the Office of Management and Budget have given
him numbers that allow him to say it. But when the Congressional Budget
Office scores it, the organization he said should judge our budget and
his budget, when we look at that budget, it never is in balance. It is
in a constant deficit of over $200 billion.
When the Congressional Budget Office scores what we intend to do, and
what we intend to do is have cuts in discretionary spending, cuts in
foreign aid, eliminating some programs, consolidating other programs,
eliminating some departments and agencies, reducing others, having a
freeze on defense spending, allowing Medicare to go up, allowing
Medicaid to go up, they say that our budget goes from $175 billion to
170 to 152 to 116, to 100, to 81, to 33, to minus 6 in the 7th year.
Obviously we are estimating. We could be off, we could reduce the
deficit a little sooner, it could go out a little more. so every year
we are going to have to look at it and be firm that we get to a
balanced budget in the next 7 years.
Some people said that when Congress voted for a balanced budget
amendment and said they would vote to balance the budget that we,
Congress, boxed ourselves in. We did box ourselves in. We felt that if
we were in support of a balanced budget in 7 years, a balanced budget
amendment, which is the easiest thing to vote for, all you have to do
is vote for saying we will balance it, we said that the important thing
is that
we vote to balance the budget, and so we boxed ourselves in.
We were much like Cortez when he left the old world for the new world
and was to conquer the new world. He landed in this new world and he
came with sailors and soldiers and the sailors and soldiers looked back
at the old world longingly, Cortez did something quite dramatic, he
burned his ships. He said there is no retreat.
We have no retreat. We did box ourselves in. We have committed to
balancing this budget. We are not looking back at the old world. We are
looking at the new world. We are looking to get
[[Page H 8723]]
our financial house in order, we are looking to balance the budget, we
are looking to save our trust funds, particularly Medicare which is in
the most trouble, and we are looking to transform this social corporate
welfare state into an opportunity society where the poor have a future,
and we have boxed ourselves in eagerly so. There is no retreat. There
is no going back to the old world. We are in the new world and we are
out to conquer the new world and to transform our society. The worst
that could happen is we would fail. What is the alternative, to go back
to the old world?
When the Congressional Budget Office and OMB's numbers are put
together, you can learn some very interesting information. Thr red line
that goes parallel horizontal is the President's budget scored by the
Congressional Budget Office. The red line with black dots is the
President's budget scored by the Office of Management and Budget, the
President's own office. They say he balances his budget in 10 years.
Now, when we look at the congressional budget, scoring our budget,
they say we balance, this green line here, they say we balance the
budget in 7 years. If we use the Congress's numbers using the Office of
Management and Budget, in other words, have the Office of Management
and Budget score our budget using the same projections, then they say
we balance the budget in 6 years.
My greatest fear, or one of my greatest fears is that we will have a
budget disagreement and people call it a train wreck, I do not call it
a train wreck, a train wreck implies tremendous destruction and it is
pretty irresponsible to have a train wreck.
What we have is a disagreement between the White House and the
President. The President says he wants us to balance the budget in 10
years but it is never balanced according to the Congressional Budget
Office. We want to balance it in 7 years. The President has opinions
about our spending cuts and our changes to the growth in spending. We
have opportunity to have dialog on that issue.
There are things that Republicans are going to, and this majority in
Congress is going to hold firm on and there are other issues that I
think should be open to debate. One thing that is firm in my judgment
is that we need to balance the budget in 7 years. My goodness, we
should balance it in 5 years.
I think another issue that clearly is one in which we will hold to
strongly, we need a tax cut. When we talk about a tax cut, understand
that $145 billion in the next 7 years of loss in revenue. In a spending
of over $11 trillion in the next 7 years, we are going to spend over
$11 trillion in the next 7 years and we are saying let us just reduce
taxes by $245 billion. Half of that tax cut is going to be a $500 tax
credit to families under $200,000 for every child. If you have 3
children, you will get $1,500 back from the Federal Government. Now
some people might think of that as a gift. I do not.
Mr. Speaker, I notice I am going over 20 minutes. I apologize. I am
getting to my end here. Some people think of it as a gift. I do not
think of it as a gift. I think of it as trying to direct money where it
is nost needed, for families.
I come from a family of 4 boys. I happen to be close to 50. In fact,
my biggest shock was I got an invitation to join AARP a few months ago.
I do not know if you know what that is like, to get an invitation to be
a member of AARP when you are still in your 40's. But my family, my dad
and mom, were able to deduct in today's dollars per child from their
income tax over $7,000 per child. The laws in the 1950's and early
1960's allowed you to deduct per child over $7,000 per child. Today you
are only allowed to deduct $2,450, I believe, per child. So that meant
in today's dollars if you were a family of 4, you could deduct $28,000
from your income, you would subtract it, and if you made $50,000, then
you had only $22,000 that was taxable. That is if we had the same
system now that we had when my family was raising their 4 boys. We were
far more family friendly then.
People say, well, we need to be more family friendly. We need to help
families. What is the best way to do it? To have a government program
where the government takes off a certain amount of money before it
directs it to a child? Or to allow families to decide how to spend
money on their family? What we want to do with half the tax cut is to
give $500 per child. If you have 5 children, you can figure out pretty
clearly what you are going to be able to get from that. The other is we
want a capital gains exemption.
What do I think is going to basically happen in this budget
disagreement? Republicans are going to hold firm to 7 years,
Republicans are going to hold firm to a tax cut. The President should
weigh in and say I do not like where you are making your spending cuts
and tell us how he would do it differently and we can come to some
agreement, he may say we are having too large a tax cut, but ultimately
I think the issue should be can we make the tax cut apply to families
that are not as high income.
For instance, the President has advocated having the child tax credit
apply to families with $75,000 income or less. That is an area that it
seems to me makes sense for there to be compromise. Have the tax cuts,
just have it apply to families that make less
income, so we get away from any argument that he may have that it is
going to wealthy people.
What is going to happen with Medicaid and Medicare? We are going to
spend in Medicaid in the 7th year $124 billion. He has suggested
spending $150 billion. There is not much difference between us. But
what the President does is he says he is saving $54 billion from
Medicaid and Republicans are saving $182 billion. The problem is his
$54 billion is scored by OMB and he is using our $182 billion scored by
CBO. If we are going to be fair, if we use the number that we are
reducing the growth in Medicaid by $54 billion, that is his number,
then our number has to be $114 billion. We are not that far apart. If
we use our number of $182 billion of slowing the growth of Medicaid,
then CBO says his number is $122 billion. We are simply not that far
apart. We have the ability to work out our differences.
Finally, with Medicare, the President says he wants to slow the
growth, he wants to spend $260 billion in Medicare in the 7th year and
we want to spend $244 billion. There is a difference. The program if we
made no change would be over $300 billion on the 7th year. He uses the
number of $127 billion, OMB says he is reducing the number $127
billion, then he says Republicans in the majority want to reduce it
$270 billion.
In fact, if we use OMB to OMB, if he uses $127 billion scored by OMB,
then our number is $205 billion. We are simply not that far apart. If
we say we are slowing the growth $270 billion using CBO, his number is
not $127 billion, that is scored by OMB, we have to use CBO's number.
They say he is slowing the growth of Medicare by $192 billion.
{time} 1445
We are simply not that far apart. On a per beneficiary basis, we are
spending $4,800 per beneficiary today to Medicare, and in our 7th year
we would spend $6,734 per beneficiary. Not only did we have a 50-
percent growth in Medicare, but a 40-percent growth per beneficiary.
The President wants to spend $7,128 per beneficiary. We are simply not
that far apart.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for this time, I know you
have other things to do and I appreciate it. Mr. Speaker, in
conclusion, we are going to get our financial house in order. We are
going to balance our Federal budget and we are going to do it in 7
years and we are going to have a tax cut.
I am hopeful that the President will weigh in and make that tax cut
more responsive to low-income people. I am hoping he will weigh in and
look at some of our spending reductions and make suggestions that we
can compromise on. There is no reason for us to have ultimately a
disagreement.
But I do know this. As a Member of this majority party, when our debt
ceiling, the amount that we are allowed to borrow based on our national
debt, being at $4.9 trillion, when the President comes in and says, ``I
need you to raise the debt ceiling, because we have to increase the
national debt above $5 trillion,'' myself, Nick Smith, and a whole host
of other Members on this side of the aisle intend to not raise the debt
ceiling. We will not allow this House to increase the debt unless the
White House weighs in on a 7-year budget.
[[Page H 8724]]
Is that a train wreck? Is that gridlock? In one sense it is gridlock.
We have never had gridlock on the budget. When I started out,
Republicans and Democrats agreed. Democrats did not want to control the
growth of entitlements and Republicans didn't want to control the
growth of defense spending. So they both agreed to pass budgets with
large deficits.
These budgets with large deficits have been agreed to by both
Republicans and Democrats, but you have this majority Congress agreeing
that we are going to get our financial house in order. It is an
unprecedented thing to have Congress say it wants to spend less.
Usually Congress wants to spend more.
We do not intend to waste this opportunity that we have. We have been
in the minority for 40 years. We are in the majority. It is under our
watch, and we look forward to getting our financial house in order.
We will have gridlock until the White House recognizes that we are
determined not to increase the debt ceiling, we are determined to
balance the budget in 7 years, we are determined to have what we
consider a very fair tax credit. But that gridlock will end when the
President agrees to a 7-year budget using real numbers, not numbers
cooked by OMB, and then the debate will be in my judgment how we spend
those dollars and how we effect the tax cut.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to address
the House.
____________________