[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 1 (Wednesday, January 3, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H65-H66]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  GETTING OUR FINANCIAL HOUSE IN ORDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I was elected to the statehouse in 1974 and 
began service in 1975 and I could never understand how Congress would 
be able to spend more than it raised in revenues and deficit-spend. I 
knew that on the State level we had to balance our State budgets.
  I vowed when I was elected in 1987 that my first priority would be to 
get our financial house in order and be part of that effort. There was 
a small group of us, only 30 at the time, who voted for a budget that 
the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] introduced which began to do that, 
and each year we saw that number increase. Finally this year we saw a 
Congress that over 300 Members voted for a balanced budget amendment.
  But it would be kind of silly to vote for a balanced budget amendment 
and not be willing to vote to balance the budget, and we set out to 
balance the budget. It was a long and an arduous task in which we spent 
the last 11 months to in fact balance the budget in 7 years. We 
submitted that budget and it was vetoed by the President.
  We are asking the President of the United States to do the same kind 
of heavy lifting that we have done and tell us where his priorities are 
and where he would spend and where he would cut. I do not disagree that 
the President might have a problem with where we spend on Medicare, 
Medicaid, school lunch, student loans. He may have differences. He may 
not agree with the tax cuts that we have suggested in the next 7 years, 
all of those are issues that are open for dialog and debate and need to 
be debated.
  The issue is, when? When is he going to submit his balanced budget, a 
budget balanced in 7 years, scored by real numbers of the Congressional 
Budget Office, which is not a partisan office, it is not a bipartisan 
office, it is a nonpartisan office.
  And so we are now in a position where the President has, which is his 
privilege, the ability to take the 13 different budget items and agree 
to the ones that we have passed, and the 13 budget items, any of those 
that he does not agree with, he can veto. He has vetoed the Interior 
bill, the Commerce, Justice and State and the VA-HUD bill.
  My colleague was right in pointing out that the Veterans 
Administration is not functioning. It is not functioning because we 
provided a budget and the President decided to veto it. We have not yet 
presented him the Labor-HHS bill. That is in the Senate and is now 
filibustered by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are in 
the Senate. We have not given him the District of Columbia bill and the 
Foreign Operations. But all the other bills we have given him.
  So we have a shutdown. I contend that this is not an issue of Federal 
employees or even the reduction and disruption of some services. It is 
an issue of whether finally after 30 years of deficit spending we are 
going to get our financial house in order.
  When I was first elected to the statehouse, our debt was $350 
billion. Our debt has grown now to $4.9 trillion. It is about whether 
we finally, after so many years, are going to get our financial house 
in order and balance the Federal budget and in the process save our 
trust funds, particularly Medicare, from insolvency starting this year 
and bankruptcy in the seventh year.
  We have heard criticism of our budget, that the earned income tax 
credit, a credit that goes to people who pay no taxes, is being cut and 
yet we know it is going from $19.9 billion to $25 billion in the next 7 
years, the school lunch program, which under our plan goes from $5.1 
billion to $6.1 billion, or our student loan which goes from $24 
billion to $36 billion. Only in this place when you spend 50 percent 
more like on the student loan program, going from $24 billion to $36 
billion, do people call it a cut. Or Medicaid that is going from $89 
billion to $127 billion. Or Medicare which is going from $178 billion 
to $289 billion.

  We have put in tremendous new money under our Medicare program. For 
instance, it goes from $4,800 to $7,100 per beneficiary in the 7th 
year, a significant increase. Ultimately we have a disagreement with 
the President on Medicare and Medicaid. He may have other priorities. 
The simple fact is this Government would get started in 6 hours, those 
parts that need to be funded that are not would be funded in easily 6 
hours if the President did one thing that he promised to do at 
Thanksgiving, and I thought when the President gave his word, he meant 
to keep it, and he gave his word 

[[Page H66]]
that we would balance the budget in 7 years using real numbers. We are 
still waiting for his balanced budget proposal.
  I know the Government is shut down, but I know ultimately that we are 
going to have to get our financial house in order, and I am willing to 
stay as long as it takes to do that.

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