[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 6, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H1756]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       INCREASING THE PUBLIC DEBT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Smith] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about the 
fact that tomorrow this Chamber is going to increase the borrowing 
authority to the U.S. Department of Treasury, or we presume the votes 
will be there to increase the debt.
  The public debt of this country is now $4.9 trillion. I brought a 
chart with me to explain the roughly $1.6 trillion budget that this 
Federal Government spends every year. If we look at the growth of the 
U.S. budget, back in the 1970's, the U.S. budget used up a much smaller 
portion of our total gross domestic product.

                              {time}  1615

  In fact, in 1948 it represented 12 percent of GDP. Now it is up to 21 
percent of GDP. This Government, this overbloated bureaucracy, is 
growing bigger and bigger, and how are we going to stop the 
overspending? How are we going to stop more and more borrowing, that 
means that we are taking the money that our kids and grandkids have not 
even earned yet to pay for what we consider today's problems?
  Everybody in the generation under 40 years old had better sit up and 
take note about what Government is doing to their future. This pie 
chart represents how Government spends its money. The bottom blue part 
represents half of the Federal budget, and it is spent for welfare and 
so-called entitlement spending.
  The little white part represents interest. Interest is now becoming 
the largest single item in the Federal budget. This year, this 
represents net interest. Gross interest, if we include the interest 
that is paid on the money that we borrow from Social Security and the 
other trust funds, was over $300 billion this part year, larger than 
any single expense item in the budget.
  The red section represents 12 appropriation bills. Those 12 
appropriation bills are controlled by Congress. Article I of the 
Constitution says Congress is responsible for the purse strings. This 
is about all we have left, is that little red piece of pie that 
represents 18 percent of the budget that represents the 12 
appropriation bills. Why I say Congress has control of that 
appropriation spending is because if the President vetoes that 
particular bill, then there is no money there.
  The green part is defense spending, and I have separated that out as 
the 13th appropriation bill, because the hawks and doves, the 
conservatives and liberals, almost never have disagreed more than a 
plus or minus 10-percent deviation. Everybody agrees that there should 
be a certain amount of our budget spent for national defense, so that 
is pretty much on automatic pilot.
  The blue is on automatic pilot on the welfare programs, because those 
welfare and entitlement programs, we cannot reduce the spending for 
those programs unless the President signs the bill to do it.
  What we have done is we have given away congressional authority over 
the years and said that the money is automatically going to be there if 
individuals meet this certain criteria of entitlement. There is a 
certain level of poverty, so therefore they are eligible for food 
stamps, or they are poor and have kids and are eligible for AFDC, or 
reach a certain age so you can have Medicare, or a certain level of 
poverty so you can have Medicaid. This cannot be changed. This is the 
part of the budget that is causing us to increase the national debt 
more than any other part of the budget.
  What a lot of us think is that it is reasonable, Mr. Speaker, to say 
to the President, look, if we are going to increase this debt over the 
$4.9 trillion that we now have, then we want to tie to it some reforms 
in the welfare programs, the entitlement programs, that are causing the 
greatest need for increasing that debt.
  Let us be fair to our kids, let us be encouraging to the economy, let 
us balance the budget. The only way you can balance the budget is to 
change the entitlement programs. That means the President has to sign 
that bill.
  We tried it once. We got a balanced budget through the House and the 
Senate. The President vetoed it. We are going to try again, Mr. 
Speaker.

                          ____________________