[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 46 (Friday, March 29, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H3210]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      GROWTH AND DEFICIT REDUCTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Wise] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WISE. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to speak on growth, deficit 
reduction, balancing the budget and getting incomes up to a livable 
level, all a pretty big order in a 5-minute period. Let me talk about 
deficit reduction for a moment. You want to balance the budget, you 
want to do deficit reduction, there are a couple things we have got to 
realize. First of all, let us make sure we take into account what has 
been done. Deficit reduction is on a definite, positive trend. The 
deficit has been cut by one-half in the last 3 years. As to the deficit 
today is at its lowest point since 1979. It is at one-half of where it 
was in relation to our overall economy just 3 years ago. It is the 
lowest now in the industrialized world. It is coming in this year at 
even lower than was projected last year. That does not mean you let up 
but it means something positive is occurring. Because of that, I think 
we also have to make sure that in balancing the Federal budget we do 
not unbalance a lot of family budgets. I happen to believe that future 
generations should not be burdened with debt but they should not be 
burdened with ignorance, either. There is nothing more grievous or no 
more debt that is heavier than that. That the expenditures that are 
made today in education, whether it is title I, assistance in mast and 
reading for elementary school students, whether it is student aid, Pell 
grant and Stafford, student loans, whether it is VA loans, whether it 
is assisting research in our universities, whether we invest in 
infrastructure, the roads, the bridges, the airports, the sewer 
systems, the water systems, those things that bring us growth and bring 
back more over time than what up pay out, those things are positive 
investments and ought to be on the positive side of the ledger. There 
is something else that we can do for growth in the Federal budget and 
that is to move this budget to the same kinds of budget that every 
business has and every family has, and that is to have a capital 
budget. That is to say that those things that we are investing in that 
pay out over time, we will show on the books that way. Sandy and I, my 
wife and I cannot afford to pay for a house in one year. We have a 
mortgage, like most everybody else in this country. We pay that out 
over 20 or 30 years. So let the Federal Government show the roads, the 
highways, the physical infrastructure the same way. Many people do not 
know but your Federal Government does not do it that way. That needs to 
change. Other things we need to do is to recognize the importance of 
wage growth. Henry Ford had it right. He said: ``I got to pay adequate 
wages so that my people can afford to buy my cars.'' Well, we are going 
in the opposite direction unfortunately in this country when 60 percent 
of the American workers are seeing declining wages over the last 15 
years, not increasing wages.

                              {time}  1430

  And so both at the private sector level and at the Government level 
we need to be encouraging that upward growth.
  Let me tell you quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, the Republican party has 
it wrong and the White House, the Democrats in the White House, have it 
wrong. If you think that 2.5-percent growth is going to get us out of 
this, we can balance this budget in 7 years, we can have a 2.5-percent 
growth and we are going to have a deficit that is bigger than it is 
today.
  We have got to focus on getting that 2.5-percent growth up to 3 or 
3.5-percent growth, not an unrealistic level. But you cannot with a 
Federal Reserve that chokes back growth and insists to fight only the 
inflation war. You cannot do it with Government policies that do not 
stimulate the economy, that cause it to restrict. You cannot do it with 
a private sector afraid to make investments. And so we have to focus on 
growth.
  Are you worried about Social Security? Social security improves as 
productivity and incomes improve. Do you want to focus on the family 
moving ahead? The family moves ahead as the family's income and 
opportunities improve.
  The problem is that both parties, if you are focusing on 2.3- to 2.5-
percent growth, are only going to put us down the road, not up the 
road. So that is the challenge that I believe is ahead of us in these 
many months to come. Declining incomes have to come up. The rising tide 
does lift all boats, but the tide has to start from the bottom, not 
from the top down.
  I will return to visit this subject another day.

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