[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 31 (Thursday, March 19, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H1323]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H1323]]
                             FEDERAL BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, I want to speak today about an 
issue which is very important to America and its future.
  I have here a chart which shows the Federal budget. Ordinarily, 
things above the line are good. But, in this case, things below the 
line are good. Because when we are above the line, we have a deficit; 
and when we are below the line, we have a surplus. What we see is that, 
for fiscal year 1998, we have a surplus; for 1999, a surplus; a small 
surplus for 2000; and then big surpluses after that. That is really 
good news.
  Supposedly, we have balanced the budget; and America will now be on a 
course to reducing our debt. If we pay this money back on the debt or 
if we spend it or give it back as a tax cut, at least the debt should 
stay the same as it is now.
  But when we look at the next chart, what we see here, and these are 
estimates from CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, the official 
office that estimates where the economy is going, how large the deficit 
is going to be, how large the debt is going to be, and what we see here 
is that there is an ever-rising debt, that the debt goes up and up.
  How can the debt go up when we have balanced the budget and we have a 
surplus? Now, if we spent the surplus, at the worst, the debt ought to 
stay the same. But the debt is going up and up. As a matter of fact, 
the debt goes up almost a trillion dollars, from about $5.4 to about 
$6.4 trillion by about 2002. How in the world can that happen? How can 
we have a balanced budget with a surplus and still have a very large 
increase in the debt?

                              {time}  1315

  It is because of the way we define the budget. The balanced budget 
that our people talk about is when we balance the amount of money which 
comes into the government against the amount of money which goes out of 
the government. But something over 10 percent of the money that comes 
into the government is not the government's money to spend.
  Let me show Members the next chart. The next chart shows the elements 
of our debt. About two-thirds of our debt are held by the public. About 
a third of our debt is in government accounts. What are these so-called 
government accounts? What that debt is, is money which does not belong 
to the government, should not be spent for the government except for 
the purpose for which it is collected.
  Social Security is about a third of that, the Social Security Trust 
Fund. Last year we took about $59 billion out of the Social Security 
Trust Fund, spent it for routine government operating activities, and 
make the perfectly silly statement that the Social Security surplus 
offsets the deficit. That is because they refer to a unified budget, 
all that comes in and all that goes out, but over 10 percent of what 
comes in is not the government's to spend. The reason the debt goes up 
is because the government owes that money. About $180 billion a year is 
about the amount of money that is taken out of the trust funds and 
spent for general government operating activities. That is not the 
government's money to spend. As a matter of fact, most of that money 
belongs to seniors.
  Look at the categories. Social Security, Medicare, railroad 
retirement, military retirement, civil service retirement. That is over 
90 percent of all of the trust fund money that is spent belongs to 
seniors. It needs to be there in those trust funds so it will be 
available for seniors. All that is in those trust funds is a bunch of 
IOUs. The bills come due when we need to have them. We do not have a 
balanced budget. The budget is in fact out of balance by about $180 
billion a year.
  We need to be honest with the American people. We have balanced a 
unified budget, but that does not keep the debt from going up. Let me 
put it back up here. The debt goes up about $1 trillion over the next 5 
or 6 years. That represents the $180 billion a year that we are taking 
from the trust funds and spending on routine government operating 
activities. The budget, as anybody outside of the Beltway would define 
it, is clearly not balanced. We are still running a deficit of $180 
billion a year. That is money taken from accounts largely owned by our 
senior citizens.
  We need to demand that the government have honest accounting. We 
really need to balance the budget. No senior I know wants to pass on a 
bigger and bigger debt to their children and their grandchildren. That 
is what this accounting does. We need to demand honest accounting, we 
need to have truly a balanced budget. To get there we have got to spend 
$180 billion a year less. That is our challenge in the Congress. Hold 
us to that responsibility.

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