[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 52 (Thursday, April 15, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H2117-H2122]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  AMERICA NEEDS TO SET BUDGET PRIORITIES AND FOCUS ON PAYING DOWN THE 
                             NATIONAL DEBT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, yesterday we took the first 
step on a long process of passing a budget this year, and a very 
important budget it will be as it will lay out priorities as we move 
into the next century. It will in fact be the last budget of the 20th 
century. As we move forward, we need to set our priorities.
  This will be a long process as we go through the summer and into the 
fall in deciding what those priorities should be in passing a budget. I 
rise today to emphasize the importance of fiscal discipline, fiscal 
responsibility, and paying down our debt as we move through that 
process. I feel that should be the number one priority of this body in 
the budget process and for the future, as it is what can best help the 
people of this country.
  We still have a significant financial problem. The news has gotten 
better in recent years. We have reduced the yearly size of the deficit, 
and we actually have the possibility of moving towards a surplus. All 
of that is good news, and many people on both sides of the aisle and 
many Congresses through the past 6 or 7 years can rightfully take 
credit for that, but the job is not done. I worry a great deal as I 
listen to the debate and listened to the debate this past week on the 
budget resolution that people have lost sight of that fact. We are 
talking about surplus politics, and I think we do so prematurely.
  To begin with, we still incorrectly, from an economic standpoint, 
count the surplus in the social security trust fund as income to the 
Treasury, and use that surplus to claim an overall surplus when in fact 
we have an overall deficit.
  Last year's numbers make this point clearly. We had a $100 billion 
surplus in the social security trust fund. The rest of the budget 
actually ran a $30 billion deficit, so presto, we have the $70 billion 
surplus that everybody has been talking about, it does not really 
exist, but that surplus in the social security trust fund is already 
obligated. We have to pay it back, plus interest to the Treasury, so 
that the trust fund can pay out the social security benefits that all 
of us, or all of us hopefully some day, that many of us, are due. So it 
is not money we can count as a surplus. To count it that way is to 
spend it twice. When we spend money twice, we wind up in debt as far as 
we are.
  The second critical point in this is we still have an overall debt. 
That $70 billion surplus, mythical though it may be, even within the 
grounds of that myth is only a 1-year surplus, with quotations around 
it. The overall debt continues to grow. It is approaching $6 trillion.
  On a yearly basis we pay $215 billion to service that debt. That is 
15 percent of the budget, 15 percent of our budget, and $250 billion 
that basically goes simply to pay off past excess. It does nothing to 
meet our obligations at present or in the future, and it should be 
reduced.
  Now is the time to do it. We have a very strong economy. We have 
unemployment at 4.2 percent. We have virtually nonexistent inflation, a 
booming stock market, with growth to match. If we cannot begin to pay 
down that debt now, we never will. We will never get there if we do not 
take that step right now. We need to step up to that as a priority.
  I am concerned, as I look at the debate that we had on the budget 
resolution, that we are not heading in the right direction. I basically 
look at the budget resolution of this week that was passed in the House 
as a bad news-good news situation.
  The bad news is, it is not a particularly good budget resolution, and 
the debate was even worse, from a fiscally responsible and economically 
accurate standpoint. But the good news is it borders on meaningless. 
What really is going to matter is the 13 appropriation bills that both 
bodies have to pass between now and October. There is no way that those 
13 appropriation bills are even going to come close to matching what 
was in that budget resolution.
  I say that is good news because the budget resolution overpromised in 
a number of different areas. Essentially by holding back key specifics, 
the budget resolution was able to promise in a number of interesting 
areas, promise more spending on defense, although they added another 
little trick in there that they promised budget authority but not 
necessarily outlays.
  What is the difference between budget authority and outlays, we ask? 
It is the difference between promising to spend money and actually 
spending it. There is a big difference between those two things.
  Beyond that, the pledges for increased spending in defense, in 
education, while at the same time including a massive back end tax cut, 
and by ``back end'' I mean it grows in the out years, in the first 5 
years it is not too much, in the second 5 years it is more,

[[Page H2118]]

in the third five years it is even more, all of that, for all of that 
to work within any sort of fiscally responsible framework requires cuts 
in the rest of the budget that nobody is prepared to make, and 
therefore were not spelled out in that budget resolution, for some very 
good reasons. If they had been spelled out nobody would have voted for 
it and it would not have passed.
  So the budget resolution was more or less a political document, an 
effort to try to gain favor in some areas by playing various tricks and 
smoke and mirrors games with the budget numbers. So it is not going to 
happen, but we are going to have a situation where we are going to have 
to pass a real budget. What is going to happen is all of those promises 
that were made during the budget resolution debate are going to be very 
tough to meet, in reality.
  What is going to happen? My fear is that what is going to happen is 
exactly what happened in the 1980s, long before I got to Congress, 
actually when I was in high school and college and watched with horror 
as my predecessors in this body spent all of our future money.
  Basically what happens is an agreement is reached that goes something 
like this: I will take your tax cut if you take my spending increase. 
That works out just fine for that Congress. They are able to pass out a 
lot of goodies and make every one happy, but it sets up a situation 
that I, among others, walked into in the mid 1990s.
  Basically it is like showing up at the time that the credit card bill 
comes due. It is not a lot of fun and it is not good for the country, 
because I understand the Federal Government has many positive things 
that it needs to do. It has spending programs in the areas of 
education, in the areas of defense, environmental protection, medical 
research. It has tax cuts it can do.
  All of those things are important, but they are not peculiar to this 
one moment in time. Ten years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years 
from now, and beyond, residents of this country are going to have needs 
in all of those areas, needs that they will not be able to meet if we 
spend the money now irresponsibly.
  I am afraid that we are headed in that direction by overpromising, by 
talking about the politics of a surplus and where can we spend the 
money, where should we spend the money, what tax cuts we should do, way 
beyond what we can actually afford to do, and not even taking into 
account the nearly $6 trillion debt that we have run up over the course 
of the last 30 years.

                              {time}  1730

  Let us be fiscally responsible and start paying that down.
  Worse than that, the debate, as I watched it, degenerated into a 
criticism of the Clinton budget and a battle over who is, quote, 
setting aside more for Social Security.
  There are a couple of problems with this argument. First of all, it 
allowed many of the majority party who supported their budget to not 
even really talk about their budget, but rather try to focus their 
attention on proving that the President's budget that he introduced 3 
months ago was bad.
  That may well be. In fact, an amendment was offered by a Member of 
the majority that was supposedly exactly the President's budget. It was 
defeated, I think, with only two votes voting in favor of it.
  From the time that budget was introduced, many things have changed, 
many other ideas have come up. The budget is a dead issue. Yet, that is 
what the majority party spent most of its time talking about.
  I would have much preferred them to have spelled out some of the 
specifics of their own resolution. I also would have much preferred 
them to be a little bit more honest in their analysis of that budget.
  I brought a chart with me which I saw frequently on the day that the 
budget resolution was debated being brought up and put forth by the 
majority party as evidence that their budget was better for Social 
Security than the President's was.
  I bring this chart up mainly for illustrative purposes to show how--
well, dishonest might be too strong a word; we are supposed to not say 
things like that in this honest body--let us say how disingenuous the 
debate was. I will put that chart up now.
  This chart shows the commitment on Social Security. It is 
interesting. The Republicans' argument throughout the whole budget was 
that their budget sets aside 100 percent of the Social Security Trust 
Fund or, sorry, 100 percent of the surplus for Social Security, whereas 
the President only sets aside 62 percent.
  The interesting thing is, and they absolutely had to be aware of this 
fact, the 62 percent that they are talking about, or sorry, the 62 
percent that the President was talking about was 62 percent of the 
entire surplus, whereas the number that the Republicans were referring 
to in their budget was 100 percent of the Social Security surplus.
  So basically the President was talking about 62 percent of a much 
larger number. In fact, a fascinating fact is this 62 percent of that 
much larger number is almost exactly the same as that 100 percent. In 
other words, there is no difference whatsoever.
  Yet, the majority got up here and argued repeatedly that their budget 
was better because it set aside 100 percent instead of 62 percent. It 
is just exactly that sort of disingenuous use of fact that colored the 
debate and got us way off the topic. That topic ought to be fiscal 
responsibility.
  If we want to do something about Social Security and Medicare, and 
that is really a third point in addition to the two prior points about 
how our budget situation is not as rosy as it is, those being, one, 
that we still count the money that we borrow from the Social Security 
trust fund; two, we have an existing debt; three is the coming bills on 
Social Security and Medicare once the baby boom retires, those 
exploding bills that are out there and what we are going to do about 
them.
  Nowhere in the budget resolution does it say anything about any sort 
of Medicare or Social Security reform to deal with those problems. If 
we do not, that is going to further exacerbate our financial situation.
  The level best thing that we can do for dealing with those programs, 
well, there is two things: one, we can reform the two programs, but 
two, is to not spend the money now. Because the interesting thing about 
this chart is both the President and the Republicans are being somewhat 
disingenuous in arguing about how much money they, quote, unquote, are 
setting aside for Social Security.
  We cannot bind future Congresses in that way. As future Congresses 
pass budgets, they will decide whether or not to spend this money on 
Social Security, Medicare, or someplace else. It will require a year-
to-year decision to decide what to do with that.
  So to say that we are setting it aside now is somewhat empty rhetoric 
except for this point: It is arguable that the extent to which we are 
fiscally responsible now, in other words, the extent to which we do not 
spend money or do not give out tax cuts that further inhibit our 
ability to have revenues for Social Security and Medicare, to the 
extent we do that, we will be in a better position to deal with Social 
Security and Medicare in the future.
  So the number one biggest test, aside from all this baloney with the 
charts, this effort to confuse people by taking two separate numbers 
and treating them as the same when they are not, look at the budget and 
see if it is fiscally responsible. That is the test on whether or not 
we are preparing for dealing with the coming increases in cost and 
Social Security and Medicare.
  Again, when we look at the budget resolution we passed this week, it 
promised $800 billion in tax cuts over 10 years. Actually, that number 
balloons even further in the next 5 years, over a 15-year period. It 
also promised massive increases in a number of different areas of 
spending. All of that will jeopardize this chart considerably.
  That is what we need to look at as we debate the budget in the months 
ahead. Because, as I said, the hard work is yet to come. We have 
basically done the smoke and mirrors, twisted the numbers around to 
make them look as good as possible. Now we actually have to pass 
realistic appropriations bills. That is going to be far, far more 
difficult than simply passing a piece of rhetoric.
  I rise today to urge fiscal responsibility. Balance the budget and 
pay down the debt. That is the best thing we can do for society today 
and in the future.
  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from Arkansas 
(Mr.

[[Page H2119]]

Berry), a colleague who will help in this argument. I appreciate his 
coming down.
  Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Washington 
(Mr. Smith) for the opportunity to participate in this effort.
  Mr. Speaker, I am reminded of an occasion that actually happened to 
me. I had been from a farm to town to get some supplies, and I was on 
my way back. One of my neighbors was out in his field, and he was 
walking back toward the road. He waved me down. Out in the country, 
when someone waves at you, well, you generally stop and at least say 
hello. I was concerned that he might need a ride someplace or need to 
see me about something. So I stopped.
  He walked over to my truck, and he said, ``I just wanted to check.'' 
He said, ``Do I look like an idiot?'' I said ``Well, sir, you are not. 
You are a distinguished-looking fellow and certainly do not look 
strange in any way.'' He said, ``Well, I just wanted to check.'' He 
said, ``It seems like everybody that comes down this road today wants 
to take advantage of me.''
  That is kind of the way I view this budget. The Congress this week 
passed perhaps the most irresponsible budget resolution this country 
has ever seen. The Republican leadership's budget does nothing to solve 
our Nation's most pressing need, the solvency of the Medicare trust 
fund. The Republican leadership's budget does nothing to pay down our 
national debt.
  Instead, it devotes any future surpluses that are estimated, and they 
are projected at close to $800 billion and this is money we do not 
have, to a tax cut without making any corresponding spending cuts.
  I am in favor of cutting taxes, particularly for small business 
owners. But to ignore this country's $5.3 trillion national debt, to 
ignore this country's future Medicare needs is just plain wrong.
  To make these assumptions that we are going to have this great wealth 
to spend out here and be irresponsible about it, like we were back in 
the 1980s, and to run the risk of incurring yet more debt and to not at 
the very least have a protection mechanism in there where these tax 
cuts do not take place where this money does not exist is 
irresponsible.
  The American people expect us to come up with a realistic fiscal plan 
for this country. Let us shelve this unworkable, unrealistic budget 
resolution and get to work on real budget.
  Again I am reminded of a story that actually happened. For 30 years, 
I ate breakfast in the same cafe every morning before I went to my farm 
with the same group of people.
  One of the fellows I usually ate with, and he is no longer with us, 
but he would come back in that cafe late in the afternoon, and he would 
have taken his ballpoint pen, and he would have figured on his pants 
leg, in the fall of the year, his combine would make the first round 
around the field, and he would estimate how much his yield was going to 
be and how much he was going to get for it.
  He would figure up right there on his pants leg how much money he was 
going to have. Sometimes he would go to town and spend quite a bit of 
that. Then the harvest would not turn out quite as good as he expected, 
and the price maybe would deteriorate, and he would end up in trouble.
  The next morning, when he would come back to the cafe, he would have 
washed those pants, and his money would have all disappeared.
  I am afraid, if we take this budget with all these projected 
surpluses that we do not really have, it will happen to this country 
like it happened to my friend. We will wash our pants, and all the 
money will be gone.
  So I urge this body to be more conscious of what a workable and 
realistic budget resolution should be and to do our best to work toward 
that goal.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Arkansas for those well-said words.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Davis) who is 
a member of the Committee on Budget and has done an outstanding job of 
standing up for fiscal responsibility for both his constituents and the 
rest of the country as a member of that Committee on Budget. I 
appreciate his support.
  Mr. DAVIS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I just want to highlight one more 
time what we have been talking about tonight, and that is that there 
should be no greater priority in this Congress than paying down the 
$5.3 trillion Federal debt.
  We are living in a time of uncertainty. We have got a difficult 
situation. We are going to do our best to manage in Kosovo. We have got 
an incredibly healthy economy, but we cannot be certain what lies 
ahead. The most prudent thing for us to be doing right now is to make 
paying down this massive Federal debt our highest priority.
  There are three good reasons why we ought to do that. First is, it is 
the right thing to do for our children and grandchildren. We should not 
force them to inherit this massive debt.
  The second reason is, it will help us prepare Medicare and Social 
Security for the retirement of the baby boomers, because those funds 
that we set aside by virtue of paying down the debt can be used as the 
baby boomers begin to retire and put more strain on Medicare and Social 
Security.
  Finally, it is the best thing we can do here in Congress to assure 
that this economy will stay healthy.
  Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, testifying 
before the House Committee on the Budget, makes it perfectly clear 
that, as we pay down this Federal debt and the Federal Government 
competes less to borrow money in the private sector, it has a direct 
bearing on interest rates.
  In my home, like many of the homes we represent, Hillsborough County 
and Tampa and Florida where the average mortgage is about $115,000, 
when we drop interest rates about 2 points, from 8 percent to 6 
percent, that reduces a monthly mortgage payment by $155.
  I will tell my colleagues that $155 reduction in that homeowner's 
monthly mortgage payment is better than most of the tax cuts that are 
being promised here in Washington. They can be taken immediately, and 
one does not have to call one's accountant to figure out how to do it.
  That is just one example of the positive impact of paying down the 
debt, apart from the fact it is the right thing to do, apart from the 
fact that it is the best thing we can do right now for Medicare and 
Social Security.
  So I urge my colleagues to take a second look at this $780 billion 
tax cut that we just passed here, and let us go back and let us do a 
tax cut, but let us put first things first. Let us pay down this 
massive Federal debt. Let us make that our highest priority. It will 
produce benefits at home for homeowners, for students who have student 
loans, for people who are trying to pay back credit card debts, and it 
is the right thing to do for our children and grandchildren.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on that 
last point about keeping the economy strong. I came into Congress in 
1996. Before that, I served 6 years in the Washington State senate, so 
I started there in 1990.
  I came into the body in the State senate during down economic times, 
during a time period when our treasury had a $2 billion shortfall; and 
in the State of Washington, $2 billion is a lot of money.
  We had to figure out how to deal with that in terms of cutting 
spending and raising taxes and basically dealing with covering the 
debts of government.
  That is a horrible situation to have to deal with as compared to the 
situation that we are in right now with a strong economy generating 
strong revenues, so that we can fund programs and hopefully pay down 
the debt.
  If we can pay down the debt, if we can be fiscally responsible in a 
way that keeps the economy moving forward, that will have benefits that 
spread all across the country and must be a top priority.
  I want to touch on one other point. Basically, I figure a lot of 
people might be tuning in and saying, what is a Democrat doing talking 
about a balanced budget and fiscal responsibility? Well, I feel that I 
am a member of the new Democratic Caucus, the new Democratic Coalition 
that is very interested in focusing on issues like fiscal 
responsibility and paying down the debt. Because, though we believe in 
government, we do believe that government has a limited role to help in 
areas like education and infrastructure and protecting the environment. 
We also

[[Page H2120]]

recognize that if we are not fiscally responsible, we will not be able 
to do that. We will not have the confidence of the voters in the first 
place that their tax dollars are being well spent.
  Second of all, as I mentioned earlier, these are not one-time needs.

                              {time}  1745

  We are not the only generation that is ever going to need these 
things, and if we spend all the money now, we do a grave disservice to 
the future.
  I have been very pleased with the number of my Democratic colleagues 
who have made paying down the debt and getting a balanced budget the 
number one priority in this budget process. I think it speaks well for 
the direction of the Democratic party today.
  That, Mr. Speaker, is an excellent intro for the gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. David Minge), who has been probably the leader in our 
caucus on fiscal responsibility and paying down the debt, and I yield 
to him at this time.
  Mr. MINGE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Washington 
for this opportunity to speak during his special order.
  First, I would like to say that I would associate myself with my 
colleague's comments. I certainly agree with the gentleman 
wholeheartedly. And I would further preface my remarks by complimenting 
the Speaker. The Speaker has done a remarkable job of keeping his 
commitment to moving the budget resolution through on a timely basis.
  I know that on our side of the aisle we have had difficulty with this 
some years. Last year, with different leadership, we never did have a 
concurrent budget resolution that passed Congress, which was a real 
failure of leadership. But this year we do have a concurrent budget 
resolution, and I do think the Speaker is to be commended for the 
priority he has accorded this task and the fact it was completed on a 
timely basis. It is almost historic.
  I would also like to compliment the leadership for staying within the 
budget caps. The President also stayed within the budget caps. There 
has been a lot of squabbling about whether this budget or that budget 
was actually within the budget caps, and of course there will be a 
great deal of anguish as we try to live within the budget caps, but, 
nonetheless, we have had a remarkable bipartisan commitment to staying 
within the budget caps.
  The next question is how have we acquitted ourselves of our 
responsibility to deal with this task of providing the Committee on 
Appropriations and the other committees in Congress with a road map as 
to how they ought to perform their functions vis-a-vis the budget for 
the fiscal year 2000 and for the subsequent budget years. I think it is 
here that we begin to really see some disagreement in perspective.
  As my colleagues have indicated, there is some real unhappiness with 
the fact that the priority that we ought to be according to paying down 
the debt has not been shared on a bipartisan basis to date. We have had 
several years of remarkably good economic times, about 9 years, and we 
are all pleased here in the United States that we have had good 
economic times. It is the economy more than anything else that has 
allowed us to come within just a fraction of a percent of balancing the 
budget here in fiscal year 1999. And the hope is, with the new CBO 
baseline, we will indeed balance the budget in fiscal year 2000 without 
using Social Security. It is historic.
  So the question is if we are balancing the budget without using 
Social Security, what are we doing to address the problem of the $5.7 
trillion national debt? What priority do we accord that? And, Mr. 
Speaker, I would like to emphasize that I, and I think most Members in 
Congress, feel that paying down the national debt is indeed a top 
priority.
  Certainly it is refreshing to see us take the Social Security Trust 
Fund out of the budget and quit using that to subsidize other programs 
or the budget generally. But the fact of the matter is that by taking 
the Social Security Trust Fund off budget, we are only doing what we 
really should have done years ago. And what we are failing to do at 
this point is to use some of the surplus that has been projected for 
the next 5 years and the next 10 years to pay down on this debt.
  My colleagues and I in the Blue Dog coalition, and about 135 of us, 
voted for a budget 3 weeks ago that would devote 50 percent of the 
surplus to paying down on the debt. This budget proposal had bipartisan 
support, and the new Democratic coalition was a very important part of 
this. Tragically, we could not prevail on the majority to include this 
commitment to paying down the national debt in the budget that was 
passed here this week.
  I would like to urge that in the weeks and months ahead that we work 
together on a bipartisan basis and determine if there is a way that we 
can go back to that principle of devoting 50 percent of our surplus 
that is projected to reducing our Nation's debt. In these good times, 
we ought to be making the repairs to our fiscal house.
  There is a saying that when the sun is shining, it is time to fix the 
roof. Well, the sun is shining on the American economy these days, and 
it is time to fix the budget roof, to pay down that debt so that the 
legacy that we are leaving our children does not include this $20,000 
per capita debt that each man, woman and child has in the United States 
today as their part of being Americans.
  If we take that $5 trillion and divide it by our Nation's population, 
it is roughly $20,000 that each man, woman and child in this country 
has as that person's share of the Nation's debt.
  Now, President Clinton did not handle it quite the same way we did in 
the budget that was proposed by the Democrats. He would take a portion 
of the surplus and reserve that for the Medicare program. And although 
that is not identical, it certainly is a step in the right direction, 
and I want to commend the President for that. I hope that the President 
can work with those of us in Congress to achieve this goal.
  I would like to make one other comment, if my colleague from 
Washington would indulge me, and that is that we have a great deal of 
emphasis these days on trying to do right by the men and women in our 
armed forces; in their pay scale and in their retirement benefits. I do 
not disagree that the men and women in uniform need additional 
compensation so that they are fairly treated in this robust economy 
that we have. I realize that we are losing experienced military 
personnel, taking early retirement or not reupping because they can do 
better in the private sector.
  But I would like to emphasize that as we proceed with this task of 
trying to do right by the men and women that work for the Federal 
Government, that we not overlook the fact that the civil servants 
similarly find that the private sector is quite attractive. In fact, I 
have met with folks that work for the Farm Service Agency in the rural 
Midwest, and I am learning that, to the horror of the administrator of 
that program, we are daily losing highly qualified experienced 
personnel to the private sector; people that are saying they are not 
sure what this agency is going to be doing; they are concerned that 
there have been cutbacks in staffing levels and there may be further 
cutbacks; and the compensation level has not kept up with the private 
sector.
  So it is easy to pick out one group and say we are going to favor 
that group, but I think it has to be a balanced approach. And we should 
not lose sight of the fact that other men and women working for the 
Federal Government are in a similar predicament.
  Now, having said this, I am not urging that we go back and somehow do 
something irresponsible with the budget. I am simply saying it is a 
task of being fair and proportional. It is a question of equity. And as 
we proceed with the appropriations bills, I trust that we will be fair 
to all Federal employees.
  In closing, I would again like to thank the gentleman from Washington 
for his leadership on this and urge that we recognize the importance of 
paying down this vast national debt as a top priority and using the 
budget surpluses that are anticipated in the years to come.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Minnesota.
  To conclude this topic, I will just go back to where I started from. 
This is going to be a long process. The budget resolution that we have 
passed is but

[[Page H2121]]

the first step. Passing the 13 appropriations bills over the course of 
the next 6 to 7 months will be the important step. That is where we 
will make the decisions.
  And as we approach those decisions, we have a clear choice. We can do 
politics as usual. And politics as usual basically means that we over 
promise and play political games to try to make it look like we can 
keep more promises than we possibly can in the hopes that the people we 
are making those promises to will not notice that we have not kept them 
or, better yet, will find somebody else to blame for the fact they have 
not been kept.
  That is the politics of taking one person's tax cuts, another 
person's spending increases, doing a deal, and just worrying about the 
debt later. That process is what got us into this mess in the first 
place.
  I understand how powerful that process can be. Not a day goes by that 
I do not have somebody come into my office and present a very credible 
case for a need. Whether it is a need for spending increases or a need 
for a particular tax cut, they make very powerful arguments.
  And we must look at each one of those situations and make disciplined 
decisions. But we cannot look at each one of those and simply say, 
well, gosh, is this an important program; would we like to spend money 
on it; and, if so, we must. We must look at that side of the equation, 
but we must balance it against the overall needs of a fiscally 
responsible budget and not promise more than we can possibly give out.
  I fear that the old politics of the 1980s, of basically winning 
elections one check at a time, whether it is a tax cut or a spending 
increase that makes some group happy, is where we are headed again. And 
when I see people talking about the so-called politics of never-ending 
surpluses, I see us drifting into that direction and it worries me.
  Because the other choice is to be fiscally responsible in how we 
approach the budget and be disciplined, and place as an overarching 
priority that shall not be bent that we first balance the budget and, 
second, begin paying down the debt.
  Now, the good news is that because of that strong economy we can do 
both those things and still do some other things. We can increase 
spending to help our men and women of the armed forces and we can do 
some tax cuts. But we cannot do everything that everybody has laid out 
on the table during the course of this budget resolution debate.
  And if we promise too much and get ourselves too far down that road 
so that we feel we cannot go back on those promises, what will suffer 
is fiscal discipline. And, more specifically, what will suffer is our 
children and their children and the future generations of this country 
who, once again, will grow up to be handed a credit card bill as the 
first thing that we give them. That is not leadership. That is not what 
we were elected to do.
  Now, I know a good many people say the way to get reelected is to 
bring home stuff. Whatever it is, a bridge, a swimming pool, a new 
school, whatever, we must bring home something to our constituents so 
that we can show them that we have made a difference. In each election 
what I want to be able to say that I brought home to the people I 
represent is fiscal responsibility; a balanced budget that is going to 
keep our economy strong and keep our commitment to future generations. 
That ought to be enough for Members of Congress to bring home.
  That is the message I am getting from my constituents; be 
responsible, be disciplined. Yes, we have needs, but there is no reason 
we cannot meet those needs within the parameters of a balanced budget 
and paying down the debt. Make that the top priority.
  Mr. Speaker, with that I would like to now yield to the gentleman 
from Arkansas (Mr. Vic Snyder), who has been a leader on fiscal 
responsibility and making sure that we have a fair and balanced budget.
  Mr. SNYDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for allowing me to be 
here with him this evening. I appreciate the work the gentleman has 
done on these issues and the folks that stayed around to talk about the 
importance of fiscal discipline.
  As the gentleman knows, the House has adjourned for the week. Most 
people are in planes heading home, and it seems like we had some 
stalwarts defending the importance of fiscal discipline in this country 
to stick around this evening and discuss this issue.
  I want to make a comment briefly, if I could. I heard someone on the 
House floor today talking about how we have the situation now where we 
have budget surpluses as far as the eye can see. As far as the eye can 
see. I think it is very nice to be part of a Congress, in my second 
term, where we can talk about budget surpluses. But as I look out at 
the world today, I also see challenges as far as the eye can see.
  Mr. Speaker, we better be very, very careful that we not head down 
the path of a lack of fiscal discipline and head into the time of not 
being responsible in how we deal with these surpluses or we will make 
some mistakes like we have in the past.

                              {time}  1800

  So what are some of the challenges? We talked a lot about the 
importance of dealing with Social Security and Medicare before we talk 
about major and large and huge tax cuts. That is what the American 
people want us to do. They want us to deal with the challenges of 
Social Security and Medicare.
  They understand this baby boomer generation, of which I am a member. 
When we are fully retired in 15 or 20 years, we will challenge those 
two systems.
  The events in Kosovo and the Balkans in the last 3 weeks really bring 
home the importance of having a well-funded and adequate and strong and 
capable and technologically superior defense. And there were a lot of 
us that have been concerned, even before these events in the Balkans, 
that we need to put additional money into the defense budget. Clearly, 
the events of the last 3 weeks, the last 21, 22 days, bring home that 
even more.
  I am also on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs and have been very 
concerned as a family doctor about, are we adequately funding the 
health needs of veterans? I believe there is going to be some 
information come out in the next few days about the potential once 
again, bring home the potential once again for hepatitis C and its 
impact on the VA health care system.
  As we learn more and about hepatitis C, its long latency period, 
about the increased risk to Vietnam veterans, about the devastation 
that it can bring on people years after they incurred the virus through 
chronic hepatitis, through loss of their liver, through death. I had a 
friend who died a few months ago of hepatitis C, and he had been in 
good health at age 43 2 weeks before his death.
  And finally, the changing world economy. It is too soon to think that 
because we see surpluses as far as the eye can see that this world 
economy will never change in a negative direction. Of course we are 
going to have recessions. Of course we are going to have recessions in 
the future, some of which may be fairly major. These are the kinds of 
things that we have to be prepared for that are challenges in the 
future.
  Agriculture: In Arkansas we had terrible problems with drought and 
low prices, and I do not see and I do not think many people in Arkansas 
see that improving this next cycle. That is going to be a very great 
challenge for this country, and we are nowhere close to solving that.
  Challenges take money. And I support tax cuts. I supported the tax 
cuts in 1997. I supported balancing the budget in 1997. But before we 
are too quick to give away huge tax cuts, contrary to the wishes of the 
American people, we had better deal with these very, very significant 
challenges, solve them first, be sure that we maintain our budget 
discipline, our fiscal discipline is so important to this country and 
so important to the American people, and then deal with the long-term 
issue of what kinds of tax cuts, in what amounts can we give tax cuts 
to the American people.
  And I know every Member of Congress would like to give tax cuts to 
the American people if it is fiscally sound.
  I appreciate the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith), his work on 
this issue.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my 
time.

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