[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 106 (Monday, July 26, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H6387-H6388]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            SOCIAL SECURITY AND FEDERAL SPENDING PRIORITIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak about national priorities 
and Federal budget needs. It is now estimated that the budget surpluses 
over the next 10 years, not counting social security surpluses, will be 
a little under $1 trillion. Now everyone in Washington wants to figure 
out how to spend that $1 trillion.
  Last week we saw the Republican plan for that money. Last week the 
House of Representatives passed a bill to use almost the entire 
surpluses, $792 billion of the projected $966 billion surpluses for the 
next 10 years, for a tax cut, a tax cut heavily slanted to the rich, a 
tax cut in which 1 percent of taxpayers will get 30 percent of the tax 
relief, and a tax cut that is back end loaded and will cost an 
additional $2 trillion in revenues in the second 10 years, just when 
the baby boomers will be retiring and necessitating huge new 
expenditures for social security and Medicare.
  Mr. Speaker, last week the House of Representatives also passed the 
defense appropriations bill, which will spend $266 billion for defense 
programs, $2.8 billion more than the administration requested. When 
combined with other military spending bills, the total defense spending 
will be $288 billion this year, about $8 billion more than the 
President's request and almost $10 billion more than the cap set by the 
1997 Balanced Budget Act.
  Thankfully, that bill did not include funding to purchase the Rolls 
Royce of the sky, the F-22 jet fighter. There is still a very real 
danger the funding for the F-22 will be restored in conference. That 
would be a huge mistake. For the price of each F-22 plane at $200 
million per plane, it will be too expensive to risk in combat. For each 
F-22, you could repair 117 American schools, you could build 33 new 
elementary schools, or enroll 40,000 more children in Head Start. Is 
that not a better use of taxpayer funds?
  However, when Congress cut the F-22, it did not use the funds for 
schools or children, it used the funds for more defense spending. 
Members of Congress cannot wait to bust the budget caps and spend 
millions more for defense, but we have not done the same for domestic 
social programs. We all know every penny we spend on the military will 
not be available to strengthen social security, build affordable 
housing, extend health care coverage to millions of Americans, or pay 
down the national debt, and yet we are still talking about devastating 
cuts to vital Federal programs, included social security.
  The surplus we hear so much about is based on the assumption that 
most domestic programs will be cut far past the bone. Simply providing 
enough funding for non-defense discretionary

[[Page H6388]]

programs to keep pace with inflation would require an additional $590 
billion over the next 10 years.
  Factoring in an allowance for the average level of emergency 
appropriations would require another $100 billion. If these limited 
funds are spent instead on the Republican tax cut, it would mean an 
average 27 percent cut in all domestic programs by 2009.
  Mr. Speaker, in 1981, President Reagan and the Republicans led us 
over the edge of a cliff. They thought we could have a large tax cut 
and increase defense spending. Sound familiar? The result was an 
increase in our national debt, the accumulated deficits since George 
Washington, from $800 billion in 1981, when Ronald Reagan took office, 
to $4.3 trillion in 1993 when Bill Clinton was sworn in.

                              {time}  1930

  In 1992, the deficit was $290 billion, with annual deficits of $500 
billion projected for the mid-1990's. The Clinton deficit reduction 
plan of 1993, passed without a single Republican vote, began our climb 
out of the abyss. Now after 7 years of strong economic growth and 
careful management of government resources, including reduction of the 
Federal work force of 370,000, we have reached high ground.
  We balanced budgets and projected surpluses, and this pains our 
Republican colleagues. They do not want either to pay down the national 
debt, as the President proposes, or to initiate long-postponed 
investments in our schools and day-care centers and our cities and our 
colleges, our Medicare, and Head Start.
  We ought to invest this money, instead, in our people, in our 
schools, and our infrastructure in order to keep our economy growing. 
With the strong robust economy, we can meet the needs facing Social 
Security while we invest in other social programs to improve the lives 
of all Americans.
  So the message is clear tonight. We cannot postpone any longer our 
long-postponed investments in schools and day-care centers and roads 
and bridges and railroads and Medicare and Head Start and housing. Now 
is the time to shift budget priorities to reflect future needs to help 
working families to have an educated work force, to build up our 
country's infrastructure so that we can keep economic growth at a high 
level that will generate the money to pay for it and that will pay for 
the money to pay for the Medicare and for Social Security as our baby 
boomers start to retire.
  Let us not fritter this away on a tax cut for the rich and on 
unneeded defense spending on unneeded Rolls Royce programs.

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