[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 28, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1663-S1666]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PRESIDENT BUSH'S BUDGET FOR AMERICA
Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, last night I had the
privilege of personally witnessing President Bush deliver remarks
outlining his budget for America and outlining the priorities of that
budget. I must say, it was refreshing, for one who has long fought over
the past 16 to 17 years in both the House and the Senate, to hear tax
cuts being proposed, and not only tax cuts being proposed, but also the
opportunity to finally downsize the national debt so we can stop
mortgaging our children's future.
The President, in that plan for America's priorities, included tax
relief, debt reduction, and some much needed reform for some very
important programs. One of the negatives over the past 20 or 30 years
is that as our deficits and our debts became larger, many times we
neglected a lot of key initiatives, areas where the Federal Government
could be helpful to the American people. So it is a pleasure to see the
debt diminished and money being returned to the taxpayers at the same
time, and, in conjunction with that, we are going to provide dollars in
much needed areas. I want to talk about that.
First, in President Bush's budget, we will see the largest debt
reduction in American history. Think of that: The largest debt
reduction in American history. It is good news and bad news. It is good
that it is the largest debt reduction; it is bad that we have debt that
large in the first place.
The key thing to understand is that this proposal pays down the
national debt by $2 trillion over the next 10 years. That is the
largest reduction in debt to the lowest share of the economy since the
First World War. With the leadership of the Republican Congress, we
have already paid off an enormous portion of the national debt--
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nearly $363 billion so far. If you stop to think about it, it costs
about $60 million to borrow every billion dollars.
Multiply $60 million times 363 and see how much we save in interest
on that debt. That $60 million will go a long way in New Hampshire. It
was a lot of money where I grew up. That is just on $1 billion of
borrowed money; we have paid $363 billion of it already, and we are
proposing to pay off $2 trillion--with a ``t''--in the next 10 years.
There is a ripple effect through the economy when taking the American
Government out of the borrowing market and putting money back into the
taxpayers' pockets.
By the end of this fiscal year, we will pay off another $262 billion.
That is $625 billion of debt reduction. Putting it in perspective, in
1997, the first year we balanced the budget, the debt held by the
public was $3.7 trillion. By the end of this year, the debt will be
$3.1 trillion, still a lot. Over the next 10 years, we will take $2
trillion more off that debt, leaving a little over $1 trillion in debt.
Over the next 2 years, our Social Security-Medicare lockbox policy will
reduce the national debt by an additional $400 billion.
I was very proud to support President Bush's plan to reduce this
enormous national debt which for so long has mortgaged our children's
future.
It is important to understand everything else. I will discuss some
items, including returning money to the taxpayers, providing dollars
for Social Security and Medicare, education, defense. Put the increases
in perspective. You will get a tax refund. We will talk about that in a
moment. Reduce the debt by $2 trillion, and there is still money to do
those things. That is amazing.
That is a great tribute to this President who didn't come into the
White House and say, this is the way we did it last year; we will
budget the same way we did last year. He sat down with his key advisers
and worked through this budget and found out where the needs were. At
the same time, he said he will reduce the debt, put money back into the
taxpayers' pocketbooks, and fund programs that deserve to be funded.
The tax reduction is fair. It is responsible. It is tax relief for
all Americans. It is certainly welcome news to my own State of New
Hampshire. Do I think the tax cut could be bigger? Sure. But I plan to
work with the President to expand tax relief. The President's tax cut
is bold. I support it. I will be with him all the way through this
process.
Good men and women of my State--and I am sure it is true all over
America--have always been weary of taxes. New Hampshire is one of the
only States in the Union that does not have, at this date, a sales or
income tax. There are some in our State who want to impose a sales tax.
I am very encouraged to see the President provide tax relief to the
citizens of my great State and this Nation.
There is some irony. When I came to Washington several years ago, I
wanted to bring the New Hampshire example to Washington--less taxes,
less spending. Now we are seeing the reverse. President Bush comes in
to cut taxes, cut spending, reduce the national debt. Ironically, some
officials in New Hampshire are doing just the opposite--raising taxes,
trying to find more revenue.
Now more than ever, I believe that hard-working Americans deserve tax
relief. If you buy a television set and pay $600, and you get home and
the price tag says $450, you were overcharged. So you go back to the
store and get your money back.
We hear all the fancy and somewhat bureaucratic terms--surplus; we
have a big surplus in the Federal Government. What that means is the
taxpayers of America have been overcharged. That is more money than we
need to operate our Government. It ought to go back to you. It is that
simple. We will hear it today. We have heard it all week. We heard it
last night in the response to the President that we don't need this tax
cut; it is too big.
I make a suggestion to those who don't need it and don't want a
refund: When you send in your tax return, put a little check mark on it
that says you don't want the money, and send a check back to the
Federal Government. You don't have to take the tax credit if you don't
want it. If you don't want the tax cut, send the money back and we will
put the money on the debt. I am fascinated by those who say they don't
want the tax cut. Fine, you don't have to take it; you can turn it
back.
There are a lot of people out there who do want it. For starters,
Americans spend more money paying taxes than they do on food, clothing,
and shelter combined. That is wrong, pure and simple. We need to change
that.
President Bush last night in a bipartisan, nonconfrontational but
firm and resolute way said let's do this for the American people. We
always hear the debates. That taxes will get cut, and they don't get
cut. It seems to be a bunch of words that don't mean anything. The
President reached out and said: Let's not get into class warfare; let's
just reduce taxes on the American people. It is good for the economy.
It is good for the people. It is their money. It is not ours; it is
theirs.
Federal taxes alone cost American families $7,238 per year. That is
more than any other item in their budget for most people. Taxpayer
freedom day, the average day Americans first start working for
themselves, was May 10 last year. So from January 1 to May 10, you
worked to pay your Federal taxes. Where is the incentive to move
forward and to succeed and do better? I say return the money.
Not only are we returning money to the people from whom we took it;
we are paying down the debt at the same time. A lot of people say, I
don't want tax relief; don't give me tax relief; just pay down the
debt. We are saying we are doing both. If you own a Government savings
bond, we cannot pay that because we owe that to you. And you may have a
20- or 30-year bond. If we wanted to pay it off in one fell swoop, we
couldn't. But a $2 trillion reduction over 10 years is pretty doggone
good.
For every 8 hours of work performed, the average taxpayer in America
works 3 hours to pay the tax collector. I think that is too much. I
know some who hem and haw, saying, I don't know whether I can support
this tax cut; it is too big, too small--a thousand different reasons. I
think if the average taxpayer has to work until May 10 to pay their
Federal taxes, has to work 3 hours of every day to pay the tax
collector, it is time the taxpayer got a break.
This is a big break. Today's average taxpayer faces a combined
Federal, State, and local tax burden of nearly 50 percent of their
income. I am delighted to support this President in providing the
typical family of four paying income taxes a full $1,600 in tax relief.
We are in Washington talking about trillions. I don't know what is
after trillion. I hope we don't have to deal with it during my tenure
in the Senate. We are talking trillions and billions and occasionally
millions. Let's talk in hundreds and thousands. That is what the
average American deals with--hundreds of dollars and thousands of
dollars, not trillions and billions. Let's bring it down. Ask yourself
what you could do with $1,600 if you didn't have to give it to the
Federal Government. What could you do? There are a lot of things you
could do. I am sure you can think of them as well as I can. If you have
a child, say, born this year, if you multiply $1,600 times 18 years and
add the compounded interest if you put it in a bank account somewhere
or a CD, you will find you have a pretty doggone good downpayment on a
college education--for the first year anyway--or perhaps a little more
money for groceries, a little more money for clothing, perhaps a little
bit for that first home mortgage. Add it up. That is real money, as
Everett Dirksen used to say.
I think we have to get away from talking about all these trillions
and billions of dollars and think about what that means to the average
taxpayer of America. I say this in all sincerity: If there are
taxpayers out there who do not want that $1,600, send it back. But for
the rest of us who might like to have it and the families all across
America who struggle really hard to make ends meet who would like that
$1,600, why should we take it away from them? But some are proposing we
do that.
President Bush is not. President Bush is saying we need to give that
back to the taxpayers; nobody ought to spend more than one-third of
their paycheck to support the Federal Government. I agree with him. It
is refreshing to hear it.
But the President also believes a tax rate of 15 percent is too high
for hard-
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working men and women who earn low wages. So he has proposed we lower
that even to 10 percent, down from 15 percent--I agree with that--and
double the child tax credit to $1,000 per child, and eliminate the
marriage penalty, penalizing people who get married.
We in the Federal Government should be encouraging the makeup of the
family not breakup, and, of course, eliminating the infamous death tax
which the President mentioned last night. All your life, you work hard
to earn money, pay taxes on that money, and have perhaps a business or
home or some asset you want to leave to your children, and they cannot
afford to receive it from you upon your death because they cannot pay
the taxes on it, so they have to sell it, whether it be a business or
home. That is not right. We ought to change it. Yet there are some who
still want to fight the President on that--a million-dollar threshold
or whatever. When you start talking about a business or what you build
up all your life, if you have to sell it to pay all the taxes, what are
you going to do?
This is a good plan: Pay down the debt and give money back to the
taxpayers who provided the money for us. We--all of us, the taxpayers--
funded the cold war. We won the cold war. We funded that national debt,
unfortunately, for all those years, and now we are going to defund it.
We are going to pay it off, and we are going to give money back to the
taxpayers who earned it.
There is one great thing about this budget. I have been around here
for a few years, and I have seen many budgets come and go. Most of them
are dead on arrival, but I am hopeful this one will not be because this
President not only reduces debt and provides tax relief for the
American family but he also funds important priorities.
I can remember--and many of my colleagues can, too--year after year,
people coming down here saying we were going to lose our money, we were
going to lose this and that, we were going to get cut here and there
because we were fighting for every single dollar because the interest
on the debt was going up $300 billion, $400 billion a year just to fund
that debt.
We are changing that now. We are reversing that. It is a new
paradigm. It is a new America, a new century, a new President. There is
new excitement here in Washington because we are paying off debt, we
are paying back taxpayers the money they deserve to get back, and we
are funding new initiatives and new priorities, good initiatives and
good priorities.
Let's talk about some of them. One is the environment. I chair the
Environment and Public Works Committee in the Senate. I commend
President Bush's budget. It invests in one of our Nation's most
important assets, our environment. Where are we without it? He is
proposing to accelerate the cleanup of toxic waste sites called
brownfields. It is a reflection of the bill that Senator Chafee and I
have introduced to clean up brownfields. The administration has
endorsed that bill. I am very excited about it because brownfields,
these toxic waste sites, are all over America. There are some 400,000
to 500,000 of them, some in New Hampshire.
What is a brownfield? A brownfield is a site that has toxic waste in
it. It is not a Superfund site, not as bad as some of them, but for
years and years contractors have been afraid to come on these sites and
clean them up for fear the Federal Government would come in and say
they did not do a good enough job and fine them, and so forth. We have
now clarified this in the law so these sites can be cleaned up.
Here is what it accomplishes: No. 1, it cleans up a blight in a
community. These are not just large cities. It is also the small town
of Bradford, NH. I say to any of my constituents in Bradford, if you
are listening, help is coming for you. In the town of Bradford, there
is a toxic waste site that needs to be cleaned up. It has not been
cleaned up because the law has not allowed it to be cleaned up. They
want to make a park there. All they have been trying to do is get the
funds to clean up this site to make a park. This is what we can do
because the President has laid out a budget that pays down that debt,
puts money back in the taxpayers' pockets, and allows us to fund
programs such as this for the first time in so many years--truly fund
them.
I am excited about it. When you clean up that brownfield, you are
going to create jobs because somebody is working to clean it up; No. 2,
you are going to eliminate the blighted site in the community; and, No.
3, maybe somebody builds something there, a new business or something
that does not go outside of town and bulldoze off 10 acres of green
space. It is just a fantastic opportunity, and President Bush came
right out of the gate and mentioned it specifically last night in his
speech: Brownfields legislation. We are going to help clean up
brownfields. That is good news for certainly every large city in
America and thousands of small towns all across America.
It is a great opportunity we have not had in the past because we had
this debt. Now we are not only putting money back directly in the
pockets of the taxpayers, under this budget, but we are also putting
money back into the community. So if you are a taxpayer in Bradford,
NH, you are going to get a Federal tax cut if you pay taxes and,
second, you are going to have your community improved with dollars that
are going to come into that community because we have the opportunity
to do it now because we are running these surpluses.
This is exciting news. It is not just brownfields. I could go on and
on with a number of environmental priorities where we could do this--
water infrastructure, sewerage pipes, clean water--all kinds of
environmental initiatives now that we will be able to fund.
Another one is the Land and Water Conservation Fund where moneys can
be provided to help create parks and trails and so many other positive
things--habitats. It is just a great opportunity for us.
Another item is defense. The defense of the United States has been
neglected over the past several years. Everybody knows it. The
President has proposed a $5.7 billion increase in pay and benefits. I
just came back from the Mediterranean, visiting the troops out there,
worried about terrorist attacks and so forth, putting their lives on
the line every single day. And some of them are on food stamps? Come
on, America. We can do better.
The President of the United States, within days of the beginning of
his term, went directly to the military aboard ship and on bases and
told our sailors, our airmen, our marines, who are defending our
interests and values all over the world: We are going to increase your
pay and benefits. He lived up to that promise, and he put it in the
budget.
It should be there. It absolutely should be there. We take for
granted what these men and women do. Believe me, we take it for
granted. If you have a young son, or daughter, or husband, or wife, or
a dad, or a mom who is out there, you know we take that for granted.
They are the best in the world, and they deserve the best we can
provide them. Now, finally, with this budget we are able to do that. It
will give the military the vital funds to compete with the private
sector in order to recruit the best people.
President Bush has correctly realized our increasingly high-tech
military requires that special steps be taken in order to attract and
retain personnel with computer science and other disciplines. Right
now, there is a great opportunity out there in the private sector. A
lot of people are pulled to that, but many people want to serve in the
military, and if they just have the opportunity to do it, with better
pay and better benefits, we can pull more people toward the military.
In addition to the military pay and benefits, the President has
pledged to increase pay incentives for highly trained military
personnel, and I know that is good news for the military.
Let me discuss a couple of other issues: Education. I am a former
teacher. I taught school for 6 years. You are never a former teacher;
you are always a teacher. I also served on a school board. I have also
been a father for 25-plus years. So I think I know a little bit about
education from four or five different perspectives, if you will.
I agree; decisions regarding education are best done at the local
level, period. That is where the best decisions are made. You cannot
sugar-coat that any other way. The best decisions are made at the local
level. We don't need
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a national school board running our public schools.
We need the local school boards to run those schools with the
parents, with the teachers, with the administrators, and with the
students working together.
Some will say there is a lot of money in President Bush's education
plan. There is an 11-percent increase in education funding at the
Federal level. Look how it is applied. This plan provides the local
schools, local districts, and States more freedom in administering the
Federal dollars. They are going to have more choices. They are going to
combine dozens and dozens of Federal education programs into only five
and allow the States and the local communities to spend the money as
they see fit in the categories that they see as best.
President Bush said last night: Leave no child behind. I think this
is the best opportunity we have had in many years to make that come
true. Passing year after year a child who can't read or write doesn't
do any good. It puts them at a tremendous disadvantage when they come
out into society. It is not necessary. Our schools and teachers should
be about kids. If they can't compete, then parents ought to have the
opportunity to say, well, I am going to go over here to this school or
this school. That is what rich folks do. They send their kids to some
private school, if they want to. They borrow money to do it because
they don't like the public school.
I am a former public school teacher. I am a strong advocate of public
schools. They ought to be competitive and good. And if they are not and
won't improve, then parents ought to have the right to choose another
school.
The Bush plan provides schools with more freedom in administering
these Federal dollars. But it also holds States accountable for
improving student achievement, which will be demonstrated through
assessments in reading and math. The plan provides reading programs
which will be available to States to provide research-based reading
programs in the early elementary grades and low-income preschools.
Some think we are going to put all of this taxpayer money on the
public debt and not do anything else and that we are going to cut these
programs. We are not. That is the beauty of the budget. It is one of
the best, if not the best, budgets I have seen since I have been in
Washington. It preserves and protects Social Security. It locks away
every penny--$2.6 trillion goes right into the lockbox for Social
Security. We cannot touch it for anything else. There will be no more
Government greedy hands in there borrowing the money and using it for
something else.
In addition, the President talks about making those dollars in Social
Security go further.
With Medicare, it is the same thing. It spends every dime for
Medicare. That is what it is gathered for and collected for, and that
is what it should be spent for. It passes it on.
I have spent a year looking at the prescription drug issue. It can be
done without hurting the program's solvency. We can provide help for
our senior citizens who need prescription drugs. They deserve it and
are going to get that help under this budget.
Finally, faith-based initiatives are somewhat of a controversial
matter. It is not controversial to me. I think the President made it
very clear last night. Faith-based proposals can get the job done.
There are so many people out there working in various charitable
organizations, whether they be religious or not. They are trying to do
a job. We are not picking sides. The President is simply saying why not
help all of these good-hearted Americans who are working and doing a
wonderful job to restore and heal the lives of men and women in need?
They can do it better than any Federal Government program. They can do
it better than any bureaucrat in Washington, and they are doing it OK.
God bless them. If you have ever been out to see what they do, your
heart goes out to them. In spite of everything, they are out there day
in and day out begging for more money. We need a chance to provide the
dollars to these folks who can get people back on track and be
productive again.
Billy Graham once said that our basic problems today are not social
problems; it is not a lack of education. The problems are the problems
of the human heart, a heart that is not right to God. These
organizations recognize that God has the power to change lives and heal
wounds and instill an inner drive in people so they have tools to
change destructive behavior.
Faith-based organizations provide needed community services. This is
a nation under God. We are not supposed to take God out of our
Government. We are just not supposed to have a state-sponsored church.
Sometimes we forget that. Why not help these people? President Bush
does. He took it head on. He knew he was going to get hit for it. But
he is doing it anyway. That is leadership. Faith-based organizations
are very effective, and they are going to get help. That is why I
support President Bush's plan.
Let me close with this point: Under this budget, we pay back $2
trillion of the national debt over the next 10 years. We provide $1.6
trillion to go back into the pockets of the people from whom we took
it. And we do all of these things that I mentioned. I haven't even
gotten started with the things I could have added to the list. That is
a good budget.
I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that is leadership. When you step
up to the plate and take on something such as that, that is leadership.
President Bush deserves a lot of credit for coming up here last night
and laying that out in a concise and clear way and not being afraid to
take on these tough challenges.
I sincerely hope my colleagues will act quickly to pass this budget
so the country will be the beneficiary of it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee is recognized.
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I understand we are in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
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