[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 34 (Wednesday, March 14, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H918-H924]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE BUDGET AND TAXES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. TURNER. Mr. Speaker, during this next hour of Special Order time,
a group of House Democrats known as the Blue Dog Coalition would like
to talk about the subject of the budget and taxes. The Blue Dog
Democrats led the effort during this past week to try to urge this
Congress to adopt a budget first before we take the important votes on
tax cuts for the American people.
The Blue Dogs and the 33 Members that are members of that coalition
believe very strongly that our future prosperity depends upon our
ability as a Congress to stay on the course of fiscal responsibility.
In order to provide tax cuts to the American people, in order to
ensure our future prosperity, we believe that we must look at the whole
budget picture of the United States before we can determine what size
tax cuts we can afford.
The Blue Dogs as fiscal conservatives want the largest tax cut that
we can afford. We believe very strongly that we need tax relief, and we
want to vote for tax relief for the American people; but we also
understand very clearly that it is important to give equal priority to
paying down our $5.5 trillion national debt.
A lot of folks do not understand all of this talk about the national
debt. Why does it matter? The truth of the matter is, you might
conclude that the Congress and the Presidents for the last 30 years did
not understand it either, because the Congress and the Presidents who
have served over the last 30 years are the ones that created the $5.5
trillion national debt by running deficit spending in every year in
those last 30 years. Only last year did the Congress and the President
see a balanced Federal budget.
For the first time, we have been able to return this country to a
course of fiscal responsibility and the Blue Dog Democrats believe very
strongly that we should not return to those days of deficit spending.
There are basically two ways we can return to deficit spending in
this country. We can start spending too much money, and if we do not
hold down spending, we are going to see deficits return.
Another way we can return to deficit spending is to cut taxes larger
in a larger amount than we can actually afford, because both spending
and tax cuts, if pursued in excess, will result in deficit spending on
an annual basis by the Federal Government and return us to those days
from which we just departed only last year.
Some people say, how big is the national debt? Frankly, the number is
$5.6 trillion, but I have no way of fairly reflecting to you how much
$5.6 trillion is, except to tell you that it is a whole lot of money.
And it is going to take us a long time of fiscal discipline to pay it
down.
Now, when I was a boy growing up, my dad always told me that the
first order of business in terms of managing my finances is to pay my
debts. I think the Federal Government should operate by the same maxim,
pay our debts. After all, the debts that we are unwilling and unable to
pay today will be paid some day by the younger generation who will
follow us.
Our Federal Government, we are told, has a surplus. But do you
realize that the surplus that we are talking about is only an estimate
of what may occur over the next 10 years? The surplus is only an
estimate. There is no place in Washington where you can go to a lock
box or to a safe and find the surplus. It is an estimate of what may
happen.
The surplus from last year was the first we have had in 30 years. It
is very small. The surplus we are going to have this year is a little
bit larger, but when you hear these optimistic discussions about tax
cuts coming your way based on the surplus, keep in mind it is only an
estimate of the surplus.
The surplus estimates we are talking about over the next 10 years
largely comes in the second 5 years of this decade. Very little of the
surplus comes in the short term.
When I was in a town meeting in my district in east Texas a few
months ago, I was trying to explain all of these numbers, and a
gentleman in the back row in overalls stood up and he said,
Congressman, how can you folks in Washington talk about a surplus when
you owe over $5 trillion? Frankly, he stumped me for a few minutes.
It is hard to imagine how we can talk about a surplus when we owe
over $5.5 trillion. But that is what we are doing. In fact, if all the
numbers on the projected surplus turned out to be true and we enacted
the President's tax cut, it would be the last tax cut we could vote on
in this Congress for the next 10 years, because it would virtually
spend the entire surplus that is estimated to show up in Washington.
[[Page H919]]
I have a chart here to my right that depicts a little bit about the
uncertainty of that surplus. The surplus that I want to talk to you
today about is the non-Social Security surplus, because we have
surpluses projected over the next 10 years in the Social Security trust
fund. We have surpluses projected in the Medicare trust fund; but
Congress, at least half a dozen times in the last year, has voted that
we should never, ever again spend the Social Security or the Medicare
trust fund surplus. And we should not.
When the baby boomers begin to retire, and I am one of them, we are
going to see a real financial crisis in Washington, because the Social
Security trust fund and the Medicare trust fund, whose funds have been
used during all these 30 years of deficit spending to finance things
other than Social Security and Medicare, those funds are going to be
needed.
Mr. Speaker, in fact, in about 14 years, for the first time in our
history, the payroll tax that is collected to pay your Social Security
and mine will be less than the amount of money we spend every year for
Social Security benefits. You may say we have been real lucky for a
long time.
We took more in payroll taxes every year than we paid out in
benefits, but that is going to change in the year 2014.
Some people wonder what is the deal on this trust fund if you all
have been taking all of this money in. Where is the money? Frankly,
there is no money in the Social Security trust fund. It has been used
for other things. The Social Security fund, if you went and looked at
it today, it simply is an IOU backed by the taxpayers of the United
States saying all that money that we borrowed we are going to promise
that we will put it back some day, and it is backed by the taxing power
of the Federal Government.
It does not sound too promising for those of you who are here who are
under 30, because you are the ones that have to figure out how to pay
it back if your Social Security is going to be there for you.
The Blue Dog Democrats believe we need to start now to pay back that
money that we borrowed from Social Security and borrowed from Medicare
and get ready for the retirement of the baby boomers when the Social
Security trust fund is going to be the biggest financial problem faced
by the Federal Government.
The Social Security Administration estimates that by 30 years from
now, that if we kept everything the same, the same Social Security
benefits for everybody, we would have to have a payroll tax that
equalled 50 percent of your payroll check.
Now, you know we are not going to have a 50 percent tax on your
paycheck to support Social Security, but it simply indicates the degree
of the crisis that we are going to face as more and more people retire
and become eligible for Social Security. In fact, in about 50 years,
there will be two people collecting Social Security for every 1 person
that is working in the workforce.
That is the real problem that Washington needs to be talking about. I
think you can see from the discussion thus far that to say we have a
short-term, 10-year estimated surplus that may not show up yet is
telling only half the story. Because if you look out about 30 years,
there is no surplus. Let us talk about 10 years.
This chart shows the 10-year non-Social Security surplus projections.
The Congressional Budget Office has given us the estimate that there
will be $3.22 trillion in surplus over the next 10 years. That is their
estimate.
They also warn us that they could be wrong. They say they could be
wrong because it could be more than that. Their most optimistic
projection is that there will be a $6 trillion surplus outside Social
Security and Medicare over the next 10 years. Their most pessimistic
scenario is that we will be back into deficit spending by half a
trillion dollars. That is without any tax cuts, by the way. This is
just going forward like we are going now.
You can see the unreliability of the estimate of the surplus that
everybody in Washington seems so anxious, as we say, to give back to
the American people.
To be honest about the rhetoric, you cannot give back something that
you do not even have yet. We do not have that surplus yet. It is a
projection, and an iffy projection at best.
Here is the chart that shows you a little bit about the projected
surplus, even assuming that the surplus turns out to be just as
projected. Forget about the uncertainty, 84 percent of the projected
non-Social Security surplus comes after the next Presidential election.
I have heard some people tell me that folks in Washington might be a
little bit bold to suggest that we are going to project the surplus for
the next 10 years and we are going to give 80 percent or 90 percent of
that in the tax cut which, as I said, would be the last tax cut we
could vote on for 10 years if the projections even turned out to be
true, because the truth of the matter is, 84 percent of the surplus
occurs after President Bush's first term.
Mr. Speaker, now, a lot of us may not be here to see these numbers in
future years, the average tenure for a Member of Congress is about 6
years, and there may be some folks who are serving here in later years
who might also like the opportunity to vote for a tax cut. But if we go
down the course that the President is proposing, and even if the
numbers turn out to be true, we are going to spend all of this surplus
estimated for 10 years in one tax cut.
Some people say that is just not fair. Others behind us may have an
interest in voting on tax cuts, too. Some have suggested that perhaps a
tax cut to spend the surplus that is going to accrue over the next 2
years, 3 years, or 4 years might be an appropriate thing for us to do.
But to think about granting tax cuts based on a surplus that is not
here yet, that will not arrive for 10 years, may be a little bit more
than this Congress should be doing.
{time} 1500
The next chart looks ahead 5 years and then looks back and shows us
how far off the projections have been in the past. Now I should have
mentioned when I started showing my colleagues these charts where they
came from. They are not charts that I put together or anybody in the
Blue Dog Coalition. All of these charts were provided to us by a
nonpartisan group called the Concord Coalition.
The Concord Coalition is made up of a respected group of business
executives who try to provide the Congress the truth with regard to
these numbers. The Concord Coalition has brought these charts to the
floor to allow us to show you what they project with regard to the
surplus and the tax and the budget issue.
So here are the projections, and it shows us how far off they have
been in the last 20 years. Fortunately, in the most recent time frame,
the estimates by the Congressional Budget Office have been
conservative, and we have had larger surpluses than were projected. But
in all of the years prior to 1995, the surpluses or the estimates of
the Federal financial condition was off, and it was off in the wrong
direction; and we found out that there were deficits there that the
Congressional Budget Office had not projected.
In order to have surpluses into the future, the economy has to stay
strong, because the budget projection is based on an assumption about
economic growth. The Congressional Budget Office, when they told the
Congress a month or so ago that we are going to have a surplus, were
estimating that the economy was going to continue to grow at close to
the rate that it was growing about a year ago.
I know all of my colleagues have seen what is happening to the
economy, and right now they say that growth is zero. If growth is zero
and stays there very long, all of these estimates of the surplus are
going to be flown out of the window because they will not be worth the
paper they are written on.
This chart shows us based on the past track record of the
Congressional Budget Office for 5-year projections what the variation
could be in the estimated surplus just for the next 5 years, not the
next 10, just the next 5.
Here we are at the year 2001. We have been given this optimistic
projection of a surplus right here on this middle line. But the CBO
says, well, it could be up here; and it could be down here. Should we
bet the future on a surplus estimate that is as uncertain as this is,
even in the hands of the Congressional Budget Office that prepared it?
I think not.
Here is what some of the experts have to say about the estimate of
the
[[Page H920]]
surplus. The Congressional Budget Office that prepared it says looking
forward 5 or 10 years allows the Congress to consider the longer-term
implications of policy changes. But it also increases the likelihood
that the budgetary decisions will be made on the basis of projections
that later turn out to have been far wrong. That is the folks that
prepared the estimate.
How about the Controller General of the United States, David Walker.
He recently warned members of the Senate Committee on the Budget, and I
quote, ``No one should design tax or spending policies pegged to the
precise numbers in any 10-year forecast, no matter who prepares it.''
Let us read what Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve
Board, told the Congress, specifically the Senate Committee on the
Budget on January 25 of this year. Mr. Greenspan said, ``Until we
receive full detail on the distribution by income of individual tax
liabilities for 1999, 2000, and perhaps 2001, we are making little more
than informed guesses.'' Informed guesses. That is what your Congress
is using to determine the financial future of your Federal Government.
We have several other Blue Dogs here who are well versed on some of
these issues, and I want to recognize the gentleman from California
(Mr. Schiff). He has worked long and hard on trying to balance the
budget; and I know he is as familiar as I am, if not more so, with some
of these statistics.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff) to
talk to my colleagues a little bit more about this very critical issue.
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, we had in the past decade the fiscal
discipline to continue paying down the national debt of this country.
Although there is much debate about what credit the previous
administration ought to have for the incredible economic successes of
the last decade, I think it is plain that one of the most significant
things that that administration did was get our fiscal house in order;
was continue paying down our national debt; was maintaining the
discipline that kept interest rates low; that made homeownership
possible for hundreds and thousands of families across this country
that had never enjoyed the benefits of homeownership, by allowing them
to have mortgage payments that they could make by keeping their
families together under one roof.
Our successes I think over this last decade are owing in some strong
measure to that discipline. Now that discipline is never easy to
maintain. It is not easy to maintain when times are difficult when we
would rather spend the money on programs that will help people that are
hurting in this country. It is not easy to maintain that discipline in
the good times.
One of the things that I admire about the Blue Dogs and the reason
that I joined, as a new Member of this Congress, the Blue Dogs is that
they have consistently fought in good times and hard times not to lose
sight of the need to pay down this debt in this country.
The surplus that we are enjoying is our surplus, the American
people's surplus. The debt that hangs over our heads is the American
people's debt. More accurately, much of the surplus that we enjoy is
owing to the people that went before us, to our parents' generation who
made the sacrifices, who built the universities, the roadways, the
waterways, the infrastructure in this country that made this period of
prosperity possible.
It is their money as much as our generation's. It is their Social
Security and their Medicare that are underfunded.
We talk about a surplus in Social Security. Well, I suppose if we
look at today, we can call it that. But if we look at the 75-year life
of Social Security, what at the moment looks like a surplus over 30
years or over 75 years looks like a $30 trillion deficit.
Maybe we should be talking about the Social Security deficit. What
are we going to do about that? The only plan we have for dealing with
Social Security solvency is the abstract idea that we will come
together on some reform in the future. We do not know what that reform
is going to look like. We do not know what the reform of Medicare is
going to look like. We do not know, as we stand here today, what the
budget looks like.
Yet, here we are making plans for tax expenditures over the next
decade and beyond based on projections of the surplus that may or may
not materialize, that even the people who gave us those projections say
are at best informed guesses about the future; and we are ready to bet
the farm on those guesses when we have no plan for Social Security and
Medicare.
So I became a member of the Blue Dogs because they are committed to
making sure we maintain the discipline in good times and in bad times
to pay down that debt, that we consider that we are, not only talking
about our parents' generation, the people who made this prosperity
possible, but we are talking about our children as well and their
future. Because, while it is the American people's surplus and the
American people's debt, it is our children's future that we are talking
about. If that debt goes on, if that debt grows, it is not you and I
who will pay it. It is our children and their children.
So here today we have to talk about those that will come after and
think about those who come after while we stand so ready to take credit
for surpluses that will not materialize for 5 or 10 years.
Now, we have a tax plan; and we will have a major tax cut this year,
and we should. And we should. The question is how large should that tax
cut be? How large prudently can it be?
What I think we ought to be debating just as vigorously, though, that
I hear so little about in this Congress and this administration is what
is our economic plan. Tax policy is simply one part of an economic plan
and the economists say not even the most significant part. There are
limitations to what we can do with fiscal policy in terms of our
economy.
Now we lost massive, multitrillion dollar equity in the stock market
this week. There are a lot of Americans very concerned about the
downturn in this economy and what it means to their families. Many
thousands of Americans have already lost their jobs.
What is the economic plan of the administration and the Congress? How
does this tax proposal fit into that plan? The reality is there is no
plan. There is no plan.
It is far more important that we focus here and now on what we can do
to turn around these recent downturn signs, that we can put ourselves
back on the road of incredible prosperity which we have traveled down
for the last 8 years. We have to start focusing on the economy and what
is our economic plan.
So I urge the Congress and all Americans, let us turn our attention
together in a bipartisan way, in a bipartisan tradition that the Blue
Dogs represent to finding a tax cut that works for all of the American
people that is the size that we can afford that does not squander the
investment that our parents made, and their Social Security and
Medicare and does not squander the investment that we owe our children
in good schools and in their future and in low mortgages and giving
them the American dream of homeownership.
Let us work together across party lines and do what is right for this
country over the long term.
Mr. TURNER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff)
has shared, I think, the thoughts that all Blue Dogs share, and that is
the importance of fiscal responsibility and the importance of paying
down debt as well as providing tax relief to the American people.
One of the members of the Blue Dog Coalition who has been the most
eloquent and outspoken on the issue of public debt and the importance
of trying to deal with the public debt while we have the opportunity is
the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor).
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor)
to discuss this issue.
Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Turner) for yielding to me. I want to thank the young
people and not-so-young people in the audience today. I hope I can make
this halfway interesting. And since you cannot talk back to me, I am
going to pretend like you can.
Now, I have town meetings in south Mississippi. I try to have at
least two a month. On almost every instance, somebody in the crowd
says, Gene, you know, we would have plenty of money for all those
really important things,
[[Page H921]]
like taking care of our military, taking care of military retirees,
building roads, educating kids if you just did not waste so much money.
So I am going to pretend like one of you all said that. I would
counter by saying, and probably shocking you when I told you that the
most wasteful thing our Nation does, we squandered $1 billion
yesterday, the day before that, the day before that, tomorrow, and
every day of the rest of our lives on interest on the national debt.
Now think about it. If you were to come down to Pascagoula,
Mississippi, a town I am very proud to represent, and go to Greenville
Ship Building, you would see that we are one of two suppliers of naval
destroyers, surface ships, for our Navy. The DDG 51, the greatest
destroyer in the world, half of them are built in Greenville Ship
Building.
And if you were to see a DDG 51 loaded with weapons, loaded with
fuel, getting ready to set sail, to go join the fleet, you would
probably know that one of those destroyers cost about a billion to
build. Yet, we only built three of them last year because the folks in
this House, the Committee on the Budget, said, Well, we do not have
enough money to build destroyers. But we had enough money to spend $1
billion a day on interest on the national debt.
Now, let me show you, I do not get any great kick out of showing this
to people, but I think it is important for Americans to visualize. When
you think of 5.7 of anything, whether it is biscuits or dollars, it
does not seem like many. So 5.7 trillion probably does not sink in
until you look at it.
That is $5,735,859,380,573.98 that your Nation was in debt on the
last day of last month. So when the President or the Speaker or anybody
in this town, and many reporters get caught up in this game that there
is a surplus, tell you that there is a surplus, I would remind them,
this is coming straight out of the United States Treasury figures. That
is how broke we are.
Now, what is really frightening for you young people is, on the day
you were born, if you were born before 1980, our Nation was less than 1
trillion in debt. So the debt has grown just in the past 21 years by
over $4.700 trillion.
Now, how does that affect you? Well, think about it. If we go to war
tomorrow, you 18-year-olds, who is more likely to fight in it, me or
you? You, because you are 18, and I am 47. If the schools get messed
up, who is more likely to suffer, me or you? Again you, because you are
still going to school; and I doubt I will ever go back to school. And
if we run up horrible debts as a Nation, who is going to pay the
interest on it the longest, me or you? Once again the answer is you.
{time} 1515
Mr. Speaker, that is why I get disturbed when young people do not
take time to vote because they are getting stuck with this bill. The
politicians in Washington are telling you that they are paying this
debt down, and they are lying to you. I use the word ``lie'' because to
intentionally mislead the public is to lie.
Since September of last year, the public debt has grown by $61
billion. $61 billion, guys, with a ``B,'' $61,681,170,687.12. We could
have built 61 destroyers for that. We could have built 12 aircraft
carriers for that. There is no telling how many miles of highway or how
many schools we could have built to help improve the lives of people,
how much veterans' health care we could have provided. The entire
veterans' health care budget for our entire Nation is only $20 billion
a year. But that is the increase in the national debt, and a billion a
day is squandered on the interest on the national debt, the most
wasteful thing we do.
Now I see some of you not-so-young folks in the audience who are
probably close to Social Security age.
Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cantor). The Chair must remind the
gentleman from Mississippi to refrain from speaking to the gallery. All
comments should be directed to the Chair.
Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Okay, guys, they called my bluff, I cannot
speak to you anymore.
Mr. Speaker, for those Americans who are paying into the Social
Security system and have paid into it, some a lot longer than others,
you would probably be shocked to know that our Nation owes the Social
Security trust system $1.7 trillion. That is money collected out of
every working American's paycheck with the promise starting in the
Reagan years, a Democratic House, a Republican Senate, a Republican
President which promised that money would be set aside for retirement.
They took the money, but they did not set it aside for retirement, it
was spent on other things, and the Nation now owes the Social Security
trust system $1.7 trillion.
At the same time, they increased the fees on Medicare. It is a line
item on pay stubs, and they are taking money out and setting it aside.
It is supposed to help subsidize the cost of your health care after you
reach 65. It will not pay for all of it, but it helps a great deal.
Right now our Nation owes the Medicare trust fund $229.2 billion.
Right now. The much-vaunted lockbox that my colleagues talk about, if
you opened it up, you would discover it is nothing more than
Tupperware; and if you opened it up, all you would find is an IOU for
$229 billion.
How many Americans have devoted their lives to defending our Nation?
In my life time there was a war in Vietnam. There was the invasion of
Grenada, there was Desert Storm, Panama, Kosovo, Bosnia. Americans are
risking their lives today; there was a horrible accident that took
place in Kuwait just 2 days ago which reminds us how dangerous that job
is. And they are in some really crummy places. They are in some nice
places like Biloxi, but they are in some crummy places like Bosnia and
Kosovo right now where it is cold, no fun whatsoever.
But the promise made to them is that you are not going to make as
much money as you would if you were working in the private sector, but
we are setting aside a good chunk of money so you will have a better-
than-average retirement.
It is sad to find out that of the money set aside, our Nation now
owes them $163.5 billion. There is not a penny in that account. It has
been spent on other things, and yet the President and the majority
leader and others will tell us there is a surplus. When you owe a
trillion here, $229 billion here, $163 billion here, you do not have a
surplus, and it gets worse.
What about all of these nice folks who work at the Capitol, one of
whom gave his life defending a Congressman's life a couple of years
ago. They pay into a public employees' retirement system with the
promise that money is set aside and spent on their retirement. They
would be very disappointed to find out that our Nation owes the Civil
Service Retirement System $501.7 billion. So again, where is this
surplus that people keep talking about.
The truth is that there is no surplus, and the truth is I think one
of the reasons Americans are disillusioned with their government is for
too long politicians have been promising them a surplus when there is
not. They have been saying everything is rosy when it is not.
I think the best Americans are those Americans who tell the truth,
and I think it is time for this Congress to rise to the occasion and
tell the American people the truth. And before we do anything else,
before we make any new promises, let us fulfill the promise to Social
Security that we already made. Let us fulfill the promise to Medicare
that we already made, and let us fulfill the promise to our military
retirees that we have already made, and let us fulfill the promise to
civil service that we have already made.
Mr. Speaker, I had a nice lady from home write me and say I would
like to have that tax break, and put the money back in Social Security.
Mr. Speaker, you cannot do both. Last year's surplus when you pulled
out the trust fund surplus was only $8 billion.
Now $8 billion to me is a lot of money, but it was not really $8
billion because there were some accounting gimmicks; just as if you
chose not to make your mortgage payment 1 month and the mortgage was
$1,000, and you decided at the end of the month, I have a thousand
dollar surplus. No, you have a thousand dollars more that you owe on
your mortgage, and you have to pay $2,000 next month to break even.
Mr. Speaker, one of the tricks that was played last year that I am
furious,
[[Page H922]]
we normally pay the troops on September 29, a Friday. Almost half of
the force now is married and a great many, almost half, have children.
So you have a lot of young guys, onesies, twosies, threesies, fours who
do not make much money who have one, two or three children. That is
tough to do on an enlisted man's salary.
One of the gimmicks that the Republican majority passed last year was
to delay their pay to October 1. Now for a Congressman, we make plenty
of money. If you delay my pay for a couple of days, I am going to do
okay. But for an enlisted guy, that means a weekend of digging around
under the couch for nickels and dimes for baby formula and Pampers just
so they could move that account from last fiscal year to this fiscal
year so they could show that $2.5 billion pay period like they saved
that money. They did not save that money. So the $8 billion surplus was
only $5.5 billion, and that is one gimmick that I caught. No telling
how many others there are.
But they are the party that keeps saying that they love the troops.
Doggone it, if you love the troops, pay them on time.
Mr. Speaker, how about replacing some of that old equipment. All of
the folks who have been talking about a surplus, they have been in the
majority for 6 years. And in the 6 years that the Republicans have
controlled the House and the Senate, the United States fleet has shrunk
from 392 vessels to 318. But they keep telling us they are for a strong
national defense. If they are for a strong national defense, why do we
have 74 fewer ships than when we started?
The Constitution says it is Congress' job to provide for an army or a
navy. No money may be spent from the Treasury except by appropriation
from Congress. Would it have been nice if the President had asked for
more ships? Absolutely. But last year the Republican Congress did not
even build as many ships as Bill Clinton asked for. Now, I think that
is a shame, and I think we could do a heck of a lot better.
Let us take the last thing I want to mention before I turn this thing
over. When they say we have all this surplus, if we have a surplus why
are so many young American 18-, 19-, 20-year-old Marines and Army
personnel riding around in 20, I am sorry, 30-year-old helicopters? If
my colleagues were to go out today and see a Hughey flying over with
Army and Marine markings on it, if they are lucky, they will be looking
at one of the new ones. The new ones were built in 1972. If they look
up and see one of the helicopters with the twin rotors on top, which is
the CH-46 or CH-47, depending on which branch of the service, again if
they are seeing one of the new ones, it was built in 1972.
So all these folks out there telling us we have a surplus cannot find
the money to replace 30-year-old helicopters that young Americans are
defending us with right now, risking their lives in right now, but they
say they have enough of a surplus for tax breaks. I say they are wrong.
I say the most important thing we can do is to defend our Nation. I
say the most important thing we can do is keep our word, quit lying to
the American people about the true size of the deficit, and, yes, the
most important thing we can do is keep our word to the folks who paid
into Medicare, the folks who paid into Social Security, the folks who
paid into the military retirement trust fund, and the folks who paid
into the civil service retirement fund. Let us pay back the money we
owe to them before we start making any new promises to any other
Americans.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) very much
for the time.
Mr. TURNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Mississippi. I
always am amazed at the common sense and clarity with which the
gentleman speaks about the very complicated subject of the debt of the
United States.
I think most people fail to recognize how much we owe to the Social
Security trust fund, the Medicare trust funds, the government
employees' trust fund, and the military retirees' trust fund. Those are
debts that are going to come due some day and those dollars are going
to be needed, and a part of that projected future surplus certainly
needs to be put back in to those trust funds to be prepared for those
retirements that will inevitably occur.
I am also pleased to have on the floor today a gentleman who is a
very active member of the Blue Dog coalition, a prominent member of the
Committee on Ways and Means, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner),
who will address these issues.
Mr. TANNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me,
and I want to commend the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner), the
gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff), the gentleman from Mississippi
(Mr. Taylor), and others who have come out here this afternoon on the
floor to talk about the Nation's debt.
The Blue Dogs agree that Americans are overtaxed, but we will always
be overtaxed as long as we have a billion dollars a day in interest
going out and as long as we have a 14 percent mortgage on this country.
That is one of the reasons we are overtaxed. What we want to do as Blue
Dogs is to try to keep our eye on the ball and to retire some of this
horrendous national debt that we are leaving to those young people.
That is how we give them a tax break. They do not have a voice here
now. They cannot vote.
It is up to us and this generation to protect not only our own
country, as the gentleman from Mississippi so eloquently pointed out
with respect to the military, that we need to support in a manner that
we have not been able to find ourselves in a position to do, but we
also need to look out for the young ones coming along and not burden
them with $5-plus trillion of debt with an interest bill of $1 billion
a day.
Now, the other point I would like to make is that the House
leadership is asking this country to take a risk that we do not have to
take right now. All of these budget projections we have heard about
are, by anyone's definition uncertain, speculative in some regards. But
more than that, the money is not here. It is not real. It is not even
supposed to come in, except over the next 10 years. And then only 29
percent of it is supposed to show up here in the next 5 years, beyond
our new President's term of office. Yet we are asked on the floor last
week and again probably next week to start spending money, in either a
tax cut or some other way, money that has not even shown up yet.
Any prudent businessperson, any person who is a head of a household,
a family, I do not think would put his or her family at risk to the
extent that we are being asked to do, nor would they put the country at
risk or their business at risk if they had a vote here. And this is a
risk that we are being asked to take on their behalf that we do not
have to accept. We do not have to accept just what those who have more
votes in this House than we do say.
{time} 1530
We say, let us wait and see where we are. We can do a tax cut that we
can afford, and we want to do that. We can do some spending on the
military, on agriculture, on education, on medicine that the country
desperately needs if we do it across the board in a businesslike
fashion with a budget in place so that we at least have some idea of
what the trade-offs are going to be. Had we rather retire debt or had
we rather continue to pay a billion dollars a day in interest and have
our young men and women in the armed services of this country flying
around in 30-year-old helicopters? I do not think that is a very hard
choice, but until we get a budget so that we know what the trade-offs
are, we are flying blind, so to speak, as some of those young men and
women are in these 30-year-old helicopters. That is an unacceptable
risk to them, it is an unacceptable risk to us and to these young
people that are here today, and in my view it is an unacceptable risk
for our country.
What we are saying, basically, is two things: one, we are overtaxed
and we always will be as long as we are carrying around this 14 percent
mortgage on our country; and, secondly, we need a business plan in
force and in effect so that we know and we hopefully can make some
intelligent trade-offs as to how much of the money that belongs to the
people that we should return to the people which we want to do, but,
more importantly, what are the needs of this country.
[[Page H923]]
I serve on the NATO parliamentary assembly which is the civilian arm
of the NATO military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
which as many of my colleagues know came into being after World War II.
I have been to several countries as a result of that duty, and I have
yet to see a country anywhere on this planet Earth that is strong and
free and is broke. There is not one, there never has been one, and
there never will be one.
That is why we sound like Johnny one-note on retiring some of this
debt. That is why we say, keep your eye on the ball, Congress; continue
to pay down the debt. As we can afford and as the money shows up, let
us return it to the people who earned it, but let us also take care of
the needs of this country and the people who live here. Let us take
care of the medicine needs that people have, particularly the aged
population, with a prescription drug benefit. Many people need that and
need it desperately. There is no reason we cannot do it if we do things
across the board with known trade-offs as to where we are and where we
are going.
In my own business at home with my brothers and my father, I would
not take a risk that we are being asked to take when we have these tax
bills come through the House here without any budget. I do not think
that you want us to take that risk. As I have said, at the pain of
repeating myself, it is a risk the country does not have to take right
now. We can do better than what we have done. We should do better than
what we have done. And if we can get the support of people who believe
that retiring debt and not taking heedless or unnecessary risk is
important to the country, it is a fight that we hopefully can
eventually succeed in.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Texas again for
taking this time this afternoon and allowing some of us to come down
and talk about the priorities of the country and talk about the
children of this country and the education that they must have for this
country to remain strong and free and also to try to put as best we can
the financial integrity of the United States Treasury back where it
rightfully belongs.
Mr. TURNER. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee, and I appreciate
his commitment to trying to restore fiscal responsibility to our
Federal Government. It would seem to me that after 30 years of deficit
spending when we only last year saw the first surplus in 30 years, that
we could somehow, some way figure out how to stay on the course of
fiscal responsibility and continue to not only run surpluses but to be
sure that we are paying down that $5.7 trillion national debt that the
gentleman from Mississippi talked about a few minutes ago, to allow us
to be prepared for the real financial crisis that is coming in the next
few years when the baby boomers begin to retire and the Social Security
system and the Medicare system experience the great strains that will
come with the large number of people who will be over 65 and eligible
for their Social Security and their Medicare.
We talk a lot about projections. The projection of the estimated
surplus is no more than a projection, as the gentleman from Tennessee
pointed out. It is not here yet. It may never be here yet. But what we
do know for certain, and it is indisputable, that there will be many,
many people retiring in just a few years that will cause the Social
Security system to very quickly become insolvent unless we decide now,
in advance, how to fix it.
Blue Dog Democrats have worked hard to try to urge this House to
debate and adopt a budget first before we have votes on major tax cuts,
because no businessman and no head of household of any family in this
country could ever determine how much is available to spend until first
they sit down and draw up a budget and stick to it. This House needs to
do that. The Senate, on the other hand, has already agreed that they
will adopt the budget resolution before they vote on tax cuts. In the
House, it seems that it is more important to create the appearance of
having tax cuts pass than it is to deal with it in a realistic way to
ensure that the fiscal soundness of the Federal Government is preserved
for the future.
We are in very difficult economic times. The stock market seems to go
up one day and down the next. Many people have said we need tax cuts.
Frankly, we all want to see taxes reduced. But the bulk of the surplus
that we are talking about in Washington for tax cuts is not here now,
and it will not be here for several years. Eighty-four percent of the
projected surplus over the next 10 years arrives after President Bush's
4-year term in office. So we do not have a lot of surplus to be
spending, or to be giving back in tax cuts. The surplus estimate may
never arrive. In my view, the best thing we can do for economic
stability in this country is for Washington to show that we know how to
balance our books, we know how to get ready for the looming crisis in
Social Security and Medicare, we know how to prevent this country from
going back into deficit spending, we know how to pay down the national
debt so we can quit paying a billion dollars a day in interest payments
and so that we can see the lower interest rates that every economist
agrees will occur if we will pay down the national debt.
I read the other day that interest rates could go down 2 percent over
the next 10 years if we could pay down the publicly held portion of the
national debt. That would be a wonderful thing. If you are trying to
buy a new home and you have borrowed $100,000 to do it, 2 percent lower
interest rates means $2,000 a year to you. If you are trying to expand
your business and you find out that you need to borrow $100,000 to do
it, 2 percent lower interest rates means $2,000 in savings to your
business.
For the average family under anybody's tax cut proposal, they are not
going to see $2,000 a year from tax cuts. You have got to be up in the
upper-income limits to get $2,000 a year. The Blue Dog Democrats say a
combination of responsible tax cuts and paying down debt will put more
money in the back pocket of most American families than tax cuts alone,
because we will get lower interest rates from paying down debt and more
importantly perhaps is we will prepare for the retirement of the baby
boom generation to ensure that there is no looming financial crisis
facing this country. That is the Blue Dog message. That is what we are
going to fight for. That is why we believe we need to have a budget
debate and a responsible budget with spending caps before we decide how
big the tax cut can be.
Democrats in this House want the biggest tax cut we can afford. But
we have not decided yet how much we really can afford. We have never
had a budget debate. We have never passed a budget. It does not matter
whether the President sends over a budget and says we are going to hold
spending to 4 percent a year, or it does not matter whether I send one
down here on the floor of the House. The way this place works is we
debate it out, we have different points of view, and at the end of the
day we take votes. It is that process that determines what the Federal
Government's budget will be. Until you do that, until you go through
that battle and you decide how much you are going to set aside for
Medicare, Social Security, prescription drug coverage, national
defense, education, paying down debt and tax cuts, there is no way you
can determine how big a tax cut you can afford. That is what the Blue
Dogs are fighting for in this House. That is the message of fiscal
responsibility that we intend to carry throughout this debate.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield the final portion of our time to
the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff), who has another subject
that he would like to address to this House.
Condemning Destruction of Pre-Islamic Statues in Afghanistan
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for
yielding me a little time at the end of the afternoon.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to condemn a deplorable act that has taken
place halfway around the world with repercussions on our ability to
protect the world's heritage and to preserve world history for future
generations.
On February 26 of this year, the Taliban ordered the destruction of
pre-Islamic statues in Afghanistan, among them a pair of massive
Buddhas carved out of a mountainside and towering over 100 feet. Two
days ago, on March 12, UNESCO's special envoy to Afghanistan confirmed
what the international community feared most, the complete destruction
of the 1,600-year-old statues in the Bamiyan province.
[[Page H924]]
In the words of UNESCO chief Koichiro Matsuura, ``It is abominable to
witness the cold and calculated destruction of cultural properties
which were the heritage of the Afghan people and, indeed, of the whole
of humanity.''
I have introduced a resolution condemning the Taliban's destruction
of pre-Islamic statues in Afghanistan and calling for the immediate
access for UNESCO representatives to survey the damage. House
Concurrent Resolution 52 sends a strong message that religious
intolerance of any kind is unacceptable and must immediately be
stopped.
One of the most cosmopolitan regions in the world at one time and
host to merchants, travelers, and artists from China, Central Asia and
the Roman Empire, today Afghanistan is one of the most repressive and
intolerant countries in the world as a result of the actions of its
ruling Taliban faction. The destruction was ordered and carried out for
fear that those ancient statues may be used for idol worship.
Destroying those unique creations which had withstood the test of time
and the elements of nature on the basis of an irrational fear motivated
by intolerance of other cultures and religions is simply unacceptable.
The destruction of the pre-Islamic statues also contradicts the basic
tenet of Islam that requires tolerance of other religions. People of
all faiths and nationalities, including Muslim communities around the
world, condemn the destruction of these statues which were part of the
common heritage of mankind. It is imperative we join the people and
governments around the world in condemning the senseless act of
destruction of our joint cultural heritage and call on the Taliban
regime to immediately cease and desist any further destruction of other
pre-Islamic relics.
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