[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.

                          ____________________