[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 63 (Wednesday, May 9, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H2031-H2049]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The Chair would remind
persons in the gallery that they are here as guests of the House of
Representatives, and signs either approving or disapproving of any
speaker's remarks are against the Rules of the House.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
California (Ms. Pelosi).
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I was congratulating the gentlewoman from
Ohio (Mrs. Jones) for getting more substance into 1 minute than I have
heard in the Congress before.
Mr. Speaker, as you know, today the Congress has a very important
decision to make. We are voting on our budget. Many of us believe that
our Federal budget should be a statement of our national values. What
is important to us should be what we commit our resources to.
Clearly, this Republican budget before us is not. It
disproportionately gives a tax break to the top 1 percent in our
country at the expense of our children. All scientific research shows
us that children do better in smaller classes and, indeed, yes, in
smaller schools.
{time} 1115
The American people have made education their highest priority. Why,
then, does this budget just play lip service? It talks the talk, but it
does not walk the walk for education.
Children are smart. If one tells them that education is important,
the key to their future, important to the competitiveness of our
country internationally, and then not commit the resources to education
and send them to school in dilapidated schools that are not clean,
well-lighted places, wired to the future, they get a mixed message from
us.
So let us reject this budget which rejects the notion of school
modernization by not committing funds for smaller classes and more
teachers. This budget only gives an increase of inflation for
education. It does not even recognize student growth and the growth in
our population of our students.
So let us ask the question: Is it a statement of our national values
to give a tax break at the high end at the expense of our children? Is
it a statement of our national values to ignore the infrastructure
needs of our children and their needs for qualified teachers to give a
tax break to the high end? I think not.
I urge our colleagues to reject this budget and to get real about it.
This is a charade. We want a real budget that addresses the needs of
the American people and serves our national values.
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to yield 3 minutes to the
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith), a distinguished member of our
conference.
(Mr. SMITH of Michigan asked and was given permission to revise and
extend his remarks.)
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, through the Speaker to everybody
that might be listening, how does one make the best decision on how
much to spend and how high taxes should be? It would seem reasonable
that the first thing policymakers might do is say, look, how much, how
high, should taxes be for the American people?
Right now, the average American taxpayer pays about 41 cents out of
every dollar they earn. Here at the Federal level, our budget, in terms
of total income, is approaching 21 percent of GDP.
So if we are going to have a reasonable budgeting process then we
say, look, at what point are taxes so high that it discourages economic
expansion in our free market economy? It is the system that has made
this country great, rewarding those people that try, that start new
businesses, that get a second job?
But we have sort of evolved into a tax system of penalties and
punishment for some of those people that really try and save and
invest. That young couple that, maybe, goes out and gets a second job;
we not only tax that person on the additional income, but we say, in
effect, if you are going to earn more money, we are going to increase
the rate of taxation.
I would suggest to my colleagues to consider that we should not have
Federal Government spending that exceeds 18 percent of total income or
GDP in this country. We are now approaching 21 percent.
I applaud the Committee on Rules. I congratulate the Committee on the
Budget for moving ahead with the most reasonable budget we've had in
years, even though this budget increases spending twice the rate of
inflation. We have gone in past years as high as five times the rate of
inflation as we expanded the Federal Government.
Just imagine for a moment a graphic projection of what inflation is
every year and the fact that the Federal Government is increasing the
size of the Federal Government two to five times the rate of inflation.
Someplace out there, it is going to catch up with us.
So let us not talk and suggest that this program could use more money
or that program could use more money. Let us decide what is reasonable
and fair to those people that are working and decide how much money
they should be allowed to keep in their pockets to decide how they want
to spend it.
The big spenders in Congress can always say we need more money for
this program or that program or we need more programs. But the fact is
that government spending through the appropriation process is not free.
It is not magic. Somebody is working hard, getting up and going to
work, whether
[[Page H2032]]
they feel like it or not, to earn that money, to send part of it to
Washington.
I think as we review what has happened in taxes in this country and
the fact that our taxes now are the highest they have ever been in the
history of the United States except for 1 year during World War II, it
should make us all very conscious of the importance of trying to be a
little more efficient, trying to prioritize spending in government. Let
us move ahead with supporting this rule and this budget and hope we
have the intestinal fortitude to stick with this spending level through
the appropriations process.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
California (Mr. Filner).
Mr. FILNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this
time.
Mr. Speaker, the veterans of this Nation ought to march on this
Capitol in protest to this budget. I heard from a Member from the other
side of the aisle that this budget over the next 10 years helps
veterans. This does nothing of the sort. This budget barely keeps up
with inflation.
This does not honor our Nation's veterans. Our veterans are waiting 2
years to have their claims adjudicated. They are waiting months and
months for appointments with doctors. Our research is lagging in all
the diseases that have come out of the Gulf and Vietnam. Yet, this
budget does not even keep up with inflation.
Even the Republican Members of the House Committee on Veterans'
Affairs said this number is insufficient to keep up with the needs of
the veterans. I challenge the Republican members of the House Committee
on Veterans' Affairs to vote no on this budget. They said in the
committee that this number was insufficient. I want them to stand up
for what they said to the veterans in committee and vote no on this
budget.
I might add that this budget took away a great victory in the Senate
for our veterans, something called concurrent receipt where a veteran
who had a pension and disability payments could get both. Now they have
an offset, and this budget keeps that offset. It is a disgrace to the
veterans of this Nation.
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 2 minutes to the
distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), a new Member that we
welcome.
Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the rule, and I thank the
distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) and the Committee on
Rules for their excellent work.
The passage of the budget today in the House is a victory for all
Americans who, after 4 months of hard work, have finally earned enough
to pay their taxes this year. It is written: If one owes debts, pay
debts. If honor, then honor. If respect, then respect. This budget pays
our debts, honors our veterans, and respects the right of hard-working
Americans to keep more of their own money.
Mr. Speaker, under the current system, taxpayers today send a higher
percentage of their income to Washington than any time since World War
II. I am pleased that, for the first time since 1981, this Congress
will provide substantial tax rate reductions for all American families
that pay taxes.
Washington is sending America a pro-growth message that helps
families, small businesses, and family farms. It is refreshing, Mr.
Speaker, that Congress is recognizing that the wealth of this Nation
and the size of our surplus is not our creation but a product of the
work of every American. This budget is an extraordinary step in the
right direction. The best news of all is that this is only the
beginning, Mr. Speaker.
In a little over 100 days with a Republican President in Congress, we
have prepared a budget that provides $1.35 trillion in tax cuts, repays
historic levels of public debt, strengthens Social Security and
Medicare, and bolsters our national defense. Most important of all, we
have shown fiscal discipline by reining in the growth of our Federal
Government and spending.
I would like to thank the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) for
all he has done to build this budget. I urge my colleagues to support
this rule.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time remains
on each side?
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The gentlewoman from New
York (Ms. Slaughter) has 9\1/2\ minutes remaining. The gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Goss) has 7\1/2\ minutes remaining.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Turner).
Mr. TURNER. Mr. Speaker, this budget fails to account for the fact it
will return us to deficit spending and it will spend money already
committed to Social Security and Medicare. That is why the fiscally
conservative Blue Dog Coalition voted yesterday to oppose this budget.
Democrats want the largest tax cut we can afford; but, frankly, this
budget is unrealistic. It fails to provide for defense spending that we
support and that the President will propose. It fails to protect Social
Security and Medicare by putting us on a course to raid both programs.
It turns our back on our commitment to lockbox Social Security and
Medicare surpluses. It fails to fund education even at the lower level
the President proposed much less the higher level the Senate agreed
upon.
This budget fails to account for the slowing economy and the
resulting loss of revenue. It denies America's families and our
children the best tax cut we could give them and that is paying off our
national debt which would not only lower interest payments in the
Federal budget, but would lower interest payments for every American
family.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Arkansas (Mr. Berry).
Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, there is a great country music song by Merle
Haggard called Rainbow Stew. It says: ``When the President goes through
the White House door and does what he says he will do, we will all be
drinking that free Bubble Up and eating that rainbow stew.''
This budget is rainbow stew. Now, to make rainbow stew, the recipe
calls first for a rainbow. That is what we have got with this budget is
a rainbow.
In the last campaign, the President and the Republicans promised
prescription drugs for our seniors. Medicare and Social Security will
be protected. We are going to pay off the debt. We are going to take
care of education, national defense, agriculture. The list goes on and
on.
This is a buckeye. Folklore in Arkansas tells us about if one carries
this buckeye. It is a relatively worthless little nut that grows on a
bush. I do not know that humans ate it and not too sure that any
animals eat it. But I can tell my colleagues that one is supposed to
carry that in one's pocket and rub it, and it will bring one good luck
and take care of rheumatism. That is what the prescription drug plan by
the Republicans are going to amount to.
I urge my colleagues to realize what a ridiculous document this
budget is.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair advises the gentleman from
Arkansas (Mr. Berry) that the buckeye grows on a tree, not a bush.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Indiana (Mr. Hill).
(Mr. HILL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I, like many of my colleagues, would like to
support this budget, because who would not want a tax cut along the
lines that had been proposed. It is politically popular to support the
tax cut, and I would like to do it. I believe that we can offer some
kind of tax cut, but this is not realistic. This is something that
cannot be done.
I know the American people must be quite confused as to who is right
and who is wrong. But let me pull out this chart. Maybe this will clear
it up. This is from the President's budget proposal that outlines what
the budget surpluses are going to be over the next 10 years.
As my colleagues can see, this tax cut is predicated upon the fact
that these surpluses are going to materialize. I do not know of any
American family that would go out and buy a new car or a new house
based upon income that he was told that he was going to receive for the
next 10 years. No common sense person would do this. But, yet, that is
what we are about to do in the Congress of the United States, Mr.
Speaker.
[[Page H2033]]
I think if my colleagues know this fact, they have to conclude that
this is a bad idea and that we ought to vote against it.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Sandlin).
Mr. SANDLIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me
this time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose this budget conference report. As
we near the end of the school year, we expect our children to put forth
their best effort in school and pass the final exams. The American
people have the same expectation of this Congress. As we put forth our
finishing touches on the budget agreement, they expect us to pass.
Unfortunately, this report earns a failing grade.
I hoped the conference would reach an agreement that I could support.
Unfortunately, there was no conference. There was no bipartisanship.
The alleged bipartisanship was nothing more than a sham. Not everyone
was included. Had there been a true bipartisan effort, we would have
met our obligation to our most vulnerable citizens and earned a passing
grade from the American public.
We have an obligation to our children. In this country, that
obligation requires us to provide them with the best public education
that is possible. But this conference report fails to meet that
obligation. It does not increase education spending. It does not
increase investment in education to our children. In fact, it provides
$21 billion less than President Bush requested for education spending.
We have an obligation to our parents for prescription drugs. This
conference report does not provide funds for a prescription drug
benefits. In fact, it raids the Medicare fund to pay for money already
set aside. That is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this report.
{time} 1130
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Doggett).
Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, every aspect of this budget and the way
that it has been crafted and presented to this House indicate that the
same folks who ran this House during the Gingrich years, their same
spirit has dominated every aspect; they are still calling all the
shots. Bipartisanship has been all pretense and no reality.
Cutting our commitment to educational opportunities for our children,
even to a level lower than the limited commitment that President Bush
recommended, represents that mean-spirited approach and a true
shortchanging of our Nation's future. The full implementation of this
budget will mean that we will consume entirely the Medicare Trust Fund
and we will deplete significantly the Social Security Trust Fund,
returning to a path of using Social Security contributions to pay for
non-Social Security purposes, and that is wrong.
If my colleagues do not understand anything else about this budget,
remember that those two pages that were supposedly lost in the middle
of the night last week did two things: for education, monies that had
been added with the support of even a Republican Member, Mr. Jeffords,
they were cut. Educational opportunities were cut in order, in those
same two pages, to have massive tax cuts for those at the top of the
economic ladder.
A budget is supposed to be a statement of our national priorities.
And this irresponsible budget invades the security of our seniors and
those who will be retiring in the future; this budget rejects
opportunities for our children. All of this results from an unrealistic
tax cut to shower benefits on those at the top of the economic ladder.
Vote no!
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the ranking member of the
Committee on the Budget.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The gentleman from South
Carolina (Mr. Spratt) is recognized for 4 minutes.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this
time.
Mr. Speaker, I have been in this House for more than 18 years, and in
those 18 years I have served on a lot of conference committees; but I
have never been so completely excluded, so totally shut out as in this
particular conference. I hope at the end of it all, my colleagues on
the other side will allow us at least one thing, and not call this
bipartisan. It is by no stretch of the imagination bipartisan. It is
the very opposite. And it does not augur well for bipartisanship in the
House for the future.
But bad as the process has been, the substance is even worse. Because
what is missing from this budget are not two pages, what is missing are
real numbers. And let me give the most salient example: the largest
account in the discretionary budget, national defense. We pass 13
appropriation bills. The defense bill is as big as all 12 others put
together. In this budget there is a number for defense of $325 billion.
That is a place-holder number. That is not a real number.
Now, how do we know that? Number one, we know Mr. Rumsfeld is busy at
work doing a top-to-bottom review of defense. And once he has finished
that review, he is going to send us a huge plus-up in the defense
budget. Number two, read the text of this resolution and my colleagues
will find that we give unprecedented unilateral authority to the
chairman of this committee to increase the allocation for defense by as
much as nearly $400 billion over the next 10 years. None of us has a
say in it. He can add that to the budget.
Let us just make that adjustment, as this chart does, to the reality
of this budget, the defense budget we all know that is coming. Let us
assume it is $20 billion to $25 billion initially and builds up over
time. Let us also add back to the budget what the gentleman from Iowa
(Mr. Nussle) was wise enough and right enough to put in it to start
with, some allocation for emergencies we know based on experience are
going to happen.
When we add those two lines, as we can see from this chart, every
year for the next 5 or 6 years the amount of money we need for
additional defense spending and the amount of money we need for
emergencies exceeds the contingency fund that is left over after we do
the puts and takes that are included in this conference agreement.
Now, what does that mean? Let us take education. This budget zeros
out education. The Senate had three votes. They added $300 billion to
defense and passed a resolution with that plus-up in it. This budget
was then taken behind closed doors in a conference and all of the money
for education was excluded; not only the Senate's added to education
but also the President's request of $21.4 billion for education. All we
provide for education is inflation.
Now, some may say on the other side that education's day will come.
We have a 302(b) allocation process; we will have another occasion when
we can plus up for education. Not after we adjust for defense and
emergencies. There is nothing left over.
So, Mr. Speaker, that is why I say this is the substance, this is the
reality, and this is why we should vote against this rule on grounds of
process and substance. Vote against this budget.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would advise the gentlewoman from
New York (Ms. Slaughter) she still has 1 minute left, should she choose
to use it.
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I advise my colleague from New York that it
would be my intention to yield at this time a few minutes to the
distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Budget and then go to
the rotation for her to close and for me to close.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Nussle), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Budget.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time; and I also thank the gentleman for his leadership, for having to
come out here on the floor a number of times over the last few days in
order to manage us through this final budget vote. I appreciate his
patience and the patience of the Committee on Rules and also his
leadership. I also appreciate the chance to speak on this.
I would like to respond briefly to my friend and someone I consider a
partner on the Committee on the Budget, the gentleman from South
Carolina (Mr. Spratt). Bipartisanship is his concern
[[Page H2034]]
and it is my concern. However, we may differ slightly on what
bipartisanship means. If bipartisanship means we have to agree on
everything all of the time, that is a goal we probably cannot achieve.
This is a country of 260 million-plus people. We are from rural
areas, urban areas. We represent districts that have people that farm,
that work in factories, that have kids, that are seniors; some who are
highly educated, some that maybe do not have as much education. We have
many minorities: black, white, Hispanic. What a diverse Nation. How
could we possibly all of the time agree on every single thing?
That is not what the founders wanted us to do. They wanted us to come
into this Chamber and have a debate. They wanted us to come into this
Chamber and send their representatives here to debate the grand issues
of the day, and we have a number of them; and we are not going to agree
on every single one. But what we try and do is we offer both sides, if
in fact there are sides, the opportunity to present their plans.
We did that. And what ``we'' means now, of course, is that the
Republicans control the House. We, at least under somebody's
definition, control the Senate, the other body, excuse me, and we
control the White House. And so we have an opportunity to present our
vision for the country. The loyal opposition has the opportunity to
present their plan; and we did so this year, respectfully, in a
bipartisan way. But we did not come to agreement.
And so at some point in time we have to have a debate, and we have to
have a vote on which vision to accept. Now, because we do not agree
does not mean that we are being partisan. In fact, the other side has a
number of good ideas within their plan, ideas that they have worked on
for many years. But I must say that they are not shared even by the
majority of the Democrat caucus.
Let me just give an example of what we do not agree on with the last
plan that was presented by President Clinton. In his last year, just as
an example, during these next 10 years, compared to our big major tax
decrease that everybody is out here lambasting today, and that is fine,
that is where the other side is coming from, my colleagues do not
believe we ought to cut taxes, but let us compare that to the other
plan. President Clinton's last budget had $237 billion of tax
increases. Now, I am sorry we do not agree.
I am not going to be partisan about that. The opposition party can
fairly present their side of it. Now they have moved to the other side
of the coin. They are saying now we ought to have tax decreases, not as
much as the Republicans want; but at least they have moved in that
direction, from tax increases to tax decreases.
But just because we still do not agree does not mean that it has to
be partisan. We can have a fair debate. It does not have to be
personal. I would say by and large it has not been personal; that we
have not heard some of the rancorous debate where people have come out
here accusing people of throwing children in the street that we heard
maybe 3, 4 years ago. I would hope that continues. But it does not mean
that we are not being bipartisan because we do not agree. It is fair in
this country to present plans and to allow for the debate.
So let me just briefly go through what it is that we are presenting
here today as a result of this rule. I believe that we have a plan that
meets the priorities of this country. Let me just run through a few of
them.
This is the fifth balanced budget in a row. This is something we
believe very strongly in, that our budgets should be balanced, that
they should be responsible. And there is still money left over after we
balance that budget. We have $2.4 trillion of debt reduction over the
next 10 years, the largest decrease of our national indebtedness that
we have had in our country's history over this same period. And we
still have resources left over. We are saving the entire Social
Security Trust Fund. Only since 1999 has that been a bipartisan
agreement here in this House. There is still money left over. The
entire Medicare surplus is set aside for modernization and a
prescription drug benefit, and there is still tax surpluses left over.
We are budgeting for our priorities at 4 percent, and there is still
money left over to provide $1.35 trillion worth of tax relief for the
American people. There is still money left over.
There are still resources left over after we have balanced the
budget, provided the most debt relief in history, set aside Social
Security, set aside Medicare for modernization, provided for America's
priorities at a 4 percent growth in spending, and provided for tax
relief. And, believe it or not, there is still resources left over to
provide for contingencies in the future.
Now, my colleagues may not agree with that budget. I invite them to
vote against it if they do not. But just because they are voting
against it, I will not call them partisan. I will suggest that they
have a different view of America and our future. That is not partisan;
that is what it means for them to be in the opposition.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for closing.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, let me quickly respond to my friend, the
gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), that if he wants an example of model
bipartisanship, 1997 is a good year to refer to. That year the White
House was controlled by Democrats, the Congress was controlled by
Republicans, and we sat down and had a process that lasted several
months and then came up with something called the Balanced Budget
Agreement of 1997. I think what we learned from that experience is that
regardless of the outcome, just putting it through the process, where
everybody participates, develops a better product.
The gentleman does not have to go back to Mr. Clinton's proposals. We
did not bring his budget to the floor. He is no longer President. We
had a budget in the well of the House just a few weeks ago which called
for an allocation of a third of the surplus to tax cuts. We were
supporting that. We came forth with the idea in our resolution for a
tax stimulus this year and next year using the surplus we know we have
in hand. That has come out in this final product.
The other side could have had the same sort of result if we had had a
real give and take. We could have had a real free market of ideas. We
would not have let our colleagues get away with coming to the floor
with nothing for education in their budget. We would have insisted the
defense number be realistically represented in this budget. I think we
would have had a better budget and we might have had an opportunity,
one of those rare opportunities, for a bipartisan budget for the next
10 years.
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to make
some closing remarks.
I think this has been actually a very good warm-up for the next
debate that is coming on this. Sure, we have heard some of the scare
stories and we have heard some of the rhetorical questions we have
expected. And I think that we are going to continue to hear those
because rhetorical questions perpetuate shibboleths and shibboleths are
what you do when you do not have anything else to do.
I am sorry that there is not a feeling that this has not been a
carefully thought-out effort. I believe it has, and I think it has gone
through conference and had a great deal of discussion not only in the
Congress of the United States but in the executive branch and across
America. And I certainly have found that in my district when I have
gone home.
I know we have done scare tactics before, and I guess some people
think scare tactics are an excuse not to vote for tax relief; and that
is okay if you really do not believe in tax relief. I remember very
well that scare tactics do not last very long. I remember experiencing
them some years ago; that somehow our party was going to stop school
lunches and then we were going to stop Meals-on-Wheels for elderly. And
all that did was cause anxiety for a lot of Americans, and it was never
true. Now I guess we are going to have school lunches that are going to
have arsenic and salmonella in them, listening to some of the latest
opposition party ads about what we are doing.
I do not think the falling-sky scenario does very well for America or
is positive in getting the program or the business of government done.
I think even The Washington Post editorialized a few years ago that
Mediscare was a tactic that was not worthy of the honorable Democratic
Party when we were trying very hard to find ways to
[[Page H2035]]
resolve the trust fund issues, which in fact we did on a bipartisan
basis, just like we found a way to protect Social Security. And I would
say that that was under a Republican-led Congress, but it was certainly
at a time when there was a Democrat in the White House.
So I think when we do work together, we come out with a pretty good
product. And I think in this case we have a pretty good product. I do
not think we ignore our veterans, and I do not think we ignore any
Americans. This is an honest effort, and I urge everybody's support for
the rule so we can continue this debate.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the
previous question on the resolution.
The previous question was ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the resolution.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a
quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not
present.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 218,
nays 208, not voting 5, as follows:
[Roll No. 103]
YEAS--218
Aderholt
Akin
Armey
Bachus
Baker
Ballenger
Barr
Bartlett
Barton
Bass
Bereuter
Biggert
Bilirakis
Blunt
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bono
Brady (TX)
Brown (SC)
Bryant
Burr
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Cannon
Cantor
Capito
Castle
Chabot
Chambliss
Coble
Collins
Combest
Cooksey
Cox
Crane
Crenshaw
Culberson
Cunningham
Davis, Jo Ann
Davis, Tom
Deal
DeLay
DeMint
Diaz-Balart
Doolittle
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Ehlers
Ehrlich
Emerson
English
Everett
Ferguson
Flake
Fletcher
Foley
Fossella
Frelinghuysen
Gallegly
Ganske
Gekas
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gilman
Goode
Goodlatte
Goss
Graham
Granger
Graves
Green (WI)
Greenwood
Grucci
Gutknecht
Hansen
Hart
Hastings (WA)
Hayes
Hayworth
Hefley
Herger
Hilleary
Hobson
Hoekstra
Horn
Hostettler
Houghton
Hulshof
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Isakson
Issa
Istook
Jenkins
Johnson (CT)
Johnson (IL)
Johnson, Sam
Jones (NC)
Keller
Kelly
Kennedy (MN)
Kerns
King (NY)
Kingston
Kirk
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaHood
Largent
Latham
LaTourette
Leach
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Linder
LoBiondo
Lucas (OK)
Manzullo
McCrery
McHugh
McInnis
McKeon
Mica
Miller (FL)
Miller, Gary
Moran (KS)
Morella
Myrick
Nethercutt
Ney
Northup
Norwood
Nussle
Osborne
Ose
Otter
Oxley
Paul
Pence
Peterson (PA)
Petri
Pickering
Pitts
Platts
Pombo
Portman
Pryce (OH)
Putnam
Quinn
Radanovich
Ramstad
Regula
Rehberg
Reynolds
Riley
Rogers (KY)
Rogers (MI)
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Roukema
Royce
Ryan (WI)
Ryun (KS)
Saxton
Scarborough
Schaffer
Schrock
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shadegg
Shaw
Shays
Sherwood
Shimkus
Simmons
Simpson
Skeen
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Souder
Spence
Stearns
Sununu
Sweeney
Tancredo
Tauzin
Taylor (NC)
Terry
Thomas
Thornberry
Thune
Tiahrt
Tiberi
Toomey
Traficant
Upton
Vitter
Walden
Walsh
Wamp
Watkins
Watts (OK)
Weldon (FL)
Weller
Whitfield
Wicker
Wilson
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
NAYS--208
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allen
Andrews
Baca
Baird
Baldacci
Baldwin
Barcia
Barrett
Becerra
Bentsen
Berkley
Berman
Berry
Bishop
Blagojevich
Blumenauer
Bonior
Borski
Boswell
Boucher
Boyd
Brady (PA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Capps
Capuano
Cardin
Carson (IN)
Carson (OK)
Clay
Clayton
Clement
Clyburn
Condit
Conyers
Costello
Coyne
Cramer
Crowley
Cummings
Davis (CA)
Davis (FL)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Deutsch
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Dooley
Doyle
Edwards
Engel
Eshoo
Etheridge
Evans
Farr
Fattah
Filner
Ford
Frank
Frost
Gephardt
Gonzalez
Gordon
Green (TX)
Gutierrez
Hall (OH)
Hall (TX)
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Hill
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Hoeffel
Holden
Holt
Honda
Hooley
Hoyer
Inslee
Israel
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
John
Johnson, E. B.
Jones (OH)
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kennedy (RI)
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kind (WI)
Kleczka
Kucinich
LaFalce
Lampson
Langevin
Lantos
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Lee
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Lofgren
Lowey
Lucas (KY)
Luther
Maloney (CT)
Maloney (NY)
Markey
Mascara
Matheson
Matsui
McCarthy (MO)
McCarthy (NY)
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
McIntyre
McKinney
McNulty
Meehan
Meek (FL)
Meeks (NY)
Menendez
Millender-McDonald
Miller, George
Mink
Moakley
Mollohan
Moore
Moran (VA)
Murtha
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Owens
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor
Payne
Pelosi
Peterson (MN)
Phelps
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Reyes
Rodriguez
Roemer
Ross
Rothman
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanchez
Sanders
Sandlin
Sawyer
Schakowsky
Schiff
Scott
Serrano
Sherman
Shows
Skelton
Slaughter
Smith (WA)
Snyder
Solis
Spratt
Stark
Stenholm
Strickland
Stupak
Tanner
Tauscher
Taylor (MS)
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Thurman
Tierney
Towns
Turner
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Velazquez
Visclosky
Waters
Watt (NC)
Waxman
Weiner
Wexler
Woolsey
Wu
Wynn
NOT VOTING--5
Cubin
Pomeroy
Rivers
Stump
Weldon (PA)
{time} 1211
Messrs. INSLEE, MEEHAN, and DEUTSCH changed their vote from ``yea''
to ``nay.''
So the resolution was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
Stated for:
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 103, I was outside the
Electronic Paging Zone. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 136, I call up
the conference report on the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 83)
establishing the congressional budget for the United States Government
for fiscal year 2002, revising the congressional budget for the United
States Government for fiscal year 2001, and setting forth appropriate
budgetary levels for each of fiscal years 2003 through 2011.
The Clerk read the title of the concurrent resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). Pursuant to House
Resolution 136, the conference report is considered as having been
read.
(For conference report and statement, see proceedings of the House of
May 8, 2001, at page H1957.)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) and the
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) each will control 30
minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle).
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
New Hampshire (Mr. Sununu), the distinguished vice chairman of the
Committee on the Budget.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by commending the members of
the Committee on the Budget, the conferees, for putting together what I
think is a very strong budget proposal, the most realistic and
certainly the most enforceable budget resolution that we have had come
through this body since I have been a Member of Congress. It does not
include everything that every Member of the House would like to see in
a budget resolution, but I think it reflects real balance and a real
sense of priorities.
We will balance the budget with this resolution for the fourth year
in a row. That is a historic achievement in and of itself. And we are
doing it without using any of the Social Security surplus. Members on
the minority side can find fault with just about any document that
comes to the floor, but let us step back and at least recognize that we
are doing the right thing for the American people by balancing the
budget, by setting aside funds for Social Security, and by paying down
debt.
{time} 1215
Balancing the budget for 4 consecutive years, that is something this
House should be very proud of.
[[Page H2036]]
We control the growth in government spending. We increase
discretionary spending by about 4 percent. There are many that would
like to see government explode, 8, 10, 12 percent growth in spending.
That is not sustainable. It would be nice to be able to fund every
program, to double the funding for every program we have at the Federal
level, and go home and tell the American people we are spending money
on good deeds; but the fact is that is not sustainable.
It is not fiscally responsible and this body has refused to do it.
Four percent growth, that is about what the average household budget
will grow this year.
We have cut taxes. It is a compromise. The President proposed a $1.6
trillion tax cut. We have compromised at a little bit more than $1.3
trillion. It is realistic to expect that after we have increased the
size of government, after we have set aside for Social Security and
balanced the budget, after we have funded important priorities, we give
what is left over back to the American taxpayer that sent it here in
the first place.
We have balanced the budget, controlled the growth in government
spending, cut taxes to make the Tax Code more fair, and we have funded
the right priorities: an 11 percent increase for education; more
funding for men and women in uniform; increased funding for basic
scientific research.
This reflects a compromise, sure, but it also reflects a budget that
we should all be proud of that sets the right priorities for the
country and continues the process of retiring debt and keeping our
economy strong.
If one wants to explode the size of government, this is not for them.
If one is opposed to tax relief, this resolution is not for them. But
if one wants to set the right priorities, lower taxes and keep our
country going in the right direction, I ask my colleagues to support
the resolution.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas
(Mr. Combest), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on
Agriculture.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Nussle) for yielding the time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the conference report to the
fiscal year 2002 budget resolution.
When I became chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, I pledged
that Congress would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with America's farmers
and ranchers, to see them through tough times and to strengthen U.S.
farm policy. This conference report is the cornerstone of that
commitment.
I thank President Bush and the House and Senate leadership for their
commitment to U.S. farmers and ranchers. Mr. Speaker, I especially
thank the chairman of the Committee on the Budget. The gentleman from
Iowa (Mr. Nussle) knows what our farmers and ranchers are up against so
he rolled up his sleeves and he did something about it. The fruit of
that labor is what we consider today, and its timing is crucial.
Conditions in farm country are serious. Net cash income over the last
3 years has fallen in real terms to its lowest point since the Great
Depression. The magnitude of this problem reaches beyond farms,
ranches, and rural America. It is a national problem.
The ad hoc help Congress has provided each year since 1998 has
helped, but it is only a year at a time. A long-term farm policy is
what this country needs. The conference report gives the Committee on
Agriculture the tools to make it happen and, as chairman of that
committee, we will get it done.
I urge my colleagues to support this report.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the minority leader.
(Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I rise to vote and speak against this
conference report and ask Members on both sides of the aisles to do the
same thing. This is not a good budget for America.
We did not get to vote the other night because we did not have two
pages, but now that we have seen all of the pages, the problem was not
the lack of the right pages. The problem with this budget is that it
does not have the right numbers. It does not fulfill the priorities of
the American people. It is a budget that is deficient in terms of
fiscal responsibility and in terms of the right priorities that I think
people have.
In many ways, this budget is a definition of what we want the country
to be in the next 10 years. So it is a momentous decision that we are
making.
I believe this is a day that we give up on fiscal responsibility. I
thoroughly believe that if this budget is followed, that in the days
ahead we will return to deficits.
First of all, there is no cushion. The cushion that looks like is
here is not here, and when the tax cuts go up, as they inevitably will,
when other tax cuts that are not contemplated in this budget are
actually passed, the deficits will start. We will invade Social
Security and Medicare, which we said we did not want to do.
We have had innumerable votes here on lockboxes, but I predict that
if this budget is passed we will be into Social Security and Medicare.
This is the day that we return to high deficits and high interest
rates. Why in the world would we want to do that? For 20 years in this
country all we ever talked about was deficits and what deficits meant
to our ability to fund anything that people wanted to fund; what it did
to high interest rates; what it did to high inflation. Now, with this
budget, I believe we are back into deficits and back into invading
Social Security and Medicare.
This is the day that we give huge tax cuts to the wealthiest special
interests in the country, and we cannot seem to figure out how to get a
decent tax cut to the middle-income Americans who really need it.
Again, half of the tax cuts contemplated here go to the top wage
earners in our country, and there is not enough for the hardworking
families that really need tax relief.
This is a budget that turns its back on education. This is probably
the most remarkable trade-off in this budget. The President sent a
budget that asked for $21 billion over 10 years above inflation for
education programs. The budget that the Democrats here on the House had
asked for was $150 billion over 10 years above inflation for education.
In the Senate, in a bipartisan way, they added $300 billion above
inflation for education, for after-school and pre-school; give us more
teachers, repair the school buildings, all the things that Americans
are asking for across the country to improve public education. Yet,
this budget takes out every cent of the increases that the President
asked for or we asked for or the Senate asked for. We are at a flatline
budget for education if this budget is voted for.
How in the world do we explain to anyone what we have done on
education? We are right back to where we started, after a long trip of
public relations saying to people we want to help education, and now we
are not doing that.
Then I think if this budget is passed, there will not be a Medicare
prescription drug program. In fact, I do not think there will be a
prescription drug program of any reasonable kind that will affect the
people in this country. When I go home now on weekends, people come up
to me and say, ``Hey, where is the prescription drug program?''
Everybody had ads in the campaign, Republicans and Democrats alike. We
all said we wanted a prescription drug program. I defy anyone to find
that program in this budget.
Why do I say that? I say that because I think the budget tries to get
to $300 billion over 10 years for a prescription drug program. The
problem with that is it spends the Medicare surplus. It is really
taking the money out of the Medicare surplus to give it to prescription
drugs. I do not think we are going to do that. I do not think we are
going to have a prescription drug program if this budget is our budget.
I did not even get to low-income energy assistance, COPS on the beat,
conservation and renewable programs for energy. If one goes out in
America today, all anybody can talk about is $3 gasoline and not having
enough electricity. If one goes out on the West Coast, they are having
brownouts and blackouts.
People are focused on energy and there is nothing in this budget to
deal with the energy issue, which is on the lips of every American
today.
[[Page H2037]]
Let me sum up by saying just one thing. This budget is a farce and it
is a fraud. At the end, America deserves better than that. We can do
better than that. I would pray we could send this budget back to the
committee. Let us have a real bipartisan process where ideas from both
sides are incorporated into a final product. Let us give America a
budget that is worthy of this great country.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond.
Mr. Speaker, the legacy of the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt)
when he was the majority leader is as follows: tax increases,
underfunding special education, absolutely no energy policy for this
country, raids on the Social Security Trust Fund, and no prescription
drug policy. So to come to the floor here today and to call this a
fraud, when for years as the majority leader he did nothing to promote
the policies he now comes to the floor and lambastes, is an atrocity.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished gentleman
from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht).
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Nussle) for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, after listening to the last two exchanges, I am reminded
of what John Adams told us over two hundred years ago: Facts are
stubborn things. I think the more the American families learn about the
facts of this budget, I think the more they are going to like it.
Let us look at what it really does. This is a budget that works for
every family. The maximum debt elimination; we are going to pay off the
redeemable publicly held debt over the next 10 years; tax relief for
everybody who pays taxes; improved education for our children, an 11.5
percent increase. Some of us think maybe that is a little too much. A
stronger national defense; health care reform that modernizes Medicare.
Is it not about time?
We set aside $300 billion to start a prescription drug plan for those
people who fall through the cracks.
Finally, we are going to save Social Security not only for today but
for the future.
Our friends on the left are going to say, well, this is
irresponsible. Well, Mr. Speaker, this was said already today, that
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the average family budget
will go up at a rate of about 4.2 percent.
This budget increases the Federal budget by less than that number. I
think that is great news for American families.
Some people say we cannot afford this tax relief. Well, Mr. Speaker,
if we look at the economy today, we look at energy prices today, I say
we cannot afford not to give tax cuts to the American people.
Let me just share a couple of numbers. Last year, when the economy
was growing at 5.5 percent during the first quarter, we generated a
surplus of $40 billion. This year, with the economy slowing to about a
1 percent growth rate, we generated a surplus of $74 billion. Mr.
Speaker, we cannot not afford to give tax cuts this year.
I would also suggest that the numbers we are using are incredibly
conservative. In fact, I asked Mr. Daniels of the Budget Office, and
these are the words: ``So if revenue growth just equals the 40-year
average, we will actually have revenues in excess of $2 trillion more
than we are currently using in your budget projections, is that
correct?''
His answer was, ``Yes, sir, that is correct.''
We can afford this budget. It makes common sense. It is good for
American families. It is good for our future.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.
Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman that we have never said we
should not have tax cuts. We said when we brought our budget resolution
to the floor, unlike theirs, that we should have some this year, take
the whole surplus this year and rebate it to the American public, and
we set aside $800 billion to $900 billion for additional tax relief.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Stenholm).
(Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the budget today,
but with a sense of disappointment. I am disappointed because I do
recognize the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) made an outreach, but
his leadership chose not to abide by it.
In the spirit of compromise, we in the Blue Dogs were prepared to
support a tax cut higher than the budget we proposed, providing there
was a strong enforceable commitment to debt reduction. This budget we
vote on today does nothing for debt reduction, and I defy anyone to
show how it does.
This resolution we vote on today literally bets the ranch that the
surpluses will continue to grow. If they do not grow, or if they are
off just a little bit, we will be forced to dip into the Medicare Trust
Fund before we even start dealing with increases for defense or other
needs the resolution does not address.
{time} 1230
This resolution sets an unrealistic spending level. Based on the
history of the majority over the last 6 years, I predict we will have
another train wreck. But that is up to the majority.
I rise in the strongest opposition to this budget resolution today
because it does not accommodate Social Security reform. I sent a letter
to our President commending him for the Social Security Commission. I
have worked for the last 5 years with the gentleman from Arizona (Mr.
Kolbe) on the other side and others in a bipartisan way in setting the
groundwork for Social Security reform. This resolution provides zero
funding for Social Security reform.
If I need one reason to strongly oppose this and why I am so proud of
the Blue Dog Democrats for voting to oppose it, as it takes a two-
thirds vote for us to oppose anything, to take any position, we took
that position, and I am so proud of our Blue Dogs because we are still
standing for the same principles of debt reduction, saving Social
Security and Medicare first, providing for the needed spending in the
area of defense, health care, education, our veterans. I agree on the
agriculture numbers, they are much better.
This is a borrow-and-spend resolution. It borrows from our children
and grandchildren in order to pay the political needs of today. I
suggest you select carefully your words, my friends on the majority,
because tomorrow you will either enjoy them, or you will eat them.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Smith), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on
Veterans' Affairs.
(Mr. SMITH of New Jersey asked and was given permission to revise and
extend his remarks.)
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I would like to engage in a
colloquy with the distinguished Chair. I would like to commend the
chairman and commend him for his determined advocacy on behalf of our
Nation's veterans.
As the chairman knows, the House-passed budget resolution included a
significant increase compared to 2001 levels in total spending for
veterans' benefits and services. The total increase for this function
was $5.6 billion over the fiscal year 2001 budget authority level,
providing a total of $52.3 billion for fiscal 2002. It is my
understanding that the conferees accepted the House-passed mandatory
spending level for function 700, a total of $28 billion, which assumes
a phased-in increase in the Montgomery GI Bill and other benefit
improvements contained in H.R. 801.
Is that the chairman of the Committee on the Budget's understanding
as well?
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, before I respond, let me thank the gentleman
for his leadership. There is no one in this House that stands ahead of
the chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs when it comes to
advocating for our Nation's veterans.
In response to the chairman's questions, yes, the conference report
reflects the House levels for mandatory spending, and it also includes
the House proposals for increases above current law levels.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, let me
[[Page H2038]]
just ask, it is my further understanding that the conferees agree to an
overall level of discretionary spending that would allow veterans'
discretionary spending to go as high as $26.2 billion in budget
authority for fiscal years 2002, a level consistent with the Senate
approved level. This level would accommodate major increases in
spending for VA health care and for claims processing and could be as
much as $3.6 billion above 2001. In any event, the increase would be no
lower than the House-passed $1.7 billion.
Is that the chairman of the Committee on the Budget's understanding?
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, again,
the answer is correct. The increase was not explicitly reflected in the
budget function for veterans because the discretionary increases in the
conference report were distributed across all budget functions. As the
distinguished chairman knows, it is the Committee on Appropriations
that makes the final determination of exactly how those resources are
distributed, and the gentleman and I will be visiting the Committee on
Appropriations to make sure that they hold to the highest possible
level for our veterans.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I want to
thank the chairman for those clarifications. I congratulate the
chairman on an outstanding budget.
Mr. SPRATT. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee,
Mr. Tanner.
(Mr. TANNER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. TANNER. Mr. Speaker, I want to rise in a sense of disappointment
also. I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle). It is too
bad his leadership has chosen the route it has chosen today, because
there were some of us that wanted to reach out, do a bipartisan budget
for this country that, albeit the tax number was a little higher than
we thought and there was not enough debt retirement as the Blue Dogs
thought, but the real kicker in all of this is the House leadership has
not only taken us out of play, they have taken their own Members out of
play. It does not matter what the House does.
Do you know if you read the budget document, the House will not even
agree to reconcile to the same number that their White House agreed to
with the Senate. I have never seen a conference report like that
before. But if you read it, it is there. The intransigence of this
House leadership is destroying the House of Representatives when it
comes to public decisions made for and on behalf of this country.
Let me say one other thing. When I came here 12 years ago, all I
heard was, John, do something, please, about the horrendous debt of
this nation that we are passing on to our children, a 13.5 percent
mortgage on this country.
Every dime of debt reduction that they talk about comes from the
Social Security surplus money. You know what that is like? That is like
you or I paying off our Visa charge with a MasterCard. It alone does
nothing to reduce the obligation that the next generation has to pay
and has to come up with, and that is plain and simply morally,
generationally bankrupt.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Illinois (Mr. Kirk), a distinguished member of the Committee on the
Budget.
Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank the service of my
chairman, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), and also my ranking
minority member, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the
soul of discretion in this debate. But I do want to correct the record.
There were two pages missing in this budget. They are now here. But
what else is missing from this budget? Last year President Clinton
proposed a $237 million increase in taxes between 2000 and 2010. That
is missing from this budget. This year, leaders on the other side
proposed a one-third plan, calling for $740 billion in new spending,
with little details. That is missing from this budget. Last year
President Clinton proposed the creation of 84 new Federal programs and
the expansion of 162 others, and that, Mr. Chairman, is missing from
this budget. Their one-third plan would pay millions of dollars in
prepayment penalties from working taxpayers to the most wealthy
bondholders. That is missing from this budget.
So what is in this budget? What is in this budget is that we are on
track for doubling resources to the National Institutes of Health; what
is in this budget is the President's immediate Helping Hand
prescription drug plan with the flexibility to expand that plan; what
is in this budget is an 11 percent increase for education; and what is
in this budget are the 1999 reforms that we did for the budget that
protect Social Security.
So, for me, I rise in strong support of this budget. There are 1,000
reasons why you could argue against a budget from all sides, but this
is an historic agreement where we complete the Congress' action, and we
do it on time.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, in response to the gentleman, I would say what is
missing from this budget is any sense of priority that education is the
number one challenge facing our country. There is not an 11.4 percent
increase. That is what Mr. Bush claimed when he was offering $21.4
billion. That increase is not included in this budget. The Senate added
$300 billion. It is not there.
The only thing in this budget for education is inflation, the same
thing everything else gets. So the dominant priority here is not for
education, that is for sure.
Mr. Speaker, to back up what I have just said, I yield 5 minutes to
the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), to talk about education,
the missing piece in this budget.
Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, our budget reflects our values, and Democrats want to
provide tax relief. We also want to take care of other priorities, like
paying down the debt and strengthening Social Security and adding
prescription drugs to Medicare and making the investments we need in
education and research and the environment, safe communities,
affordable housing, military readiness. Quite simply, this Republican
budget falls short on all of those counts, but nowhere more than in
education.
We need to be reducing class size in this country and building and
modernizing schools and recruiting and training teachers and boosting
Title I aid for disadvantaged districts, closing the achievement gaps
between majority and minority students and increasing Pell Grants and
meeting our obligation to special education students and expanding Head
Start.
This budget falls short even of what the President asked for, and
that was already inadequate. For example, with this budget, President
Bush and the Republicans break their promise to increase the maximum
Pell Grant to $5,100. Candidate Bush promised to do that for freshmen.
Unfortunately, President Bush and the Republicans have fallen at least
$1.5 billion short of the amount needed to fulfill that promise.
The President's budget provides only enough funding to raise the
maximum award of $3,750 by a mere $150, far less than Pell Grant
increases in recent years, and the budget before us today does even
less than what the President proposed.
Mr. DAVIS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
Mr. DAVIS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it is terribly important that we
debate the facts here, and the fact which has been stated over and over
again, which has not been rebutted, is that the House is adopting today
a budget that is $21 billion less than what the President proposed for
education. What does that say about our priorities?
In my home State of Florida and in many growth States throughout the
country that leaves us high and dry in dealing with the growing problem
of school construction. We need that to reduce class size so we can
return control of the classroom back to our teachers.
We are left with having to raise property taxes or raise sales taxes
that are much too high in Florida and many other States. There is a
solution at hand if we will get our priorities straight. It is the
Johnson-Rangel bill that provides tax credits to school districts to
fix crumbling schools, to build new schools the right size the first
time, where we can provide Federal funding to fix that problem.
[[Page H2039]]
We are missing a golden opportunity. If we simply will return to
where the President was, at least $21 billion higher, we can pay down
the debt, we can have a tax cut, but we can get our priorities straight
and begin in Florida and other States to fix crumbling classrooms and
reduce class size.
Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank
my colleague for underscoring the need to get our kids out of these
trailers and into modern effective classrooms where they can learn and
where teachers can teach.
Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from New
Jersey.
Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and
pointing out that each day this debate goes on, education is losing
ground. We started off with a number that was not as good as the
President had proposed. Now it comes back from conference committee
with even less than that. So whether it is Pell Grants or school
modernization, we are just not keeping up.
An area that concerns me greatly is teacher recruitment. We need 2.2
million new teachers in the next 10 years just to stay even. Whatever
incentives we use to recruit those teachers, whether it is debt
forgiveness or other financial aid, it is not here. And we will pay.
Schools all across the country will pay.
Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, in my
State alone we are going to need 80,000 new teachers in the next 10
years. We do not know where those are coming from. The gentleman is
correct, this budget has no investment in recruiting and training and
improving the preparation of teachers.
Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, and for
the continuing professional development of existing teachers.
Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentlewoman from Oregon,
a great champion of special education.
Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding.
Mr. Speaker, one of the things you do in a budget is you set
priorities. That is what a budget is all about. One of the things you
do when you set priorities is you put money where you say your
priorities are. I mean, we do that in our home budgets; we need to do
it in this budget.
Again, this budget has been cut. It is even less than what the
President asked for. The President's budget was inadequate.
We have an opportunity at this time to fund special education. We
promised about 26 years ago to our schools and to our children that we
would provide up to 40 percent of the funding for special education. We
have not done very well. We have only provided 14.9 percent.
This is an opportunity to provide the funding we need for special
education, and, in doing that, we help every single child, every single
school district. But we need to make sure that our priorities are
funded, and this budget does not do that.
Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, is it
not true that our colleagues in the other body actually put additional
funding in the budget for special education, and now as this budget
comes back to us, those funds have been stripped out. Those funds are
gone. This is an obligation which our local districts feel very
acutely.
Mr. Speaker, without new resources, these crumbling classrooms cannot
be repaired, new schools cannot be built, teachers cannot be hired and
Pell Grants cannot be increased. We must do better. We must defeat this
budget.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond.
Mr. Speaker, if it was spending that we needed to solve education in
this country, the District of Columbia schools would be the best in the
Nation. This is not a county sale barn, where we are bidding on a prize
heifer. Spending more money on education is not the only thing we need
to do. I stipulate the fact that you will spend everything you want
here. That does not mean it is a responsible budget. We got to have
reform. That is what is in this budget.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr.
Collins), a distinguished member of the Committee on the Budget.
Mr. COLLINS. Mr. Speaker, the people of the State of Georgia strongly
believe that the Federal budget policies should be based on guidelines
of limited government, lower taxes, and increased local control of
local affairs.
{time} 1245
The budget resolution before us today closely follows those
guidelines.
First, this budget plan establishes a limit on the growth of Federal
spending that closely follows the rate of inflation. Second, we provide
real reduction in taxes for wage-earners. Third, the budget resolution
makes room for future consideration of reform bills such as education
reform that will focus on returning more control to the local level.
Mr. Speaker, why is tax reduction important? In developing a budget
plan, we must answer the question, what makes up the economy? It is not
the government. The Federal Government does not manufacture, it does
not have a product for sale, it is not and should never try to be the
engine that runs economic growth.
The economy is made up of people, workers, taxpayers. They are the
ones earning the wages and spending or investing portions of their
paycheck. Each time they do, they create economic activity. The more
they spend or invest, the more economic growth we have. In many ways
the budget debate is about cash flow, the cash flow of the government
and the cash flow of individuals and families.
The Federal Government has a cash flow which is funded by the
paychecks of working people. It creates its own income by collecting a
portion of all private sector earnings. Today, that collection level is
excessive. Over the next 10 years, the government will collect from
wage-earners over $3.1 trillion more in non-Social Security taxes than
it needs to fund the operation of government.
The budget resolution takes a responsible look at the Federal books
and recognizes the fact that it is time to slow down the collection of
the government cash flow and return those excess funds to the cash flow
of individuals and families. In the words of the President, the
taxpayers have overpaid their bill; and this budget resolution will
provide a refund on their collected earnings that they so well deserve.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Menendez).
(Mr. MENENDEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. Speaker, this is the people's House, not the
special interests' House, not the billionaires' House, not the oil
companies' House, but the people's House. The budget we pass tells the
people what this House stands for.
The problem is, this Republican budget tells them we want to return
to the days of budget-busting deficits and away from investing in our
future. This budget shortchanges the agency that keeps our air clean
and our water pure, while President Bush gives a free pass to oil and
gas companies who want to rob our public lands for private profits; and
it raids the Social Security and Medicare trust funds to pay for new
tax breaks for millionaires while denying many working families even a
dime in tax relief.
Budgets represent values. They tell the American people what we stand
for. This House must stand for more than just doling out tax breaks to
the wealthy. This budget does not represent the values of the American
people; it represents the values of a few special interests. It is a
sham, it is a disgrace, it is the real atrocity, and it should be
defeated.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Crenshaw), a distinguished member of the committee.
Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support this budget
resolution, and there are an awful lot of good reasons why we ought to
all support it. Again, it lets the taxpayers keep more of what they
earn; and it begins to pay down the national debt, a great legacy to
leave to our children and our grandchildren. It sets aside Social
Security and Medicare to make sure that they are in a lockbox, that
they are off the
[[Page H2040]]
table. They are going to be there for not only our senior citizens, but
for their kids and their grandkids.
But maybe most important about what this budget resolution does is it
recognizes that we need to make America strong again. The only way to
keep America safe is to keep America strong, and that is not the case
today. We have watched the last 8 years while our military has been
hollowed out, overdeployed and underfunded; and this budget recognizes
that and puts more money into the military. It puts it in a place where
we need it. Because there are so many young men and women in our
military today who have really kind of lost their sense of direction.
Their morale is lower than it has ever been. This budget puts
additional money to give pay increases to our young men and women in
uniform. It says that we are going to provide additional benefits in
terms of health care for those young men and women in uniform, and it
says that because so many of our young men and women live in
substandard housing, we are going to make the housing better for them
to give them a sense of respect and honor.
Mr. Speaker, this is not a safe world in which we live today. The
Cold War is over; but we still have nuclear proliferation, we have non-
State terrorist groups, we have criminal elements with worldwide
tentacles, and we need to recognize that.
So if there is just only one reason, and again, there is an awful lot
of reasons to vote for this budget, but just the reason alone to make
America strong again is reason enough. I urge adoption of this budget.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from
North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton).
(Mrs. CLAYTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend her
remarks.)
Mrs. CLAYTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time. Some of us, including myself, take the budget process seriously;
and we also take the budget as an important document.
We consider the Federal budget an important document because it is
the document that we use to speak to the needs and the priorities of
the American people, whether that is defense, education, Social
Security, environment, agriculture, any of these. Also it is an
important document because it says where we are getting the resources
from, whether it be taxes, will it be trust funds like the Social
Security trust fund, or what programs will we reduce. Indeed, it is an
important document that when we have a surplus, we should use it to pay
down the debt.
In all of these areas, we indeed do not take the process seriously;
but we say that the budget indeed is an important document. The
chairman says it is a guide. A guide for what? A guide for new
priorities or simply a statement to get it out on the floor?
Mr. Speaker, I say we failed miserably, but in no more important
place than education. Indeed, the commitment to education is
undergirded by taking away not only what the President asked for, but
also the additional funds.
I say we ought to reject this budget. We can do much better for the
American people. We can say we are serious, and the budget itself is an
important document.
Mr. Speaker, today I would like to urge my colleagues to vote ``no''
on H. Con. Res. 83, the conference report on the budget.
As a senior member of the Budget Committee, I take the budget process
seriously. If the two pages had not been missing from the budget, this
blunder never would have been exposed, and we would not have allowed us
to see the reality of this process and what was really being concealed.
Some of us, including me, take the budget process seriously. We
consider the federal budget to be an important document that provides
for the priorities and needs of the American people. This document
should show how and what activities the government will support (i.e.
defense, prescription drugs for seniors, environment, medicare, social
security, education, and agriculture). A serious budget would clearly
indicate how we are going pay for these priorities. It would indicate:
What are the resources? What are the tax cuts? What programs are
reduced? And yes, a serious budget should help pay down the national
debt when in surplus, and we do have a surplus. This conference report
on this budget resolution fails miserably on being a serious or
important document for many reasons.
Education. The most important and serious priority to American people
clearly is education. However, this conference report on the budget
does not reflect this commitment. It completely eliminates the $294
billion in education that the Senate approved. In fact, the budget
reduces the education budget below the President's request by $21
billion. We take seriously the commitment and statements of the
President, and the majority that ``no child should be left behind''.
These cuts in education are egregious.
Health. The health needs of American people are also serious. This
budget makes a mockery of our commitment to help senior citizens secure
prescription drugs and help prevent HIV or care for AIDS patients or
respond to other health care needs. Most Members in both Chambers
clearly know that it will take at least $300 billion or more for a
meaningful prescription drug program. The budget provides $61.4 billion
less than the Presidents requested for appropriated health care
programs such as Ryan White AIDS treatment grants, maternal and child
care grants, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug
Administration.
National Debt. Instead of paying down the national debt, this budget
has left a margin of error so narrow that we very well will raid the
Medicare and Social Security Trust funds in order to pay for the tax
cuts as early as next year. Do we really want to be accused of gambling
with our nations resources? We are literally betting on our projections
and hoping that the numbers turn out right.
This agreement also includes the amount of the contingency reserve in
its claimed totals for debt reduction. This budget is a sham and a
farce because they are utilizing ``double counting'' when considering
the contingency reserve fund. This means that every dollar of the
contingency reserve that is spent also diminishes the amount of
debt that is reduced by a dollar, plus the cost of interest. This
conference report obviously places a low priority on debt reduction.
Presuming assumptions and projections prove to be correct, the
conference report would pay about $300 billion less than the amount of
debt reduction provided by the House Democratic budget alternative
budget resolution. A budget process that would have included Democrats,
would have allowed for such deliberation rather than tapping into the
Medicare and Social Security surplus funds.
Tax Cuts. The final budget and tax package calls for tax cuts in the
amount of $1.269 trillion for the years 2002 through 2011, and allows
for an economic stimulus consisting of $100 billion in outlays that may
occur any time from 2001 through 2011. Due to the two pages mission, it
was disclosed that the Republicans had stripped $70 billion from the
``so called bipartisan deal announced by the President two days
earlier--which cut education--the President's ``number one'' issue that
was to ``leave no child behind''. This ten-year tax cut is larger than
the $1.25 trillion cut Republicans publicly accepted earlier this week
because of the revenue affects of the reduction of the bill recently
passed on the Securities and Exchange fees included in that package.
Believe me, this is the beginning of many tax bills to come that will
slowly prey upon the Medicare and Social Security trust funds, and
threaten our economy. The true cost of the tax cut with its impact on
the surplus over a ten year period, including added spending for
interest on the national debt, realizes a grand amount of $1.668
trillion.
This budget is a fraud, and an empty shell leaving out inevitable tax
cuts and spending proposals publicly announced by the administration
and Republican leaders. This agreement does not provide for the funds
needed for the administration's national missile defense proposal or
any other increases in the defense budget that may be recommended as a
result of the administration review of defense policy and requirements.
Nor, does it include almost $1.0 trillion in tax cuts beyond the $1.35
trillion reconciled, including terms left out of reconciliation and
proposals like the $300 billion to fix the AMT, extension of the R&D
credit, a variety of health-related tax cuts, the Portman-Cardin
pension/IRA bill that the House passed, a capital gains tax cut and
small business tax cuts that Republicans want to pass with an increase
in minimum wage. Last week's budget faux pas was an attempt at
procedurally rushing through a dishonest and deceptive budget shell
that would ease the passage of excessive tax cuts. The deception
backfired and allowed the American people to at least examine the
conference agreement and to uncover its many flaws. Repeating the
mistakes of the past would be foolish for this body knowing the
predictable outcome of increasing the public debt and triggering a
deficit.
To pass this budget means breaking our commitments to our senior
citizens by robbing the Social Security and Medicare trust funds;
denying our youth and children the best educational opportunities
possible; and depriving the poor the money and resources needed to
provide for their welfare.
[[Page H2041]]
We must make hard choices about how to allocate the resources of the
American people. We need a conference agreement, that provides sensible
tax relief for all Americans, pays down the national debt, and adopts
the priorities of the American people. My fellow colleagues, I urge you
to vote ``no'' on the conference report on H. Con. Res. 83. It is not
the right decision for most Americans, and we will all pay a dear price
if it is passed.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Fletcher), a member of the committee.
Mr. FLETCHER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
I appreciate the opportunity to rise and speak in support of this
conference committee, the budget conference committee. As we can see,
it helps us set the priority of paying down the national debt at record
levels to ensure that we do not leave our grandchildren and children in
debt.
Tax relief for every taxpayer. Improved education. It gives us the
opportunity to not just put more money into education, but actually
make some structural changes that will improve the education for our
children. Stronger national defense, health care reform and
modernization of Medicare, with up to $300 billion for Medicare reform,
including prescription drugs which is needed for our seniors.
Last year in the House, we passed the first prescription drug bill
for our seniors out of this House, and we are going to continue to work
to make sure that happens so that no senior has to choose between their
food and medicine. We are going to save Social Security in the sense
that we are setting aside Social Security and Medicare and making sure
we are keeping that in a lockbox.
The other side talks a lot about putting more money into priorities.
What does that do? We have held the spending at 4 percent. They would
like to increase it 5, 6, 8 percent, we have heard, depending on who
speaks. What is that? Now we have heard they want tax relief; but let
me tell my colleagues, any increase in spending as it goes above
inflation is a taxation on the next generation, because that becomes
the baseline for next year.
We have all heard in our accounts of compound interest and how that
works, how we can double our money over a period of years. Well, what I
call the increased spending above inflation, what the other side would
like to do is compound taxation on our children and grandchildren,
because we require future revenues to be increased in a compounded way
to increase the spending, or to fund the increased spending that they
want every year.
Mr. Speaker, that is not good for America, it is not good for our
children, and it is certainly not the kind of tax relief and freedom
that we need to return to our American families.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman that there is
no money set aside in this budget for Social Security and Medicare,
except for the money that is set aside for a prescription drug benefit,
but not to make the program solvent; and there is certainly no lockbox.
It is not in this bill at all.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts
(Mr. Capuano).
Mr. CAPUANO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this budget. It has
a lot to do with philosophical issues, but it really has a lot more to
do with telling the truth to the American public.
The budget that we passed out of committee, though I disagree with
many philosophical issues, at least told the American public where we
stood. The budget we are about to vote on today does not, and it does
not because at the end of the budget, there is something I have never
seen before, a negative slush fund of $67 billion because we could not
get it all in. We could not make the numbers add up. What that means is
that we will be back later on this year to straighten these numbers
out.
This is the first time I believe that we have heard before a lot of
talk about the President's budget we had a Democratic President and a
Republican House being dead on arrival. This budget is dead on exit. We
will be back in the fall to straighten it all out. The numbers will be
meaningless, and we will be back here arguing about what the numbers
should be. That is in addition to all the philosophical arguments. We
will be back in the fall; we will be telling the people the truth about
how much money we put into education and research and the defense
department. Right now, no one can answer those questions.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady).
Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Speaker, as we can see, Washington hates to
change, and this Congress and this President is intent on making
Washington change the way it works. Look at its impact on the American
people today. Tax Freedom Day just occurred May 3. That means for most
of our families, we have worked from New Year's Day to May 3, just
recently, just to pay our State and local and Federal taxes. That is
the highest, that is the longest date ever; and that means that for
most families, because we are not working for ourselves until the fifth
month, we pay more in taxes than if we put our house payments, all of
our groceries and our clothing together. We pay more than that in
taxes. No wonder it is hard for families to make ends meet.
We wonder, how much of the money we send here actually gets to the
people who really need it. Washington recently has funded, and we have
read about it, we funded $1 million that the Park Service used to build
a two-hole outhouse. We spend $5 billion a year to help salmon swim
upstream. In fact, we spend so much we could buy each of those fish a
first-class ticket on a plane, fly them to the top of the river and
save money doing it. Not only that, we paid one group $350,000 a year
to kill the same salmon. We waste dollars up here day and night.
This President is intent on Washington not going on a spending spree,
on tax relief that grows as we pay off the debt and as our surplus
grows, tax relief grows. This President is intent on helping education
between the teacher and the student and the student and the parent
where it really counts. Washington needs to change, and this budget and
this President is intent on doing it.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Mississippi (Mr. Taylor).
Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding me this time.
In the time that remains I would hope the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Nussle) would explain a few things to the American people. Number one,
how is a Nation that is $5,661,347,798,002 in debt, how does that
Nation have a surplus? How does a Nation that owes its Social Security
Trust Fund $1.103 billion of unfunded liability, money that has been
taken from people's paychecks and squandered on other things, how can
we say we have a surplus? How can a Nation that has taken 235.5 billion
of people's tax dollars, promised to spend it towards Medicare and
spent it on other things, and tell people we have a surplus? How can a
Nation that has taken $160.5 billion out of the military budget over
the past 15 years, set it aside with the promise that we are going to
spend it on our military retirees, but spend every penny of it on other
things, how do we have a surplus?
Finally, for Federal employees, how do we take $497.6 billion out of
their paychecks, promise to set it aside for their retirement, spend it
on other things, and then look them in the eye and say we have a
surplus and therefore we have to cut taxes and, therefore, we cannot
fund defense and therefore the fleet will keep shrinking? How can we
say that when we cut the shipbuilding budget this year by almost $4
billion that we are taking care of national defense?
{time} 1300
Since the Republicans have taken over Congress, the fleet has shrunk
from 392 ships to 313. And my colleagues are cutting the shipbuilding
budget, but yet they keep saying this is good for defense.
I say to my colleagues, if they are looking for waste, the most
wasteful thing we do is squander a billion dollars a day on interest on
the billings we already owe. If my colleagues are serious about
addressing that waste, then we should take every penny that we have and
address it to national defense and paying down the national debt.
This budget does not do that, and therefore I am going to oppose it.
[[Page H2042]]
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/4\ minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Nussle) for yielding the time to me.
Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to say to the gentleman from
Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), my good friend, that I agree that under the
Clinton administration in the last 8 years, a lot of these things have
in fact been devastated, like military spending and shipbuilding
programs and so forth, but we are going to rebuild some of these things
through a very smart budget.
The way we are going to do this is we are going to first put our
priorities on top, Social Security, Medicare, education. Then we are
going to take care of the normal functions of government, our
obligations for roads and bridges, and for all of the departments,
National Parks and Fish and Wildlife. Then what we are going to do is
pay down the public debt.
This, Mr. Speaker, is the first debt that we have been able to pass,
I believe, that actually does pay down the public debt to a zero level,
which I think is extremely important. Then we get to that leftover
amount.
Mr. Speaker, let me explain it to my colleagues this way: In Johnson
High School, Savannah, Georgia, a couple months back, I was speaking to
a group of seniors, and I asked them, how many of you have a job?
Sitting in the front row, a blonde-haired Julie Lawhon said, I have a
job. Julie, how much do you make? Seven dollars an hour. Seven dollars
an hour? Then if you work for 2 hours, you made $14, right? No, sir.
Obviously, you have not had a job; I only get to take home about $11.
Oh, where does the rest go, little 17-year-old, Julie? It goes to
taxes. Okay, let us talk about that, the $4 that you pay on your $7 an
hour in taxes for 2 hours of work, the $4 an hour my friends in
Washington take and we pay for education, we pay for roads, we pay for
health care. You do not begrudge that, do you? You know those functions
are needed. She said, yes.
Well, Julie, what if you found out I do not need $4, that my friends
and I can do all of this great stuff for $3.75, what would you do with
the extra quarter? Seventeen-year-old blonde-haired Julie Lawhon,
Savannah, Georgia, says, give it back to me, it is my 25 cents.
That is all we are doing. God bless Julie Lawhon, the 17-year-old
high school student. God bless the children of the next generation,
because they get it.
Mr. Speaker, I am on bended knee, begging my colleagues across the
aisle to get it as well. It is their money. It does not belong to one
single person in here. It belongs to the taxpayers. Let us return the
overcharge back to those who earned it.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I heard the gentleman from Georgia (Mr.
Kingston), my friend: Let us not give them 25 cents back and add 75
percent to their debt. That is what the gentleman from Mississippi
said.
Mr. Speaker, our Republican friends have turned the annual budget
resolution into a rite of spring.
Remember what the Washington Post said last year? The Republicans
seek not to just cut taxes but to increase defense and selected other
categories of spending while maintaining the appearance of fiscal
discipline.
Does that sound familiar?
The year before that, The New York Times said the Republican
Congressional leadership appears to prefer radical tax and spending
cuts to reasoned accommodation on the budget.
The tone may be different, but the substance is not.
Three years ago, of course, the majority plumbed the depths of
budgetary gridlock. It could not even pass a budget resolution.
Mr. Speaker, to that poor soul who accidentally lost two pages in the
budget resolution on the way to the House floor early last Friday, let
me say, do not be too hard on yourself.
Mr. Speaker, that oversight is just a tiny blip on a fiscal radar
screen, full, frankly, of Republican pretense.
The substance of this budget resolution is shameless. It is not a
plan for our future. It is a stalking horse for Republican tax cuts
that would mainly benefit the wealthy.
I am for a tax cut, a tax cut that is responsible and will fit
defense and domestic discretionary spending and will help pay down the
debt and save Social Security and Medicare.
Who would bear the brunt of the proposed spending cuts? The millions
of Americans with no health insurance; the kids who go to school in
crumbling buildings, zero-funded education in terms of any increases;
the seniors who cannot afford prescription drugs not provided for.
My colleagues are either going to steal from Medicare, from Peter and
pay Paul, but neither Peter nor Paul are going to be able to be funded.
Meanwhile, the President is pushing a missile defense system. It may
be a good policy. He has no idea how to fund it, no idea how to pay for
it.
He is pushing his plan to privatize Social Security, no idea and no
plan in this budget how to pay for it; unless that is, of course, we
continue to plan on raiding the Social Security surplus.
This budget resolution is not real any more than last year's, the
year before, or the year before that. The chair of the Committee on
Appropriations in the other body thinks that as well. He is a member of
the party of the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), not mine.
Mr. Speaker, we ought to reject this budget resolution. We ought to
go back and do some real work for real Americans for a real future.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, the Chairman of our Committee on
Appropriations thinks it is a real number.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Ganske).
Mr. GANSKE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Nussle), the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, for doing a great
job on this budget.
We will end up at the end of the day with a significant tax cut. We
will have additional funds for education and many other of our
priorities, agriculture; but I do want to point out something that
Members of both sides need to be aware of, and that is the projected
high costs for the prescription drug benefit.
If my colleagues look at the policies that looked relatively
inexpensive just a year ago, we had a $6,000 stop loss, and we can see
the area in green above that for the costs above that.
In just 6 months since we debated that, we have seen a 30 percent
increase in the baseline, which means a 500 percent increase in the
stop loss area. What that means is that in just 6 months, if we look at
the projected costs for the Republican plan last year, it would go from
$150 billion to $320 billion.
If we look at the projected costs of the Daschle bill, it would go
from $300 billion to $505 billion to $600 billion, and that does not
necessarily include a low-income senior benefit; because if we then
look at that cost, these are the senior citizens existing on Social
Security just above the poverty level, so they are not in Medicaid.
If we look at that and we go up to, say, 175 percent of poverty, you
now have $600 billion. If we go up to 135 percent, phase it out as in a
bill that I have before Congress, we are looking at $400 billion. Some
of that is already picked up by Medicaid, maybe half of that. If we add
that amount to the bill that we had last year, we come up with a 35
percent cost share, about $500 billion. That is only up to the 2011.
In the year 2012, the baby boomers start to retire. We can afford a
helping hand right now, but we need to structure prescription drugs in
the context of Medicare reform.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 90 seconds to the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Bentsen).
(Mr. BENTSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BENTSEN. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting, all of the bipartisan
things that were supposed to be in this budget. The bipartisan things
in the House seem to be lost from this balanced budget, whether it is
our commitment to education, whether it is our commitment to increasing
funding for basic science research, whether it is our commitment not to
spend the Medicare trust funds.
I want to go to comments of the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston)
[[Page H2043]]
about little Julie Lawhon from Savannah. In fact, the way this budget
is structured, she would not get any of that tax cut back, because she
does not make enough money to qualify for the tax cut that they want to
provide.
Second of all, what would happen is this budget would spend so much
of the Medicare Trust Fund that by the time little Julie was able to
get Medicare benefits that she is paying out of that $4, the benefits
would be cut so low and probably the payroll taxes raised so high
because we raided it through this budget, that she would not get much
for that.
So I am afraid little Julie from Savannah, Georgia would end up
paying a lot more under this budget than less.
Mr. Speaker, the problem with this budget is contrary to what
Congress voted on this year and last year. This budget spends about
$300 billion of obligated Medicare trust funds to help pay for the tax
cut and to help provide some sort of prescription drug component and
some form of Medicare reform, whatever that may be.
In fact, in the budget there is no specific reconciliation
instruction telling the committees to report a prescription drug
component to the full House or the full Senate. So we do not know if
there is going to be a prescription drug program or not.
I would urge the Members to vote down this budget, let us write a
real bipartisan budget as opposed to one that abandons our bipartisan
commitments.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Brown), a member of the Committee on
the Budget.
Mr. BROWN of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, today we declare victory
for every taxpayer in America. Finally, a tax refund is on the way. The
government has overcharged the American people, and it is time to
return their money.
This budget will provide long-term tax relief of $1.35 trillion over
the next 11 years. This includes an immediate, much-needed hundred
billion dollars this year.
When Americans have more money in their pockets, the Nation's economy
will benefit.
This agreement on the budget resolution between the House and the
Senate will also repay a historic $2.4 trillion on the debt by 2011,
which is the maximum that can be repaid without penalty. This, too,
will benefit our economy by lowering interest rates.
Do not be misled by political rhetoric. Let us look at the facts and
support this budget resolution. This budget is good for America and a
victory for the taxpayers of this great Nation.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Virginia (Mr. Moran).
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, we are all entitled to our own
opinion but not to our own set of facts. The fact is, contrary to what
the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) said earlier, it was not
President Clinton that cut the shipbuilding program, it was actually
President Bush that first did that. I want to clear that up for the
Record. The facts will bear that out.
Mr. Speaker, when the Congressional Budget Office estimated last year
that economic growth would increase by two-tenths of a percent on
average over the next 10 years, we were faced with a historic choice.
When they told us that the surplus estimates would increase by 75
percent up to $5.6 trillion, we had to decide, are we going to use this
unprecedented opportunity to sustain the American legacy of leaving a
better quality of life to our children than we inherited from our
parents, or are we going to take care of ourselves first?
The problem with this budget resolution is that it does the latter
and not the former. It breaks that American legacy, because we had a
historic opportunity to pay off the debt that we incurred during the
1980s. When $3 trillion matures by the end of this decade, that should
be our first priority, get rid of that debt. The second priority should
be to take care of the baby boomers' retirement.
I am a baby boomer. I was born in 1945. I do not want my kids having
to pay for my retirement, but this budget resolution is going to force
them to, and that is unfair, to leave them with trillions of dollars of
debt and the responsibility to pay for our Social Security and Medicare
costs. That is wrong. That is what this budget does. That is why it
should be defeated.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Young), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee
on Appropriations.
Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa
(Mr. Nussle), the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, for yielding
the time to me.
Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Nussle) for having done an outstanding job, in my opinion, of bringing
this budget resolution through the process. That job is not always
easy.
I would like the Members to know that the Committee on the Budget and
the Committee on Appropriations probably has a better relationship and
better communication between each other this year than we have had in a
long, long time.
{time} 1315
I want to say, in the few remaining seconds, that this is a good
budget. There are those who think that it does not spend enough money.
But there are always Members in Congress who think budgets do not spend
enough money. There are also those who think it spends too much.
Somewhere in between is where we ought to be; and that is where we are
today, somewhere in between.
I would remind my colleagues that this budget provides for $60
billion more than we had last year at this same point in the process.
So for those who think it is not enough money, understand, there is $60
billion more than we started with last year.
So I commend this budget resolution to the Members. I also want the
Members to know that there are 61 working days basically left before
the end of the fiscal year. We have 52 specific appropriations events
that must take place in that 61-day period. None of them can take place
at the same time. Fifty-two separate events that all have to have their
own block of time.
So we need to pass this resolution today. The 302(b) process is next.
Then we will start bringing appropriations bills to the floor. Again, I
compliment the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle). He has done a really
great job, and I encourage the Members to support this budget
resolution.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Andrews).
(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina
for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, the choice before us today is whether we choose the
future or the present. In the present, the smart political thing to do
is go home and tell everyone you cut their taxes. People like to hear
that. It makes for good political patter.
But the future demands that we do something very different. It
demands that we relieve our children of the $5 trillion debt that we
have placed upon them. A family would never make the choice the
majority is about to make. When a family has some excess income and a
huge debt, they would pay off that debt, not pass it on to their
children. So should we. The appropriate vote for the future is to vote
no on the budget resolution before us because unlike the Democratic
plan, it does not pay down the debt.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
California (Mr. Gary G. Miller), a distinguished member of the
committee.
Mr. GARY G. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman
from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) for this time, and it is a fine job he has
done this year.
The Members on the Democratic aisle talked about telling the truth.
Let us tell the truth. Last year, Republicans proposed a $373 billion
tax cut for the American people, and they did not support it. In fact,
the President vetoed it, and they upheld his veto.
Then they held the budget up till December. Why? Because they wanted
to spend more money, and we did. Shamelessly, we did. And that spending
increase alone will cost us $572 billion over 10 years. They had no
problem spending $572 billion of the people's money, but they could not
give those same people the $373 billion tax cut.
[[Page H2044]]
On average, since 1990, the Federal revenues have grown 9.1 percent
each and every year on average. How many of you at home got a 9.1
percent increase in pay every year since 1990? Nobody I know of.
My colleagues on that side of the aisle talk about cutting education.
The fact is, read the budget. We are spending 11.5 percent more this
year on education than we did last year. How many of you at home got an
11.5 percent increase in pay this year? Nobody I know.
Every time we set aside funds, the problem is my colleagues do not
want to give them back to the people. They want to spend those dollars.
We are paying down 100 percent of the debt that we can pay down over 10
years. We can pay no more than is due.
We are saying we are going to set aside 100 percent of the Social
Security money. We are going to set an additional $300 billion aside to
reform Medicare and prescription drugs; yet my colleagues say we are
not dealing with the problem.
The problem is they want to feed the cow. We tell the cow owner that
he deserves more of the revenue from the milk coming from that cow.
The problem is we are never going to agree. The facts are very clear.
They are in the record as far as the tax cut last year. They are in the
record as far as the tax cut this year.
We can afford it. The American people earned these dollars. They
deserve to spend their dollars. We talk about it is for the children.
Why do we not let the American family keep more of their hard-earned
money so they can provide for their children. They know the needs of
their children. We do not.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, we have, as I understand it, 2 minutes
remaining on our side; and we will close with that, I would just inform
the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt).
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The gentleman from South
Carolina (Mr. Spratt) has 6 minutes remaining.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time.
Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman from California (Mr. Gary
Miller) who just spoke that it is as a matter of record we overspent
the President's request last year. While there were some things the
President got that were over and above what we were willing to give him
before the negotiations began, we were already beyond the President's
request for spending, and we added $4 billion among other things to his
request for national defense.
We added a huge sum to transportation precipitated by the Speaker's
request that we take care of Chicago's mass transit.
So there was a mutual effort to add to spending last year. We ought
to really come clean and say we all were part of that process last
year, the President, the Congress on both sides of the aisle.
Let me direct our attention to this budget. I have said from the
start that my concern with this budget is, first of all, it is a
watershed budget. It will affect what we do, not just in 2002, it will
frame what we can do for the next 10 years, because we are making
fundamental watershed decisions in this budget.
In dealing with a budget of that gravity, that importance, the
numbers ought to be real. I am not worried about a couple of missing
pages. I am worried about plugs and placeholders and numbers that I do
not think are real. Let me tell my colleagues which ones.
First of all, defense spending, the largest account in the budget
other than Social Security, the largest appropriation bill that we
handle on the floor every year. $325 billion is a number inserted for
defense spending in the year 2002. But we all know that is not the
number. That is the Clinton-coined budget number. That is a
placeholder.
We also all know that Mr. Rumsfeld has been working for months now
behind closed doors, 18 different committees, making a comprehensive
review of our national security requirements. We have seen leaks in
recent weeks in all kinds of publications and some directly from him by
way of television, indicating that his request will be substantial, I
mean 2 to $400 billion a year over the period that we are talking
about. $25 billion a year at least in the way of an increase in defense
spending over and above what this budget provides. That is why the
defense number is patently unreal.
In fact, we have given the chairman of this committee unprecedented
unilateral authority, once he gets the numbers from Mr. Rumsfeld,
without consulting with anybody else, to come over and adjust the
allocation to defense by up to $400 billion.
I cannot recall any kind of authority like that that we have given
any single individual before, but that shows us we explicitly recognize
in this budget that the defense number is not a real number. It will be
jacked up considerably before this fiscal year is over.
Emergency spending. To his credit, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Nussle) tried to deal with this spending. He tried to put it in the
budget because, historically, we know from experience every year we
have emergencies. Hurricanes, tornados, you name it, we have them. And
we pay for it out of this budget through FEMA.
The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) provided $5.6 billion after a
tussle with the appropriators that was taken out. But if we add it
back, that is $60 billion that is not in the budget but ought to be
provided in the budget.
Discretionary spending. This budget purports to have a tight limit, a
tight tether on discretionary spending. In the outyears, 2003 to 2011,
the purported rate of increase is 2.6 percent. That is not even
inflation. Over a 10-year period of time, for nondefense discretionary,
this provides less than inflation, $50 billion less than inflation.
Now, that is a tough challenge to the appropriators at a time when we
have a massive surplus. It used to be we could say we have got this
deficit, and you could deter people from pushing their spending
request; but now we have this surplus, it is a lot tougher to beat back
the people who want to add this and add the other.
Does one think that we are going to hold discretionary spending to
$2.6 percent at the same time we are taking the budget and favoring
things like transportation? We have allowed transportation a special
niche in the budget, giving them substantially more than inflation. We
have allowed NIH and other favored activities like that a much bigger
than inflationary increase. When we allow those favored programs their
extra share of the budget, it means we have got to cut everything else.
That is the reason, Mr. Speaker, when we look at this budget, we
should realize that all the numbers down to function 920 called
allowances are not real. If we look at function 920, we will see a
number called $67 billion. That is $67 billion in unspecified cuts.
The conference labored hard to come to a final conclusion, but they
effectively threw in the towel. What they effectively adopted as the
spending level for every function was just an inflationary rate of
increase.
My colleagues know and I know that is not the way the appropriations
process works. But if they cannot resolve at the function level where
the cuts are going to hit, how in the world will we resolve it and
bring in total spending at a 2.6 percent rate of increase for 10 years?
I do not believe it will happen. I do not believe this is a real
number. Function 920 is the ultimate tip-off.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that the tax cuts are real. As
soon as the compromise at $1.35 trillion for tax reduction over 10
years, as soon as it was announced, Senator Lott said there are other
ways to do tax cuts. This is round one.
Secretary O'Neill was on the Hill. He testified that this is more of
a floor than a ceiling, that there are other ways to skin this cat and
provide additional tax relief. Look at what is on the cutting room
floor. Once we trim this $1.6 trillion request to $1.3 trillion tax cut
bill, it will have to be increased.
Look at the charts and realize that the bottom line here will soon be
gone. It puts the bottom line in jeopardy. Two numbers I would say to
my colleagues. $342 billion invasion of Medicare, $255 billion invasion
of Social Security is the arithmetic. That is where this budget leads
us.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time.
Mr. Speaker, this is an opportunity to vote for either excuses or
opportunities. That is what we are faced with
[[Page H2045]]
here today. First the excuses: ``we cannot,'' ``we should not,'' ``it
will not work.'' Those are the excuses.
The excuses have been going on for years why we cannot return the tax
surplus to the American people. First is do not have a tax cut until we
balance the budget. We balanced the budget. Then it was do not cut
taxes until we have saved Social Security. We have saved all of Social
Security. Then it was do not cut taxes until the Medicare trust fund is
set aside. We set aside the Medicare trust fund.
There was still money left over, but they said do not do it until you
significantly increase spending. We increased spending for important
priorities. They say do not cut taxes because it is the wrong time.
Then it was the wrong way. Then it was the wrong process. Then they
said it was too big.
Today there has even been Members who have come to the floor and have
suggested that the tax cut will not work because it is too small.
Now, look, we have all heard the story about the three bears and the
excuses. The excuses stop today with a budget that provides for
opportunities: the fifth balanced budget in a row, maximum debt relief
of $2.4 trillion, saves Social Security, provides for a Medicare
surplus for modernization, budgets for Americans priorities at 4
percent for education, 11.5 percent increase. Agriculture is increased.
Defense is increased. Veterans priorities are maintained. The National
Institutes of Health, the largest increase in history. There is still
money left over.
It is at that time that we have to recognize who does this money
belong to. It is the American people. The budget that they negotiate
around their kitchen table is more important than the Federal budget.
So let us stop making excuses about the Federal budget. Let us
recognize where those tax dollars come from. Let us take the
opportunity to provide tax relief for the American people. Vote for a
budget of opportunities. Vote for the conference report.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, when we first debated this budget
resolution in the House, I opposed it because I thought it would risk
the opportunities of the future on the outcome of a riverboat gamble.
The original resolution was based entirely on a long-range forecast
about the economy--a forecast that predicts good economic weather and
budget surpluses for a full decade ahead. How prudent is that? If you
want to know, ask any rancher in Colorado, or anyone who watches for
fires in our forests, or anybody who has watched the stock market
lately. They will tell you how risky it can be to bet too much on
forecasting the weather or the economy for one year, let alone for a
decade.
The original resolution ran the risk of shortening the solvency of
Social Security and Medicare, while neglecting other important needs in
order to pay for the President's tax plan. And it would not have done
enough to reduce the publicly held debt and would have shortchanged
education, seniors, research, and the environment.
I had hoped that after the Senate considered the resolution and there
had been a conference between the two bodies, it would improve.
Unfortunately, that hasn't happened--in fact, in some important ways
the conference report is not even as good as the original resolution
passed by the House.
It's still a gamble, all right. But while the original resolution was
like a high-stakes poker game on a riverboat, this conference report
makes me think of a rigged roulette wheel in a mining town gambling
hall--complete with the false front.
On the gambling hall, the false front gave the illusion of a full-
sized building, concealing the incomplete structure that lay behind.
Here, the label of ``budget'' conceals what is not in the conference
report. It conceals that the conference report doesn't include a way to
pay for a realistic Medicare prescription drug benefit. It conceals
that the conference report doesn't include enough for education. It
conceals that the conference report doesn't include enough to
adequately protect the environment. It conceals that the conference
report doesn't include enough for scientific research. It conceals that
the conference report would not do enough to reduce our debt.
And, like the false front on the gambling hall, the ``balanced
budget'' label on this conference report conceals the real game here.
That game is to get the President's tax plan over to the Senate under
rules that will shorten the time for debate and that will make it
harder to make adjustments so it would be less of a gamble with our
fiscal future.
Once that has been done, I expect that this unrealistic budget has
served its purpose--and I am tempted to hope it will then be
disregarded. I would like to think that its false front will be
replaced by a sounder structure that will accommodate doing what should
be done to bolster Social Security and Medicare and to make needed
investments in education, health, and other vital needs.
But banking on that would be another gamble--and I am afraid that the
odds are not very good. What is much more likely--almost a sure thing,
in fact--is that the imbalance will be made worse when the
Administration completes its defense-policy review and seeks increases
in defense spending that are not accounted for in this budget.
What will be the result when that happens--as I expect it will? What
will result when Congress acts to relieve middle-class families from
the problem of the Alternative Minimum Tax--as it definitely should?
And what will result when Congress extends other tax provisions, like
the credits for research and development--as it should?
The answer is that the approach of this budget will lead us to
further weaken Medicare and fall further short of meeting the test of
fiscal responsibility.
I do not want to play that game. And so I cannot support this
conference report.
Mr. COYNE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the conference report
on the fiscal year 2002 budget resolution.
The compromise that was crafted in conference and in consultation
with the White House--and finished, apparently, just hours ago--suffers
from the same failings as the budget resolution passed by the House in
March.
The conference report on the budget resolution calls for an
irresponsible $1.25 trillion tax cut over the next ten years, and a
number of Republican Representatives and Senators have already
expressed an interest in enacting additional tax cuts. How can the
members of the House Majority in good conscience pass a budget that
they have no intention of following? We shouldn't be surprised--we've
seen the same actions in previous years.
The unrealistic tax cuts are only one of the problems with this
budget. Unrealistic spending levels are another. The discretionary
spending levels specified in the conference report are, I believe,
inadequate to address the many domestic challenges facing this nation
over the next ten years. Moreover, if previous years are an indication,
many members of the House Majority want higher appropriations levels as
well. This budget plan does not include the additional discretionary
spending that would be needed for President Bush's proposed ballistic
missile defense system, nor does it include the increased defense
spending that the President will probably request once Secretary
Rumsfeld completes his review of our current defense policies. It
doesn't do enough for education, nor does it provide enough money to
enact a decent Medicare prescription drug benefit or address the
problem of Americans without any health insurance.
What is even more troubling is the fact that under this budget plan,
Congress would most likely be forced to dip into the Medicare surpluses
in order to pay for the tax cuts and new spending that we can already
anticipate. Throwing fiscal caution to the wind is not my idea of
conservative government.
And finally, and the most troubling of all, I am concerned that this
budget plan leaves no room for error or unanticipated bad news. If some
of the projected surpluses fail to materialize over the next ten years,
the federal government could easily start running deficits again--or
dipping into the Social Security Trust Fund.
I'd like to see the House's so-called conservatives show a little
more interest in responsible fiscal policy. I will oppose this
conference report, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this budget which
shamefully does not fund education, health care, and housing programs
that this country so desperately needs. The meager 3.6 percent increase
in this budget's education funds is simply not enough to modernize our
crumbling schools and institute programs to retain teachers and improve
student aptitude nationwide. There is simply not enough money in the
budget to fund the education rhetoric coming from the Administration.
The basis of this budget is a massive tax cut that does not come for
free. It has a price. In my district in Alameda County, California we
are having an affordable housing crisis at all income levels but
particularly affecting low and moderate income people. To pay for this
tax cut we will cut 1.7 billion in real dollars from the federal
housing budget, including cuts to the drug elimination program, the
community development block grant, and empowerment zone funding.
We are also having a health care crisis in this country. Many of us
have been pushing for a Medicare prescription drug plan for our seniors
who cannot afford costly drugs. Because of this tax cut our seniors
will continue
[[Page H2046]]
to pay the highest cost for drugs among developed nations. This is the
cost of the Bush tax cut.
This budget eliminates the COPS program which practically any law
enforcement official will tell you made our streets safer and crime go
down during the past several years. Another cost of the Republican tax
cut.
A vote for this budget and the Bush Administration's mega tax cut is
a vote against most Americans and their rights to decent shelter,
healthcare and safety. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this
budget.
Ms. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, as Democrats and Republicans it is our job
to work together on a budget that reflects the issues that the voters
sent us all to Congress to address. The nation's priorities are clear.
Americans want a balanced federal budget that meets our health,
education, retirement and infrastructure needs while paying down our
national debt and providing for a reasonable tax cut.
Unfortunately, the Republican budget abandons the fiscal
responsibility that has resulted in the budget surpluses we are
presently enjoying. The sum of the Republican tax cuts reach almost $2
trillion and are completely based on a projection for surpluses that
may or may not materialize over the next ten years. I support
responsible tax cuts that are targeted to working families and ensure
our seniors will continue to have retirement security.
In fact, the Republicans controlling Congress spend more on tax cuts
for the wealthiest one percent of Americans than they spend on every
other need in this budget. Worst of all, the Republican budget uses
Medicare and Social Security as a slush fund that will be raided if the
projected surpluses are not realized.
Today's budget resolution shortchanges education and provides even
less money than the President asked for in his budget plan. It
threatens Medicare by raiding the trust fund, jeopardizing the benefits
to which seniors are now entitled and does not guarantee that any
portion will go toward a prescription drug benefit. In addition, it
cuts back on energy programs that we should be strengthening to help
our constituents deal with the energy crisis and cope with sky-high
prices.
This budget resolution should balance all of our priorities--from the
need for tax cuts to investments in public schools, our national
defense to prescription drugs. Most of all, America's budget should do
nothing to break faith with the millions of seniors who rely on Social
Security and Medicare.
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the Budget
Resolution Conference Report presented to us today. That opposition is
based on the substance of the budget as well as the tactics used by the
Republican majority to force this bill to the floor of the House of
Representatives with no input from those of us on the Democratic side
of the aisle.
I guess it doesn't matter that Democrats have not had real input into
the budget process because the overall document is a sham anyway. It
does not reflect the total cost of the tax cuts that Republicans plan
to pursue this year. Nor does it reflect the total defense spending
increases that will become law before this year is over. And, this
budget resolution still fails to account for additional cuts that will
have to occur in many domestic programs in order to make room for the
bloated tax cut and defense spending increases. Finally, it fails to
protect Medicare and Social Security and falls far short of
guaranteeing the funds necessary to add a prescription drug benefit to
Medicare.
On the tax cut front, the House has already passed tax cut
legislation totaling more than $1.54 trillion. That is more than this
budget resolution would even allow. Yet, the House-passed bills and
this budget resolution still fail to address many tax issues that we
know will be included before the year is over. Such tax changes
include: a business tax package that will ultimately be part of any
proposal to increase the minimum wage, tax extenders like the Research
and Development Tax Credit, adjustments to the Alternative Minimum Tax,
and various tax incentives for health care and education.
I applaud my Senate colleagues for fighting to lower the amount of
dollars dedicated to tax cuts in this budget resolution conference
report from the $1.6 trillion requested by the President to
approximately $1.215 trillion (and the $100 billion stimulus package
for fiscal years 2001 and 2002). However, that appreciation is strongly
dampened by the reality that even $1.25 trillion is too high and the
tax cut number in this budget resolution is going to grow still larger.
We will surpass these dollar limitations for tax cuts; in fact, we
already have. And we will pay the price in more ways than one when we
are forced to reduce expenditures in vital domestic programs that mean
much more to a wider array of Americans than the tax cuts ever will.
We can and should be increasing our investment in education.
President Bush has made education one of his highest rhetorical
priorities, but rhetoric alone won't fund education improvements. This
budget fails to follow through with the resources necessary to make
great strides on education.
My colleagues in the Senate were able to dramatically increase
funding for education by $294 billion in their version of the budget
resolution. This conference report strips those increases from the
package. The total funding level for education in this budget
conference report is even less than the amount the President requested
and the House approved this past March! That's moving backward on
education--not forward.
This budget puts at risk the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds
to finance other expensive components of this package.
In 2011, the baby boom generation will start to become eligible for
Medicare benefits. That begins a major demographic shift with far fewer
workers supporting far greater numbers of seniors on Medicare. Today
the ratio is approximately 3.4 workers per Medicare beneficiary.
According to the Medicare actuary, that number is predicted to drop to
about 2.1 workers per beneficiary by 2029. All of this cries out for
protecting every cent that we have in the Medicare Trust Fund and
making changes to law to ensure that more funds go into the Trust Fund
in the future. But, the budget before us does the opposite. It raids
the Medicare Trust Fund to fund an inadequate prescription drug benefit
and makes the Medicare Trust Fund vulnerable for raiding for other
purposes as well.
Make no mistake about it. The dollars diverted from the Medicare
Trust Fund in the budget before us today will never be returned to the
Trust Fund. They are being spent elsewhere. That means that there are
fewer resources dedicated to Medicare's future. We are robbing Peter to
pay Paul. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
It is past time for us to add a prescription drug benefit to
Medicare. None of us would join a health insurance plan that didn't
include prescription drug coverage, but Medicare does not cover these
necessary medical costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that
Medicare beneficiaries will spend $1.5 trillion on prescription drugs
over the next ten years.
Instead of using a portion of the surplus to assure meaningful
coverage, this budget resolution presents a Hobson's choice between
covering prescription drugs or assuring available funds for future
hospital, home health and nursing home services that are already
covered. It diverts needed dollars from the Medicare surplus into an
account that is labeled by the Majority for use on prescription drug
coverage and so-called ``modernization.''
I opposed the earlier House-passed budget for the same reasons that I
am opposing this budget resolution conference report before us today.
This version still fails to appropriately prioritize the needs of our
nation. It could put us back in the economic ditch that the Reagan tax
package created in the 1980s, and from which we only recently emerged.
During this time of unprecedented surplus, we should be shoring up
the federal programs on which people rely, we should be increasing our
investment in education, we should be improving the quality and
availability of child care in our nation, we should be covering
prescription drugs through Medicare, and doing much, much more.
Instead, this budget squanders projected resources on tax cuts that
disproportionately benefit the most well-off and puts at risk our
ability to finance important government priorities now and in the
future. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the budget resolution
conference report before us.
Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose the budget resolution
conference report.
It is not a fiscally responsible plan. It does not spend our surplus
wisely nor make any additional reductions in the public debt. Instead,
it sets out a course that may well result in huge deficits by the end
of the 10-11 year period.
When I was first elected to Congress in 1992, the annual federal
budget deficit was close to $300 billion. But I joined many of my
colleagues in making the hard-fought and difficult deficit cutting
votes of the 1990s. I voted for the 1993 budget, Penny-Kasich,
constitutional amendments to balance the budget and to limit tax
increases. And I voted for the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, which finally
produced the first federal surpluses in a generation.
The budget before us could well restore that $300 billion annual
deficit by 2011, undoing everything I fought for.
It could return us to raiding the Social Security and Medicare trust
funds--despite this chamber's repeated promise not to do so.
And the budget retreats from making needed investments in our
citizens. For example, it eliminates 98 percent of the increase
proposed in the Senate's budget for special education--a program of
critical importance to educators in my district and elsewhere.
The budget before us has accounting margins so precarious that any
small bump in the economy will result in a deficit. It spends, for
[[Page H2047]]
example, all but $1 billion of the FY01 $96 billion surplus. That
surplus, however, was estimated in January--before the downturn in the
economy and the freefall of the stock market.
Mr. Speaker, a fiscally responsible budget should meet our nation's
investment needs while using the surplus to reduce the public debt and
enact responsible and affordable tax cuts. The framework I support--
fashioned by the Blue Dogs--would allocate the surplus 50%--25%--25%
across these three budget categories.
Most important, the Blue Dog framework earmarks half of the surplus
to reducing the debt--the policy most preferred by my constituents and
most Americans.
The budget before us has none of these characteristics. It is
imbalanced in its priorities, and predicated on budget surplus numbers
that are ephemeral at best and illusory at worst.
My constituents deserve better.
Mr. BENTSEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H. Con. Res. 83,
the conference report to the Fiscal Year 2001 Budget Resolution. The
document before us is sham which purports to set spending and tax
policy for the next fiscal year, as well as important parameters for
the next ten years when, in fact, this is a highly flawed budget that
is destined to fail when actual legislation is adopted to put it in
place. Mr. Speaker, here we are again for part II of a budget debacle
that defies all reason. Even if the conference report before us
includes the two pages missing from last week's submission, it is still
incomplete. This conference report abandons any commitment to improving
education. This conference does not provide for the Administration's
national missile defense proposal or the other increases in the defense
budget that will be recommended as a result of the administration's
review of defense policy and requirements. Further, this conference
report claims a tax cut of $1.35, yet it leaves out such proposals as
$300 billion to fix the AMT, extension of the R&D credit, and enact the
Portman-Cardin pension/IRA bill that the House passed. Finally, this
conference report does not set aside the requisite level of funds
needed to pay for the President's Social Security privatization plan,
approximately $1.0 trillion. Without that transition funding, the $1.0
trillion would have to be taken out of the Social Security trust fund,
benefit cuts or new debt generated.
Mr. Speaker, I predict that this so-called compromise of tax cuts
totaling $1.35 trillion over eleven years and spending held to 4% in FT
2002 will be breached before the end of the year. This budget also
turns its back on our commitment to paying off the national debt. If we
were to stay the course, the nation could retire all of the debt held
by the public for the first time since 1835, and add three trillion
dollars to net national savings. This budget clearly indicates that the
Republican Majority has no qualms about turning its back on budget
process and policies that has served this nation so well and is readily
willing to risk returning us to the budgetary turmoil of the 1980s and
early 1990's to make room for the President's tax cut.
The Republican Majority knows that their appetite for tax cuts will
be too hard to control, just as their appetite for spending. Tax cuts
are the overriding priority of the Republican budget. Over eleven
years, their cut will cost anywhere between $2.2 trillion and $2.5
trillion, including debt service and the inevitable cost of fixing the
alternative minimum tax (AMT). Thus, this tax plan consumes nearly all
of the $2.7 trillion surplus outside of Social Security and Medicare.
The ``tax-cuts-at-all-costs'' strategy, employed by the drafters of
this resolution, ignores logic and history to make room for this plan.
Rather than take a long look at obligations on the horizon, the
national debt, Social Security and Medicare solvency and the need to
invest in education and research, the Republicans seek to push this
resolution through the Congress before anyone has a chance to read it.
The Republicans are bound and determined to push this budget through on
a party line vote without telling the American people how they intend
to live within the confines of their budget resolution or how they will
pay back Medicare for the amount they seek to spend from the trust fund
or how they will fund the recommendations from Secretary Rumsfeld's
Defense review or how they will fund the national missile defense or
even how they will fund the President's Social Security privatization
scheme. And, now we find that the Republicans have dropped even the
President's education initiative in the name of tax cuts. Hollow as it
may be, the Republican Majority is desperate to claim victory here and
drive the death nail into the coffin of the Budget Act. This budget is
not about funding priorities. It's not about tax cuts or tax policy.
It's certainly not about fiscal responsibility and it is most certainly
not a product of bipartisanship. It's about politics.
This budget is not so much the product of deliberation but rather
arbitrariness. The Republican Majority arbitrarily set each of the non-
defense discretionary levels to the CBO baseline, thus failing to make
any decisions about how to allocate these resources. Then, they dropped
any assumption for natural disasters or emergencies. And, finally, they
assume unspecified cuts in discretionary spending of $6 billion per
year. Mr. Speaker, this budget's failure to list a meaningful dollar
level for each budget function means that the Congress and the public
can have no clear idea about what the budget really means for America.
Aside from failing to articulate our current obligations, this budget
also turns a blind eye to the looming costs of the President's agenda,
such as missile defense, privatization of Social Security, prescription
drugs for seniors and tax cuts.
Mr. Speaker, not only does H. Con. Res. 83 fail to reflect any
contemplation, it is seriously flawed. This conference report turns its
back on all the fiscal policies that led to the greatest period of
sustained economic expansion but sets us on the path back to ``spend
today, borrow tomorrow.'' H. Con. Res. 83 eliminates the budget surplus
in the non-Social Security, non-Medicare operations of the federal
government, and spends at least $300 billion of already-obligated
Medicare Trust Fund monies on other benefits. It's like spending the
house payment on roof repairs and not acknowledging that you still owe
on the mortgage. Thus, the conference report puts the Medicare and
Social Security Trust Fund surpluses in jeopardy. The Republicans claim
they want to fund a prescription drug program for senior citizens but
they plan to raid Medicare to do it. They don't even require that such
a plan be reported to the House. Any economic adversity or policy
miscalculation could leave the government again spending out of the
trust fund surpluses, instead of adding those surpluses to the nation's
pool of savings for business investment to make the economy grow. At
the very worst, H. Con. Res. 83 sets us on a course of returning to
deficit spending.
With the CBO reporting that its average projection error for a budget
is about 0.5 percent of the GDP, or roughly $52 billion this year and
rising to around $85 billion in 2011, the funding level for this
conference agreement falls below that minimal level of security until
the last two years of the ten-year budget window. Lest we forget that
more than 87 percent of the projected non-Social Security, non-Medicare
surplus under the conference agreement would occur in the last five
years of the ten-year budget cycle. History has taught us that it is
far better for our national interest to pay down debt and make our
economy grow than consume surplus funds on new spending or tax cuts. If
fully implemented, the Republicans use none of the on-budget surplus to
pay down debt and spend a portion of the Social Security surplus for
their tax cut. If history is any judge, and the Republican Majority
fails to make huge discretionary spending cuts, it will spend even more
of the Social Security surplus.
Mr. Speaker, this budget finances its large tax cut by assuming that
non-defense appropriations will be held to unrealistically low levels
over the next ten years. This budget ignores the fact that it is very
unlikely that this Congress will execute the cuts prescribed under the
budget. The Republican Majority claim that the funding level for all
appropriated programs will be increased by about 4.0 percent. When
advance appropriations made last year on a one-time-only emergency
funding basis are discounted, the total overall increase is around 3.8
percent, which is just about the amount necessary to maintain
purchasing power at the 2001 level. With most of the 3.8 percent
increase devoted to defense, international affairs, that leaves an
increase of only about 1.8 percent over the CBO baseline in 2002 for
domestic discretionary programs. Among non-defense discretionary
programs, most will see cuts of, on average, 1.2 percent, including the
SBA, NASA, flood control, drug enforcement, alien incarceration
programs and the COPS in school program. This budget does not merely
limit the growth of domestic spending, as the Republican Majority
asserts, it cuts domestic programs. Are the Republicans really
advocating that we cut the FBI, INS or DEA?
The conference report claims to increase our bipartisan commitment to
double funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) but it turns
its back on the bipartisan commitment to double funding for the
National Science Foundation. Further, the budget cuts so many health
programs it will pit the NIH against such things as Community Health
Centers and child and maternal health programs. But worse, Mr. Speaker,
the Republican budget fails to adequately invest in education, one of
the President's own priorities. This partisan budget ignores the strong
bipartisan support for education funding, retreating from this
commitment. This measure not only strips the $294 billion in increased
education funding provided for by the Senate, but also provides $21
billion less education support than provided for under the President's
budget. It eliminates all of the
[[Page H2048]]
Senate provision to increase the federal share for special education
costs absorbed by local school districts, as mandated under IDEA and it
fails to adequately advance the goal of improving our schools.
If the cuts provided for under H. Con. Res. 83 are made, they will
hurt key domestic investments which enjoy broad support among the
American people. If the cuts are not made and the large tax cut is
enacted, Congress risks raiding the Social Security and Medicare Trust
Funds and possibly pushing us back into deficits. I believe the
Republicans know that these cuts will never occur, but they provide
cover for their huge tax cut which will ultimately eat through the on-
budget surplus and into the Social Security surplus at the expense of
solvency and long-term economic growth.
As I have said before, logic tells us that basing a tax cut plan on
ten-year revenue projections, when the CBO has only been in the
business of doing such long-term projections, is playing with fire. In
fact, CBO itself acknowledges that current projections may
substantially overstate projected surpluses and has concluded that
``the estimated surpluses could be off in one direction or the other,
on average, by about $52 billion in 2001, $120 billion in 2002, and
$412 billion in 2006.'' Second, history has taught us that it is far
easier to enact additional tax cuts in future years if economic
projections hold up or improve, while it is far more difficult to enact
tax increases or budget cuts in the future if the projections go
unrealized. And, Mr. Speaker, we all know that the President will come
back to Congress, after we pass this budget, and ask for billions of
dollars of new spending for defense.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in rejecting this
``spend today, borrow tomorrow'' measure that was bound together by the
Republican Majority in such a haphazard fashion, so as to leave no room
for adequately funding the nation's priorities or protecting against
unforeseen economic downturns. As I have said before, I support a
substantial tax cut but not at the expense of hard-fought fiscal ground
and long-standing domestic priorities, such as strengthening Social
Security and Medicare, providing a universal prescription drug benefit,
and adequately funding education and defense. Mr. Speaker, that is why
I cannot support H. Con. Res. 83 and would urge my colleagues to join
me in rejecting this sham budget.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the budget
conference committee report. Amazingly, this proposal keeps getting
worse, not better. The item before us, in order to accommodate the tax
cut, does not include provisions earlier passed by the Senate for
education. The $294 billion supported by the bipartisan majority in the
Senate, and that would be supported by a majority of the members in
this body, is nowhere to be seen. It even does not have $21.5 billion
for education proposed by President Bush and approved by the House in
March. It also provides less money than the President requested for the
Ryan White AIDS Treatment Grants, Maternal and Child Care Health Block
Grants, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug
Administration. This budget proposal has $700 million less for
veteran's programs in FY 2002 than the House-passed resolution and $2.7
billion less than the Senate-passed resolution. Furthermore, at a time
of energy crisis, this document does nothing to restore the significant
reductions in energy conservation proposed by the Administration. It is
in short, a resolution that stands our bipartisan budget priorities on
their head.
The part that is most objectionable to those of us in Oregon is the
silence on where future budget cuts are going to fall. There will be a
requirement for additional budget cuts of at least $6 billion next year
and more than ten times that amount over the next ten years, without a
hint of where those reductions will come from. Last week the budget
process fell apart after keeping the Members of this House waiting
until the early hours of the morning for a vote. In part, this
breakdown was less due to the two pages that were lost, and more due to
the fact that this bill has not proceeded as a serious piece of
bipartisan legislation. Despite the hopeful rhetoric about changing the
tone in Washington from the Bush Administration, nobody had seen the
resolution last week, and now what has been revealed to us leaves
gaping holes in essential priorities.
What we do know is the Administration is about to unveil massive
increases for defense. When coupled with the known requirement for
annual emergency spending that is not accounted for in this document,
the cost rises by hundreds of billions of extra dollars. Additionally,
we must acknowledge the need to correct the problem of the Alternative
Minimum Tax that was originally implemented to ensure the super wealthy
at least paid some income tax. Instead the AMT is affecting lower
income Americans with large families in ways never intended and the
impact will be much worse under President Bush's proposed income tax
rate reductions. Everyone in Congress knows it has to be fixed and this
budget resolution ignores our duty to correct this inequity in the tax
code.
Congress and the American people deserve an honest budget resolution
that tells us where we want to go and how we are realistically going to
get there. This proposal does neither.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this
Republican budget. Unfortunately, this budget is nothing but missed
opportunities and misplaced priorities.
Mr. Speaker, our nation needs a national economic strategy for
economic opportunities for all Americans. We can charge boldly into the
21st Century with prosperity for all if we have the vision to see our
opportunities and the courage to seize those opportunities. But this
budget will squander our prosperity and set America back on a failed
course.
We must invest in science and technology and innovation, but this
budget cuts Research and Development. We must invest in better schools
and training so we can have the greatest workforce in the world, but
this budget neglects education. Some people say education is too
expensive; I say it's a whole lot cheaper than ignorance. We must
strengthen Social Security and reform Medicare to include a benefit for
prescriptions, but this budget will raid those trust funds. We must
rewrite the Farm Bill so North Carolina's farm families have an
opportunity to make a living, but this budget puts agriculture under
the knife. We must modernize our defenses and make America's military
second to none, but this budget blows the resources we need to
accomplish that mission.
Don't get me wrong: I support responsible tax relief for our working
families. But this budget will run our economy into the ditch and
return us to the days of huge deficits, economic stagnation, high
unemployment and out-of-control inflation. Our North Carolina values
call for balanced budgets and responsible policy, but this budget sends
us a on riverboat gamble with America's future. I urge its defeat.
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, this Member rises in strong support of the
Budget Conference Report.
This Member is especially pleased with the funds proposed for
agriculture. Not only does the budget agreement include $26.3 billion
for agriculture related programs in FY2001, but it also includes funds
for emergency spending of $5.5 billion in FY2001 and $7.35 billion in
FY2002. Furthermore, an additional $66.15 billion will be held in
reserve for reauthorization of farm support programs between FY2003 and
FY2011. This sends a strong signal that there will be money available
for farmers this year to meet emergencies and in the coming years as we
develop the new farm bill. Farmers and their bankers certainly need
assurance that there will be money there and these numbers demonstrate
that commitment.
This Member strongly regrets that the funds originally in the
conference report for the creation of a new natural disaster
contingency fund within the budget were eliminated during last minute
conference negotiations. Not only were there disagreements about the
emergency fund between authorizers and appropriators, but there was a
crucial and possibly erroneous ruling by the parliamentarian in the
other body that the emergency fund would trigger a requirement for a
60-vote majority. That ruling caused the other body to oppose the
creation of the funds in the conference report. While the amount of
money in the emergency fund ($5 billion) might end up being an
underestimate, depending on the number and severity of natural
disasters, it would have been a good start in responsibly addressing
the certainty of a need for disaster assistance funding in this big and
diverse nation. This Member has been a long-time supporter of the
establishment of such a fund and is hopeful that it will be created as
soon as possible.
The compromise includes $1.35 trillion in tax cuts over the next 11
years including $100 billion in an immediate tax cut ``stimulus'' for
the current fiscal year, and it holds overall spending to a four
percent increase. While the overall tax cut is less than President Bush
proposed, it is still the largest tax reduction in the last 20 years.
Furthermore, the budget conference report provides an historic $2.3
trillion in public debt reduction by 2011 (the maximum that can be
repaid without penalties).
Mr. Speaker, this is a good budget agreement that provides a strong
framework for the future of our country. Accordingly this Member is
pleased to support this common sense plan that funds our nation's top
priorities, provides for the continuation of the retirement of our
national debt, and which also gives tax relief to every taxpayer. At a
time of actual and projected budget surpluses the American taxpayers
deserve ``a refund'' to keep that money from being collected for
dramatic increases in spending. Therefore, the tax relief offered by
this agreement will help strengthen our economy, create jobs, and
leaves more money in the pockets of those who earned it.
In closing Mr. Speaker, this Member urges his colleagues to support
this important measure.
[[Page H2049]]
Mr. COSTELLO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the $1.35 trillion
budget resolution. While I am in favor of tax relief for the American
people, I do not believe relief should be accomplished through tax cuts
benefiting big business and the wealthiest of Americans.
I believe that the Congress can and should pass legislation giving
tax relief to the American people. That is why I have consistently
voted to eliminate the death-inheritance tax and the marriage tax
penalty.
Mr. Speaker, the Congress can and should give tax relief to the
American people. However, any tax cut should not threaten our Social
Security and Medicare programs. While we still have a surplus we should
provide a prescription drug coverage paid by Medicare, an initiative
the majority of Americans support. Even so, we should not support a
budget and ensuring tax cut that spends expected revenue 11 years down
the road. We need to have a mechanism in place to adjust the plan if
revenue projections prove to be wrong.
Today I intend to vote against the Republican budget. A more
realistic five-year spending bill should be put in place to fund
critical programs important to the American people like Social
Security, Medicare/Medicaid, national defense and other important
programs. Then we should bring a tax relief package before the Congress
that is realistic and that has a mechanism that directly ties tax cuts
to controlled spending and the amount of revenue that will come to the
federal treasury each year.
I am also troubled that this budget does nothing to ensure the
solvency of Social Security, instead relying on a commission loaded
down with individuals who have publicly supported the privatization of
Social Security. I am adamantly opposed to investing any money intended
for a secure retirement through our current Social Security system in a
stock market that is increasingly more volatile.
Mr. Speaker, today we should reject this misguided budget.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 136, the
previous question is ordered.
The question is on the conference report.
Pursuant to clause 10 of rule XX, the yeas and nays are ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 221,
nays 207, not voting 4, as follows:
[Roll No. 104]
YEAS--221
Aderholt
Akin
Armey
Bachus
Baker
Ballenger
Barr
Bartlett
Barton
Bereuter
Biggert
Bilirakis
Blunt
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bono
Brady (TX)
Brown (SC)
Bryant
Burr
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Cannon
Cantor
Capito
Castle
Chabot
Chambliss
Coble
Collins
Combest
Condit
Cooksey
Cox
Cramer
Crane
Crenshaw
Culberson
Cunningham
Davis, Jo Ann
Davis, Tom
Deal
DeLay
DeMint
Diaz-Balart
Doolittle
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Ehlers
Ehrlich
Emerson
English
Everett
Ferguson
Flake
Fletcher
Foley
Fossella
Frelinghuysen
Gallegly
Ganske
Gekas
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gilman
Goode
Goodlatte
Goss
Graham
Granger
Graves
Green (WI)
Greenwood
Grucci
Gutknecht
Hall (TX)
Hansen
Hart
Hastert
Hastings (WA)
Hayes
Hayworth
Herger
Hilleary
Hobson
Hoekstra
Horn
Hostettler
Houghton
Hulshof
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Isakson
Issa
Istook
Jenkins
John
Johnson (CT)
Johnson (IL)
Johnson, Sam
Jones (NC)
Keller
Kelly
Kennedy (MN)
Kerns
King (NY)
Kingston
Kirk
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaHood
Largent
Latham
LaTourette
Leach
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Linder
LoBiondo
Lucas (KY)
Lucas (OK)
Manzullo
McCrery
McHugh
McInnis
McKeon
Mica
Miller, Gary
Moran (KS)
Morella
Myrick
Nethercutt
Ney
Northup
Norwood
Nussle
Osborne
Ose
Otter
Oxley
Pence
Peterson (PA)
Petri
Pickering
Pitts
Platts
Pombo
Portman
Pryce (OH)
Putnam
Quinn
Radanovich
Ramstad
Regula
Rehberg
Reynolds
Riley
Rogers (KY)
Rogers (MI)
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Roukema
Royce
Ryan (WI)
Ryun (KS)
Saxton
Scarborough
Schaffer
Schrock
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shadegg
Shaw
Shays
Sherwood
Shimkus
Simmons
Simpson
Skeen
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Souder
Spence
Stearns
Sununu
Sweeney
Tancredo
Tauzin
Taylor (NC)
Terry
Thomas
Thornberry
Thune
Tiahrt
Tiberi
Toomey
Traficant
Upton
Vitter
Walden
Walsh
Wamp
Watkins
Watts (OK)
Weldon (FL)
Weldon (PA)
Weller
Whitfield
Wicker
Wilson
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
NAYS--207
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allen
Andrews
Baca
Baird
Baldacci
Baldwin
Barcia
Barrett
Bass
Becerra
Bentsen
Berkley
Berman
Berry
Bishop
Blagojevich
Blumenauer
Bonior
Borski
Boswell
Boucher
Boyd
Brady (PA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Capps
Capuano
Cardin
Carson (IN)
Carson (OK)
Clay
Clayton
Clement
Clyburn
Conyers
Costello
Coyne
Crowley
Cummings
Davis (CA)
Davis (FL)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Deutsch
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Dooley
Doyle
Edwards
Engel
Eshoo
Etheridge
Evans
Farr
Fattah
Filner
Ford
Frank
Frost
Gephardt
Gonzalez
Gordon
Green (TX)
Gutierrez
Hall (OH)
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Hefley
Hill
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Hoeffel
Holden
Holt
Honda
Hooley
Hoyer
Inslee
Israel
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
Johnson, E. B.
Jones (OH)
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kennedy (RI)
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kind (WI)
Kleczka
Kucinich
LaFalce
Lampson
Langevin
Lantos
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Lee
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Lofgren
Lowey
Luther
Maloney (CT)
Maloney (NY)
Markey
Mascara
Matheson
Matsui
McCarthy (MO)
McCarthy (NY)
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
McIntyre
McKinney
McNulty
Meehan
Meek (FL)
Meeks (NY)
Menendez
Millender-McDonald
Miller, George
Mink
Moakley
Mollohan
Moore
Moran (VA)
Murtha
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Owens
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor
Paul
Payne
Pelosi
Peterson (MN)
Phelps
Pomeroy
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Reyes
Rodriguez
Roemer
Ross
Rothman
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanchez
Sanders
Sandlin
Sawyer
Schakowsky
Schiff
Scott
Serrano
Sherman
Shows
Skelton
Slaughter
Smith (WA)
Snyder
Solis
Spratt
Stark
Stenholm
Strickland
Stupak
Tanner
Tauscher
Taylor (MS)
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Thurman
Tierney
Towns
Turner
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Velazquez
Visclosky
Waters
Watt (NC)
Waxman
Weiner
Wexler
Woolsey
Wu
Wynn
NOT VOTING--4
Cubin
Miller (FL)
Rivers
Stump
{time} 1402
Mr. SHERMAN changed his vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
Mr. TOOMEY changed his vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
So the conference report was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
____________________