[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 5 (Tuesday, January 29, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H85]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS AND CHALLENGES FACING THE NATION IN 2002

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Capito). Pursuant to the order of the 
House of January 23, 2002, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Madam Speaker, the President of the United 
States is going to give his first official State of the Union Address. 
It will be the third time he has spoken before a joint session. I think 
the challenges facing this Nation are great.
  The President certainly is going to talk about the success so far in 
our war against terror, but I suspect he is also going to remind us of 
the tremendous challenge that we have, as a Congress, as an American 
people, to continue this fight. We do not know how long this war is 
going to go on. It could be for generations. The best defense against 
terror in this case is a good offense to get rid of the terror cells 
around the world.
  I think this is an excellent opportunity for this country and the 
rest of the free world to push as vigorously to resolve, hopefully once 
and for all, the conflicts in Ireland, between Palestine and Israel, 
and certainly dispute between the two nuclear powers of India and 
Pakistan looking at Kashmir. Many things can be done.
  I hope this Congress can continue to work with this President, even 
though this is an election year. Most people understand that in an 
election year the Republicans would like to regain a majority in the 
Senate and keep a majority in the House. Democrats would like to do 
what they can to retake a majority of the House and keep their majority 
in the Senate.
  I think the challenges are also great on spending. We have already 
acknowledged that we are going to reach into the surpluses of the 
Social Security Trust Fund and spend those revenues for other 
government spending. We had an emergency in this country on September 
11, and like any family or any business that has a serious emergency, 
you come up with the funds to accommodate and fix that emergency as 
best you can.
  Those families and those businesses normally say, look, we are going 
to put aside less important expenditures and we are going to deal with 
the emergency. I hope that the President says the same thing 
ultimately, that, look, we now have to do a better job at prioritizing 
spending. We are going to deal with this emergency the way we have to. 
We will win the war on terrorism, but let us not drive this country 
deeper and deeper into debt, which means that we put our kids and our 
grandkids and our great-grandkids at risk in paying for the 
overexpenditure of this government.
  Prioritizing to me means that we cut down on some of the social 
programs that we were so willing to expand after the Cold War, as we 
cut down on military, as we cut down on our intelligence community 
efforts, and left ourselves weaker than we should have been September 
11. I think a good example in showing how much spending has grown and 
become the problem of us running into a deficit is our projections of 
1997.
  In 1998, we promised that we were going to balance the budget by 
2002. At that time the projections for revenues for 2002 was a little 
over $1.4 trillion, and we were going to balance the budget because we 
were disciplining ourselves on spending. Actually the revenues 
projected last week for 2002 by CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, 
were approximately $1.9 trillion. So more revenues coming into the 
Federal Government than we thought was possible but still a deficit. 
Why? Because spending has increased even more than the dramatic 
increase in revenues in this country.
  So the question is and the challenge is, will the President tonight 
push this Congress and the American people to start prioritizing? Can 
we minimize the partisan bickering and blaming as we try to come to 
grips with a budget that is going to be challenging, if we are to avoid 
jeopardizing Social Security and Medicare and other programs by 
overspending, and borrowing more, and going deeper in debt?
  Welfare reform I hope the President talks about because the welfare 
reform bill that we passed in 1996 is expiring this year. There has 
already been some suggestions from some of the Senators that we have to 
modify work provisions. I think the welfare reform bill has been 
extremely successful, and we have got to be very careful not to pass a 
bad welfare bill.

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