[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 7 (Tuesday, February 5, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H112-H113]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 TIME FOR CONGRESS TO REIN IN SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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. Mr. Speaker, the President released his budget 
yesterday. Congress and probably many in America and throughout the 
world are starting to analyze just what this budget does.
  I compliment the President for sending out a warning to Congress that 
he is not going to stand for excessive discretionary domestic spending 
for additional social programs. I think most of us agree that his 
increase in spending for defense and national security is not only 
reasonable but is required, realizing what happened on September 11 and 
the fact of what we have discovered in Afghanistan, that there are many 
terrorists throughout the world dedicated to cause the same kind of 
damage that those 19 individuals did on September 11. We are faced with 
the fact that thousands of individuals went through that same kind of 
perverted religious indoctrination and eventually the training on how 
to be terrorists with a dedication to injure the people of the free 
world, especially in the United States, and destroy some of our symbols 
of the freedom and liberty that we have in this country. It is a $2.13 
trillion budget, a budget that has continued to grow faster than 
inflation for the last 40 years.
  Mr. Speaker, my particular concern is the fact that government is 
growing so rapidly. And I would hope that we could comply with the 
President's suggestion that we hold down the discretionary domestic 
spending so that the deficit is minimized, or hopefully there will be 
no deficit this year in terms of all funds coming into the Federal 
Government versus the funds going out of the Federal Government.
  It was only a short time ago that both Republicans and Democrats in 
this Chamber pledged not to spend the Social Security surplus money. 
Maybe, maybe the kind of war that we are in justifies spending that 
money. But if I had had my druthers, I would have preferred that the 
President gave us a budget that was balanced, at least in the unified 
sense of total revenues coming in versus total expenditures going out. 
The reason for that is I think by the President suggesting that maybe 
it is okay this year to have an $80 billion deficit, it is going to 
open the door for spenders, it is going to open the door for individual 
Members of the House and the Senate to suggest that as long as the 
President says it is okay to have a little deficit spending, let us 
have more deficit spending for some of these, quote-unquote, important 
programs that we think should go back to my particular district.
  Pork-barrel spending has increased tremendously. I think that is 
because when Members learn that most of the other Members are getting 
things for their district, it is only fair for them in the treatment of 
their particular constituents to try to get pork-barrel spending for 
their particular district.

                              {time}  1245

  I think pork-barrel spending has got to stop. It is my hope and my 
encouragement to the leadership of this House on both sides of the 
aisle that this Chamber pass a budget resolution that is in balance; 
that we say here is the possibility of the $80 billion that might go 
into a stimulus tax cut package to stimulate the economy, but, if that 
does not happen, we are going to balance the budget. The challenge now 
is holding the line on spending.
  Let me give one example of what has happened in the last 5 years. In 
1998 Congress said we promise to balance the budget by 2002. That 
balanced budget was predicated on an estimate by both OMB and CBO that 
there would be approximately $1.4 trillion of revenue by 2002.
  Guess what the revenue actually is going to be in 2002, this fiscal 
year ending next October? The actual revenue is going to be $1.9 
trillion. So my point is, Mr. Speaker, that revenues are much larger 
than we anticipated, but what happened is spending increased

[[Page H113]]

 significantly more, so that we have ended up with a great deal of 
deficit spending. The difference between $1.4 trillion and $1.9 
trillion in revenues, between the $1.4 trillion we estimated 5 years 
ago and the $1.9 trillion that is actually going to happen, even takes 
into consideration the tax cut we did last spring.
  I would suggest that it behooves the United States to have the kind 
of economic expansion we want by not going deeper into debt, causing 
extra demand by the government in the money that is available for 
borrowing, which is ultimately going to increase interest rates and 
ultimately going to have a depressive effect on the economy.
  I would close by again urging my Republican and Democratic friends to 
work towards a total unified balanced budget.

                          ____________________