[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 32 (Tuesday, March 19, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H990-H996]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY AND THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Jo Ann Davis of Virginia). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from 
Kansas (Mr. Moore) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Mr. MOORE. Madam Speaker, last year it was announced by the 
Congressional Budget Office that, and I am talking about February of 
last year, that the projected surplus over the next 10 years would be 
approximately $5.6 trillion. At that time, the surpluses ran as far as 
the eye could see, and everybody was talking about the surpluses and 
how we might use those surpluses to benefit our country.
  In fact, the debate at that time was how we might use those surpluses 
to pay down our national debt, which was approximately $5.7 trillion at 
that time. The debate was how much we should pay down our surplus and 
whether we should pay down our surplus or if we should pay down our 
surplus, if we might pay it down too fast. In fact, Chairman Alan 
Greenspan of the Federal Reserve Board said there would be some danger 
in paying down our national debt too quickly.
  Well, that problem has been solved. We no longer have surpluses. In 
fact, and I am not pointing fingers or blaming anybody here, but as the 
result of an economic slowdown, as a result of the horrible tragedy 
that confronted our Nation on September 11 last year, the economy 
slowed down, number one. It was really put into a tailspin on September 
11. The surpluses have virtually disappeared.
  In fact, the $5.6 trillion surplus last year that was projected over 
the next 10 years this year, in February of this year, was projected by 
the Congressional Budget Office to be approximately $1.6 trillion. 
Somebody said to me when I was back home, what did you all do with the 
other $4 trillion? I said, well, it was a projected surplus. 
Projections are hopes for the future.
  In fact, I speak virtually every weekend when I go home to either 
college classes or high school classes, government classes. I remember 
several

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months ago speaking to one high school government class. I was talking 
to them about the virtues of fiscal responsibility and paying down our 
national debt, and what Chairman Greenspan has taught us about long-
term interest rates benefiting and being lowered as a result of fiscal 
responsibility and fiscal restraint.
  I talked to this class about surpluses and deficits, and I said 
finally to the class, these high school seniors in the government 
class, ``How would you define a projected surplus?'' One girl raised 
her hand, and she said, ``Maybe yes, maybe no.'' I thought, what a 
great definition. She could probably give good instruction to some of 
our colleagues here in Congress who think that we can spend projected 
surpluses, which we know not to be the case.
  It is often said that our children are our future. I think no issue 
goes more directly to the heart of our Nation's future than the debt 
limit, because what we do now and what we do in the future is going to 
affect our children, our grandchildren, and their children, because 
they are going to have to pay off the debt, whatever debt we 
accumulate.
  I think, again, Congress could learn something from our children and 
do something better for our children. Apparently, Congress is one of 
the only groups that has not heard that surpluses can disappear, and 
now we are paying the price and have to make some tough choices.
  The President wants to raise and Secretary O'Neill wants to raise the 
debt limit by roughly $750 billion. This would raise the public debt 
from $5.95 trillion to $6.65 trillion. I am asking, and again, I am not 
here to lay blame or point fingers; certainly, the recession I do not 
believe was the President's fault, and certainly September 11 was not 
the President's fault. The Congress and the administration should take 
a hard look at our long-term budget priorities before writing a huge 
blank check, though, of $750 billion.
  I believe it is irresponsible to raise borrowing limits today without 
planning to protect our children and grandchildren from the 
consequences of our debt in the future. Lower numbers would be more 
acceptable at this time. I believe our discussion of the debt limit 
should be part of an overall discussion as to how to balance the 
budget.
  We cannot throw away and we should not throw away all the progress we 
made over the last several years in terms of fiscal responsibility in 
this country. There was a lot of pain involved, and I think we learned 
some tough lessons, but I think Chairman Greenspan is exactly right: If 
we can show fiscal responsibility and fiscal restraint, it is going to 
have a beneficial impact on long-term interest rates, and that affects 
everybody in this country who borrows money for a mortgage, for a car 
loan, or any other type of consumer loan.
  Too many people in Congress, both sides, Republicans and Democrats, 
worked too hard to balance the budget to so easily slip back into our 
old habits. I hope that does not happen.
  The President said several times, and I agree with the President 
wholeheartedly, there are a couple of times when it is appropriate and 
sometimes necessary to engage in deficit spending, short-term deficit 
spending. One is in time of war, and the other is in time of recession.
  We were in recession, we are told now we are coming out of recession, 
but we may still be in a time of war. I do not begrudge what the 
President has done and what Congress has done in supporting the 
President in terms of some deficit spending. But what I do want and 
what I think we desperately need in this country is a plan to get us 
back to fiscal responsibility when the threat to our Nation is past.
  When they borrow, when families and businesses put together plans to 
pay off their debt, I go home virtually every weekend and I hear from 
families that they live by three simple rules, and they wish Congress 
would as well: Number one, do not spend more money than you make; 
number two, pay off your debts; number three, invest in the basics and 
for our future.
  The basics for the country are national security, national defense, 
Social Security, Medicare, some transportation, things of that nature. 
The basics for a family are food, shelter, education, health care, and 
all the things that I think we could agree on.
  I really think that Congress and this country need to be more like 
families in managing their budgets. Our government really should not be 
any different. We need a long-term plan to pay off our debt. Raising 
the debt limit by $750 billion just allows Congress to continue its 
free-spending ways. We should not give a blank check to a Congress that 
has proven it cannot control its own spending.
  Several of my colleagues and I have offered a substitute budget that 
would raise the debt limit by approximately $100 billion to $150 
billion up to the end of this fiscal year, September 30 of 2002. This 
would prevent a fiscal default, it would stabilize markets, and it 
gives Congress and the President time to develop a long-term plan to 
return to balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility.
  We should not play partisan games with the financial health of our 
country. An unprecedented Federal default would wreak havoc on our 
economy. But that is only slightly worse than the bleak outlook we will 
leave our children if we do not get back to fiscal restraint and fiscal 
responsibility.
  Higher debts now mean higher taxes for our children, and that is 
grossly, grossly unfair. We are willing to raise the debt limit, but it 
must be part of a plan to balance the budget and stop spending the 
Social Security surpluses. Nothing less than our future and the future 
of our children and future generations in our country is at stake.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner).
  Mr. TURNER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Kansas for 
yielding to me. It is good to be here on this floor tonight with our 
fellow Blue Dog Democrats, who have consistently stood up in this 
Congress for fiscal responsibility.
  I think all of us tonight have a great deal of concern about the 
suggestion that we increase our statutory debt ceiling, because we all 
know that the statutory debt ceiling is the last remaining line of 
defense to protect us from total fiscal irresponsibility in Washington.
  We all thought that there was another line that protected us from 
fiscal irresponsibility, and that is the pledge of this Congress never 
to spend the Social Security trust fund monies on anything other than 
Social Security.
  Back in 1997, all of us here tonight were present when we voted for 
the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. It reversed a trend that had been 
present in the Federal Government for 30 years of spending every year 
more money than the government took in. And for 3 years after that 
Balanced Budget Act, we actually had a surplus in the everyone.
  As the gentleman from Kansas pointed out, just a year ago it was 
projected that we would have over $5.6 trillion in surplus funds 
flowing into the Federal Treasury over the next decade, but then came a 
major tax cut, a recession, and a war. That surplus has disappeared.
  This year, for the first time in the last 4 years, the Congress is 
looking at a budget that will once again return us into deficit 
spending, will rob the Social Security trust funds of those payroll 
taxes that are paid in by the working people of this country for Social 
Security, and that money will once again be spent to run the general 
government. That is wrong. And since we have crossed that line of 
spending Social Security trust fund monies, something that we pledged 
on the floor of this House not to do at least half a dozen times in 
votes cast by the Members here, there is no other protection against 
fiscal irresponsibility except the statutory debt ceiling. That is that 
limit in law that says that the Federal Government cannot go over a 
total of $5.9 trillion into debt.
  Most of us cannot understand how in the world we ever got in a 
position that we would authorize over $5 trillion in debt, but when the 
administration comes to this Congress and says that we have to increase 
the debt ceiling by $750 billion, any Member who is fiscally 
conservative will say, wait a minute, where is the line of defense to 
protect us from fiscal irresponsibility now? It will be gone.
  Now, we all understand that in times of national emergency, there may 
be justification for a short period of deficit spending if we are in a 
war, as we are now. The recession has brought

[[Page H992]]

Federal revenues down. It could be that the emergency presented by war 
would say in the short term deficit spending may be necessary, but only 
short term.
  What we have projected now by the Congressional Budget Office is a 
decade of ever-increasing national debt.

                              {time}  2115

  Deficit spending is wrong. We would not do it at our house or yours. 
We would not do it in your business or mine because we know it just 
would not work. We all understand that we need to pay our debts. Why 
cannot Washington understand that same principle? The reason is that 
government can print money, and we are going to continue to print money 
if we increase the statutory debt ceiling, and that debt is going to be 
owed by our children and by our grandchildren.
  Our debt today costs this country and the taxpayers of this Nation 
almost a billion dollars a day just to cover the interest payments on 
that national debt. What a waste of resources. Think what we could do 
if we could save that almost billion dollars every day we spend on 
interest. Talk about waste in government. The biggest item of waste in 
government today is the almost billion dollars that we pay every day in 
interest on that national debt.
  So the Blue Dog Democrats believe that holding the line on increasing 
the debt ceiling is the only way to protect this Congress from 
continuing down that reckless path of going deeper and deeper and 
deeper into debt. I think we all understand that when we are in war, as 
I said a moment ago, we may have to do deficit spending in the short 
term; and we would all understand if there was a proposal before this 
House to increase the debt ceiling enough to cover the needs of 
national defense in time of war, but that is not what the proposal is. 
The proposal is many times over that amount, and it is designed to 
allow this Congress to continue down a road of deficit spending for at 
least another 2 years.
  We have got to hold the line. We need to stand up for limiting the 
amount of increase in the debt ceiling. It is our only line of defense 
in order to prevent this Congress from fiscal irresponsibility.
  We all know that increasing debt is morally reprehensible. Why should 
we spend money today, whether it is for defense or any other purpose, 
and expect our children some day to pay for it?
  We are in a war today. Many men and women are in uniform in faraway 
places tonight, defending freedom, fighting for this country. They are 
making a tremendous sacrifice, and yet it seems that the American 
people are not being called on to join in that sacrifice because the 
American people have been given a pass, a pass that says, you do not 
have to pay for this war now. You can let your children pay for it.
  So when those young men and women in uniform return to our country 
and begin to enter the workforce and build their careers and their life 
savings, they would have to look forward to paying for the war that 
they fought in the first part of the 21st century.
  Now that is wrong. And the only way we can stop it is to hold the 
line on the request to increase the debt ceiling in our law.
  We know that as we continue to increase debt, the demand for credit 
from our government increases, and it has the effect, the economists 
tell us, of increasing the interest rate on all kinds of loans sought 
by American families. So if we continue down the road of fiscal 
irresponsibility and allow this debt to continue to mount and mount and 
mount, not only do we have increasing interest costs to the Federal 
Government, but the cost of borrowing money for every American family 
will be higher because the Federal Government's appetite for credit 
pushes all interest rates up for everybody. So if you want to buy a car 
or buy a new home and finance it through a home mortgage, or send your 
kids to college and have to borrow the money to do it, you will pay 
higher interest rates in the years ahead because of the fiscal 
irresponsibility of your Federal Government.
  We hope that the Members of this Congress will join with the Blue 
Dogs in standing up for fiscal responsibility, for paying down that $5 
trillion debt instead of allowing it to continue it to go up. That is 
an issue that is important to the American people and the American 
family, and our failure to deal with it responsibly will result in 
fiscal catastrophe for this country because we cannot continue to allow 
debt to mount higher and higher and higher.
  So I am very hopeful that our colleagues in the House will join with 
the Blue Dog Democrats and stand up for the proposition that we should 
not increase the debt ceiling by the amount of money that has been 
requested, and preserve that one last line of defense for fiscal 
responsibility.
  Mr. MOORE. Madam Speaker, at this time I would like to recognize 
another gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), and I yield to him.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend for taking the time 
tonight to permit us again to discuss in what we hope are very 
rational, simple-to-understand terms what we are proposing.
  About a year ago we stood on this floor in opposition to the budget 
that ultimately passed. We are in the minority. When you are in the 
minority you usually lose. But we also stood on the floor and offered 
some comments and some suggestions that we thought made a little bit of 
common sense.
  That projected surplus that everybody was talking about was 
projected. It was a guesstimate. It was an estimate. It was not 
necessarily real. It was not necessarily unreal. But we thought the 
conservative thing to do with our economic game plan for America was 
simply to take half of it and pay down the national debt. We were 
ridiculed by some saying that we were going to pay down the debt too 
fast.
  Others suggested that it was the people's money and, therefore, we 
are going to give it back to them. Very popular suggestion. Some of us 
were also reminding people that it was the people's debt. Again, we 
were told do not worry about it. The national debt, the debt ceiling, 
is not going to have to be increased for 7 years. And we said, we hope 
you are right. We hope that these estimates are right. But just in case 
there may be an emergency, and we were not prophetic, no one could have 
foreseen September 11, 2001, but it happened.
  We did not believe necessarily the stock market was going to go up 
forever. We have always recognized that there are going to be ups and 
downs; and we had just come through 8 years, the longest single 
economic expansion in the history of our country doing whatever we were 
doing until the 1990s, which happened to be beginning to balance the 
Federal budget.
  And I give credit to my friends on the other side for being a part of 
that. And that is what we are here tonight saying, look at some of the 
things we did and said in the last 6 or 8 years and try to be a little 
bit consistent.
  What we are suggesting is that some of the same things that occurred 
in 1996 in which the majority party, the same folks that are in control 
tonight, demanded that ``The President of the United States and the 
Congress shall enact legislation in the first session of the 104th 
Congress to achieve a balanced budget not later than the fiscal year 
2002 as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office.''
  What an irony. Here we are, March 19, 2002, recognizing that the 
balanced budgets that we have achieved over the last 2 or 3 years are 
now out the window as far as the eye can see. The President's budget 
that he submitted to the Congress does not balance without using Social 
Security for the next 10 years.
  We Blue Dogs are suggesting that is irresponsible budgeting; that we, 
in fact, are not unreasonable to ask the leadership of this body in the 
budget tomorrow and in the actions coming up to submit a plan that will 
balance the Federal budget by 2007 without using Social Security trust 
funds. That is all that we ask.
  Some of us have been here and voted consistently for these type of 
budgets. That is what I hope to do again tomorrow. But tonight we are 
calling attention to the fact that we believe it is irresponsible to 
ask the Congress to borrow $750 billion without a plan of how we are 
going to get our budget back in balance, other than the plan that we 
are now under which, by their own administration, does not balance 
until, well, it does not. We do not go out past

[[Page H993]]

10 years. In fact, this budget we will consider tomorrow is going out 
only 5; that is what is bothering us.
  We are perfectly willing to vote for a clean debt ceiling increase 
with certain provisos. I do not want to see us go through what we did 
back in 1995 and 1996 in which we had members of the other party 
standing on this floor threatening to impeach Secretary Rubin for doing 
the things that we are now being told by the majority leadership that 
we are going to do, borrow on our employees, our civil service, 
military retirement, borrow on those retirement funds and temporarily 
suspend paying interest in order to get by. Why do that?
  There are those of us in the Blue Dog coalition that are looking for 
a way to be bipartisan on something other than the war. I do not 
understand why the leadership of this House demands when it comes to 
fiscal policy that the only votes that will ever come on this floor are 
those that get 218 Republican votes, when there are some of us, we 
heard the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner), we heard the gentleman 
from Kansas (Mr. Moore). We do not just say that we want to return to 
fiscal responsibility; we are prepared to act. But the budget that is 
submitted tomorrow by the chairman of the Committee on the Budget's own 
admission is not in balance.
  And, again, I repeat what the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore) said, 
2003 is a different story. We are at war, an unusual war by the fact 
that it has not been declared by Congress and yet we are at war, and we 
understand that and we are perfectly willing to fund whatever it takes, 
both domestically and internationally, to cover that cost.
  But why, we ask, would we want to just arbitrarily give a blank check 
to borrow $750 billion without a plan of how we are going to use it? 
What are we going to spend it for? Why should we just arbitrarily send 
the bill to our children and grandchildren for $750 billion additional, 
following an economic game plan that has already put us into a position 
where we cannot balance the budget for 10 years without going into the 
Social Security trust fund after we voted last year five times on the 
lockbox, cross my heart, we are not going to touch Social Security 
again. And yet, here we are, the first action of this year, we are 
going to do it again.
  Not with my vote. But if we can have a little bit of cooperation, 
some of us submitted an alternative today that we will talk about 
tomorrow. But tonight we are just talking about a simple request.

                              {time}  2130

  What is it that is so wrong about submitting a plan that will get us 
to balance? What is it that is so right by sending a plan up that we 
have got to change the manner in which we score it? We agreed back in 
1995 on a massive vote, and there were 148 of my friends on this side 
and 48 Democrats that voted and said we want the President to submit a 
balanced budget. In fact, we demand that the President submit a 
balanced budget; and we want that budget to protect future generations, 
ensure Medicare solvency, reform welfare, provide adequate funding for 
Medicaid, education, agriculture, national defense, veterans, and the 
environment. Furthermore, the balanced budget shall adopt tax policies 
to help working families and to stimulate future economic growth. That 
is what we said in 1996; and we got 277 votes for it, including 48 
Democrats, 229 Republicans.
  What happened? If that is what we required President Clinton to do, 
why are we not equally asking President Bush, and I do not think it 
will take a whole lot of encouraging. I think this President will be 
amenable. In fact, I am almost sure he will be amenable, but why is 
that some on the other side refuse to bring that kind of a resolution 
to the floor and instead think of ways to circumvent, to circumvent the 
law of the land, to circumvent how we in fact avoid increasing the debt 
ceiling on a clean up and down vote, when the same folks and I will 
read quote after quote after quote of the same folks that said so many 
bad things when it was Secretary Rubin doing it?
  We Blue Dogs pride ourselves in consistency. We are not perfect. I am 
sure that somebody will find something that I have done or said that is 
not totally consistent, but I bet I will be 90 percent consistent in 
saying let us submit a plan for how we balance our budget without 
touching Social Security and Medicare. As we Blue Dogs stood on this 
floor last year and argued for our budget in which we said take half of 
the projected surplus, pay down the debt, take the other half, divide 
it equally between the necessary increases in spending for defense, for 
education, for health care, for veterans and for agriculture, and the 
other 25 percent, a tax cut targeted at helping the economy and working 
families.
  Well, we lost on our plan. If we had passed our plan, we would have 
been in a heck of a lot better shape tonight on all accounts, but today 
is a new year. Tonight we stand up again in asking, submit a balanced 
budget plan. Show us why we need to arbitrarily borrow $750 billion. 
Show us what the money is going to be used for. The best way to do that 
is to go slow, to go slow. Do not just give us a blank check anymore 
than if you were a father and your son had just exceeded his credit 
card, and you are not going to go out and say, well, great, son, that 
was wonderful that you exceeded your limit, I am going to give you 
another $2,000 on your credit card; just keep on doing whatever you 
have been doing. Families, we do not operate that way. We should not 
operate the country that way.
  So tonight we are just, in fact, saying we are ready to support a 
plan. We will roll up our sleeves and work with my colleagues on a 
plan. Try us. Just try us and see what might happen, instead of the 
partisanship that we see time and time again on economic issues. And 
here I will say if my colleagues sincerely believe in their budget, if 
they sincerely believe that it is in our Nation's best interest to 
borrow on our children's and grandchildren's grand future and the next 
10 years and the Social Security trust fund, then just stay with my 
colleagues' budget and I will respect them for that.
  Anybody that stands up on this floor and does what they say they 
believe in and stands behind it with their vote and argues for it, I 
will respect them; and I hope they respect those of us that have a 
little bit different version of this, and we will be arguing for that 
tomorrow, assuming we will be allowed to have our amendment on the 
floor tomorrow and have that amendment, which I certainly expect and 
hope that we will.
  With these comments I would now yield back to the gentleman and to 
other of my colleagues who have come here to discuss this issue 
tonight, and I thank him for yielding.
  Mr. MOORE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Phelps).
  Mr. PHELPS. Madam Speaker, proudly I stand here tonight, with my Blue 
Dog colleagues, a group that not only just offers rhetoric but is ready 
to back up what we say. That is why I am proud to be a member of this 
organization. We are consistent. We say what we mean with integrity and 
we intend to accomplish, if we have the cooperation from the other side 
of the aisle, what needs to be accomplished on behalf of this great 
Nation and the Americans that deserve the best attention.
  So I want to thank my colleagues for their comments, for giving me 
this opportunity to speak on such important issues.
  I want to make it clear that I understand the need for the 
President's increased investment in defense and homeland security. 
However, I do not want this to come at the cost of economic security 
for our folks at home.
  First and foremost, we need a budget that is made up of honest 
numbers. One of the most frustrating things I have experienced since I 
have been a Member of Congress, now my second term, is to think we 
would go to the ultimate degree to press for investigating private 
corporations such as we are right in the midst of now, the Enrons, and 
saying you mean your accounting firms do not even know what is what, 
what the numbers are, no one can come forward and swear in front of our 
committees on a Bible that these are accurate numbers?
  Yet we as elected officials from all across America cannot even agree 
what is in the bank or what is real or what is funny money or fuzzy or 
what is projected versus what we can really count on. We really know, 
if the honest truth was brought out, we really know, but

[[Page H994]]

not very many in this political game will step forward and admit it 
because with that comes a price; and no matter what the price is, for 
me I have to tell my colleagues the honest truth about the honest 
numbers.
  We need a budget that is honest in numbers. We need to base it on the 
CBO, Congressional Budget Office, and not the OMB, the Office of 
Management and Budget, estimates. We bring fiscal discipline to this 
body. The Blue Dogs and others that might share our philosophical 
positions bring fiscal discipline.
  As a former teacher I always like to break down the real root words 
and meanings of words that we throw around that is supposed to mean a 
lot. Do my colleagues know where discipline comes from? The word 
disciple. We can reflect on disciples of Christ. Disciple means the 
ultimate example, someone to pattern your life after, to live by, to 
hold up in esteem, on a pedestal. That is what we are as elected 
officials. We are disciples, offering discipline when it comes to 
spending, with honest numbers. Let us follow the examples of the 
ultimate people of integrity in our history.
  For the past couple of years, the Republican leadership has made 
promises to protect Social Security, but this budget is far from 
protecting Social Security. Many of my constituents depend on Social 
Security as a means of comfort after they have worked hard all their 
lives. I am talking about the most frail, elderly citizens, the lowest 
echelon of income in America.
  The budget calls for tapping the Social Security trust fund to 
support other government programs every year for the next 10 years at 
the tune of $1.5 trillion. Our Nation cannot afford to put our Social 
Security system at risk when it is depended on by so many of our most 
vulnerable citizens.
  The budget must address the declining Social Security trust fund. We 
must pay down the public-held debt; and I know and I understand there 
is a serious question, whether we should increase the debt limit coming 
soon; but I believe we need to hold off on increasing the debt limit 
unless there are certain provisions that we can come to agreement on 
that would help preserve what we know is true with honest numbers until 
we can bring the budget into balance without putting the Social 
Security surplus into jeopardy. That is the balancing act. We can do it 
if we have the will.
  As Americans, it is our job to work together to take care of our 
folks at home. As politicians, it is up to us to come up with the best 
possible way to do that. We need to work together. It is easy to say 
that every day we need to work together, to come up with a plan that 
will fight the war on terror but at the same time does not sacrifice 
the needs of our citizens at home.
  The citizens in my district are downright puzzled, confused, as to 
where the surpluses went; and I know we have outlined all the real 
things that happened that took our surpluses away. We can talk about 
September 11, a terrible event, still paying the price, probably will 
for several years to come, psychologically, emotionally, financially, 
economically, every way possible. The recession, played down, really 
underestimated, and yet was real and still is, and give away in 
whatever way you want to define spending up here.

  Some say spending is when you want your project funded. Spending 
takes on a lot of different definitions since I have been here and 
found out. Spending is about what my colleagues want to accuse the 
other side of the aisle or the other people of using it for; but when 
it is for my colleagues' purposes, and the majority, it is not called 
spending. We use something else to justify what are not real numbers, 
honesty in budgeting.
  Finally, the priorities. If we do not think it is priority for the 
Americans to entrust their elected officials to manage their money, how 
much did we hear about we want to return their money? What do my 
colleagues think Social Security is that is checked off of everybody's 
check every week for several years as these elderly people are now in 
the end of their life waiting for? The word ``security'' means stable, 
someone can depend on it. Not true. It is not true.
  I just hope that we can work together, come up with a plan that will 
give some compromises to some, stipulative outline of issues that will 
bring us to a reasonable debt limit; and then when we get down to the 
end of the summer, early fall, we will know exactly where we stand; but 
until then, we better be cautious. We better be truthful with the 
American people and save Social Security, pay down the national debt, 
win the war on terrorism.
  Can we do it? We are the greatest country in the world. I bet my 
colleagues we can do it.
  Mr. MOORE. Madam Speaker, next I yield to the distinguished gentleman 
from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner).
  Mr. TANNER. Madam Speaker, I am not going to add a lot to what my 
colleagues have said on the technical side of it. I just want to say 
that I came here from Tennessee in 1988; and when I came here, people 
said, John, please, if you get elected, go up there and do something 
about this horrendous national debt. We are borrowing more money every 
year as a people than we can pay back in our lifetimes, and we want you 
all to do something about it. Please, if you go up there, concentrate 
on retiring the debt and living within our means.
  Now, we have tried to do that and I have been here, the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) has been here longer than I have, and this is 
hard. This is not easy. The easiest thing that anybody who seeks 
political office can do is to promise a road or a bridge or a dam and 
promise to cut taxes all at the same time. That is what we hear on the 
stump, and this is really tough work that we are trying to do here as 
Blue Dogs because we are doing something that is oftentimes not 
politically expedient.
  We do things that we hope are in the best interest of the country and 
our children that are not maybe politically popular today.

                              {time}  2145

  I mean, it is tough to stand here with a new President, as we did 
last year, and say we really need to slow down on all these projections 
and all of these ideas that money is flowing into Washington as far as 
the eye can see. That is what we were told.
  We said, to be conservative in our own business, if it were our own 
business, we would not run it that way. We would not devote 100 percent 
of a projection for 10 years to a program that we did last year. We 
tried to say, that is not a conservative view, it is not the way we 
would run our own businesses. Why on earth do our colleagues want us to 
run the country's business that way?
  So last year, as my colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Stenholm), said, we were unsuccessful when we tried to say we need to 
slow down on this.
  And the funniest thing I have heard since I have been here is when 
people around here actually, with a straight face, said that we are in 
danger of paying off the debt too quickly. That reminded me of a guy my 
size, weighs 400 pounds, and the first night on my diet somebody asks 
me how I feel and I say I am worried about becoming emaciated. To me, 
that was almost ludicrous, but that really is what we were told by 
people with a straight face.
  As the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore), the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Stenholm), and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) have said, 
nobody is prophetic. We do not know, I certainly do not know what the 
price of cotton is going to be next Friday, yet we are supposed to base 
how we conduct the business of our citizens of this country on these 
projections.
  And by the way, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Phelps) was talking 
about us, and we do have a very special place here because we are 
privileged people to represent free men and women. That is an honor 
that none of us deserve, but as President Jimmy Carter said, the 
highest office in this land of ours is that of citizen, because a 
citizen is the owner of our country.
  So we are very, very privileged people to be where we are, and with 
that privilege comes an awesome responsibility. And sometimes that 
responsibility is to do tough things; to say, look, in response to, we 
need to give the people their money back, it is theirs. Well, kids are 
people, too, and they do not have a voice here. But they are people, 
and there are a bunch of them that are not yet born, and we are

[[Page H995]]

spending their money tomorrow if we pass this budget, and they do not 
even know about it.
  Somebody asked me one time if I would agree to a supermajority to 
raise taxes. I said, no, there is plenty of pressure in this system not 
to raise taxes. But I will vote for a supermajority to borrow money, 
because the people we are spending their money are not here to tell us, 
please do not do that to me, I am 2 years old.
  But what my colleagues are doing is going to not only make sure that 
our citizens are overtaxed, because they do not have the willpower to 
say no to either a tax cut that is irresponsible or to a spending 
program that is irresponsible. My colleagues do not have the willpower 
to say no to that, so they want to put it on me. That is basically what 
has been going on around here, and it is very simply wrong.
  So as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) said, this debt limit is 
really one of the last lines of defense we have to insist that the 
people who run the House here, the majority party, bring a budget to 
the floor. We cannot bring anything to the floor. We can ask for it, as 
we did tonight in the Committee on Rules, a substitute that puts at 
least in place some safeguards, but we cannot bring anything to the 
floor here because we are in the minority. And that is all right as 
long as we are treated fairly and we get a vote on what we have asked 
for and then people know.
  But it is not easy to stand here as someone who asks for votes every 
2 years and say, as much as I would like to, we just simply cannot 
afford that program in west Tennessee or middle Tennessee or east 
Tennessee or wherever; or we cannot afford to do some of the taxing 
initiatives in terms of tax cuts that we have been doing. We do not 
have the money. So I would hope that as we go into the budget debate 
tomorrow, we would keep in mind that we are not just talking about 
ourselves, but we are talking about our country.
  I have been to countries that do not have a government. I have been 
to a country that is broke. And I have yet to find a country on the 
face of the earth that is strong and free and broke. And that is where 
we are headed when we are paying a billion dollars a day in interest. 
And that is going up every day because we simply, in the here and now, 
say let us give the people back their money, they earned it, it belongs 
to them. And it does, except kids are people, too, and we have not done 
them right. And anybody who says we have, I would have to take violent 
disagreement with that.

  We are going to be overtaxed the rest of our lives, and we should be, 
because we are paying 13 percent interest before we ever get to tanks, 
before we ever get to any of the projects that we need in the country 
to give private enterprise the opportunity, with the infrastructure 
that only government can provide, the ability to grow and create 
private sector jobs, which is, after all, the backbone of the country. 
We understand that. But we are going to be overtaxed the rest of our 
lives because people back in the 1970s and 1980s spent more money than 
they were willing to pay for, and now we are being asked to do the same 
thing.
  We are going to make sure, if we keep on this course, that not only 
are we overtaxed the rest of our lives, but our children are going to 
be overtaxed all of their working lives because we simply cannot find 
within ourselves the ability to make tough, hard decisions that are not 
politically expedient.
  So, Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague, the gentleman from 
Kansas (Mr. Moore), for having this special order tonight and inviting 
us to participate.
  Mr. MOORE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee, and 
next I am going to yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff).
  Mr. SCHIFF. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Kansas for 
yielding to me and also thank him for the extraordinary and bipartisan 
work he has done to try to bring America's budget into balance.
  America needs a wartime budget. We need a budget that will provide 
the resources necessary to win the war on terrorism, that will 
stimulate our economy without aggravating our deficits, and that will 
protect and reform Social Security and Medicare but not finance the war 
out of its trust funds. In sum, our country needs a budget that will 
call on the American people to make sacrifices to win, sacrifices they 
are willing to make if only their leaders will have the courage to ask 
and speak plainly.
  The President's budget is not there yet. The budget we will vote on 
in the House this week calls for the most significant increase in 
military spending in more than two decades, and that increase will 
enjoy bipartisan support. The budget also proposes significant new tax 
cuts, and the House leadership has also signaled its interest in making 
last year's tax cuts permanent. Domestic spending increases only 
slightly or remains flat. And the budget requires sacrifice.
  There is only one problem: It is not we who are being asked to 
sacrifice. It is our children.
  Advocates of the budget call it balanced. Regrettably, it is anything 
but balanced. The $2.1 trillion budget uses $200 billion in Social 
Security trust funds to pay for other programs, spends all of the 
Medicare surplus on priorities other than paying down the national 
debt, fails to count the cost of the $43 billion economic stimulus 
package just signed by the President, assumes that spending levels on 
domestic priorities will be reduced, including the President's own 
education initiative, and that mammoth problems, like the growth of the 
alternative minimum tax, will go unaddressed.
  But even these glaring omissions are not enough to balance the 
budget. The gimmickry goes further.
  The budget addresses only the next 5 years, not 10, to hide big late-
year costs. And the budget relies on the White House's own budget 
numbers rather than the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office 
estimates, which are more conservative. Although institutional memories 
are sometimes short, I am sure none will forget that only 6 years ago 
the House Republicans shut down the government twice when President 
Clinton failed to use CBO estimates to balance the budget.
  It is no wonder that Secretary of the Treasury O'Neill will soon be 
before Congress asking us to raise the debt limit so that the United 
States of America can borrow another $750 billion on top of the $5.9 
trillion we already owe to continue paying its bills. Only last year, 
the Secretary predicted that an increase in the debt limit would not be 
necessary for 7 years, and the President and Congress vowed we would 
never dip into Social Security.
  It is true that the war on terrorism and long- deferred improvements 
to our military readiness have required the largest increase in the 
defense budget in two decades. But this increase of $45 billion in 
military costs and almost $20 billion in homeland security are but a 
fraction of the multi-trillion dollar change in the Nation's economic 
projections over the next 10 years. The tax cut recession played a much 
more significant role in expending the anticipated surplus, with the 
recession having the largest impact in the short term and the tax cuts 
playing a more prominent role in the long term.
  But whatever the causes of our current economic shortfall, the fact 
remains that the administration has yet to come up with a budget and an 
intermediate or even long-term plan to restore balance to our budget 
and stop deficit spending.
  When we had a $5.6 trillion surplus and no war, we could afford a 
substantial tax cut, and I supported the President. But now we are at 
war, we have no surplus, and we are spending the Social Security trust 
fund. To propose dramatic new tax cuts at a time like this, or to make 
permanent those we enacted before, before it is clear whether we can 
afford them, means financing the war out of our parents' retirement and 
out of our children's education; and this just is not right.
  While it may be necessary to deficit spend in the short term, while 
we are at war and not yet fully recovered from the recession, Congress 
should work with the administration to develop a balanced budget for 
America's future that does not rely on raiding Social Security. 
Everything must be on the table. Secretary O'Neill's request for a 
mammoth increase in our national debt should be rejected in favor of a 
small, short-term increase and a plan to return our country to balanced 
budgets.

[[Page H996]]

  America has always been willing to sacrifice to win its wars. She 
still is. But she must be asked by leaders who are willing to speak 
candidly about what is at stake and what it will take to win. She must 
be asked by those with faith in the essential generosity of the 
American people and who will not tell us that we can have our cake and 
eat it too. Our prosperity and that of our children may depend on it.
  Mr. MOORE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California. I 
also want to thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner), the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Phelps), 
and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner) for their remarks this 
evening.
  I think we have heard for just about the last hour, Madam Speaker, 
some really good advice about what we need to be looking at in the 
future and what we need to do as a country. We can always choose the 
easy path; or we can try to do what is right by our children, by our 
grandchildren, and for our country. Doing what is right may sometimes 
be harder, but it has its own rewards.
  I think we need to look at fiscal responsibility and a plan back to 
fiscal discipline for the future of our great country.

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