[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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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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