[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 51 (Tuesday, April 30, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H1757-H1762]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            THE ABCs OF SECURING THE FUTURE OF OUR CHILDREN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the 
House and Nation tonight for a few minutes. The Blue Dog Coalition is 
going to use this hour to talk a little bit about ABCs.
  Mr. Speaker, some may wonder, well, that is unusual for the Blue Dogs 
to be talking about the ABCs, but let me tell you a little bit about 
the Blue Dogs. We are a group of 33 Members of Congress, men and women, 
from all around the Nation that spends a great deal of our focus and 
efforts and time and resources here in Congress asking the Congress to 
act responsibly in its fiscal and budgeting matters.
  We believe that this Congress and this Nation in the last year-plus 
has moved away from fiscal responsibility, and, as a result, we are 
endangering our children's future. So what we want to do tonight, Mr. 
Speaker, is talk about the ABCs of securing our children's future.
  When Congress considered the budget last year, Mr. Speaker, the Blue 
Dogs warned about the danger of making long-term commitments for tax 
cuts or new spending programs based on projected surpluses. In less 
than a year's time, we have seen a dramatic reversal of the once 
promising budgetary outlook. We now face projections of deficits and 
increasing debt for the rest of the decade that go far beyond the 
temporary impact of the economic downturn or cost of the war on 
terrorism.
  Congress and the President need to sit down, we need to roll up our 
sleeves, and we need to have an honest and open discussion about what 
we need to do as a Nation, as a Congress, to put the budget back in 
order, starting with the ABCs of fiscal discipline.
  The Blue Dogs have outlined four solutions to avoid leaving our 
children and our grandchildren with the consequences of today's 
irresponsible budgeting decisions. The members of the Blue Dogs who are 
here tonight to address this House are going to talk about those four 
solutions. I want to outline them very briefly.
  Number one is assuring honesty and accountability. We believe that 
the Budget Act of 1990, which expires later this year, should be 
reinstituted by this Congress. Unless we renew our budget discipline, 
Congress will continue to find ways to break its own rules and pass 
more legislation that puts more red ink on the national ledger.
  The Budget Enforcement Act, of course, has two major provisions. One, 
it sets in place discretionary spending limits for 5 years; secondly, 
it extends and expands pay-go rules. The pay-go rule is simply 
legislation that says that mandatory spending or revenues that increase 
the deficit must be offset.
  Secondly, the ``B'' of the ABCs is balancing the budget without 
raiding Social Security. We believe that this Congress should pass a 
balanced budget amendment to the Constitution which makes it a 
violation of the Constitution to deficit spend, unless there is an 
extraordinary vote of the Congress or an extraordinary reason to do so.
  Thirdly, we believe that the third point that we would advance is 
what we call climbing out of the deficit ditch. That is, there should 
be a plan to restore balance to our Federal books, and that, of course, 
is going to be an issue that we get to talk about a lot in the near 
future because of the need to raise the Federal debt ceiling.
  Fourthly, the fourth part of our ABCs is Defending Our Children From 
Paying Our Bills Act. This would require a supermajority to borrow 
money by the U.S. Congress. Many in this Chamber have, over the years, 
proposed that we would require a three-fifths vote to consider 
legislation that would raise taxes or some other sort of supermajority. 
Many of the Members of Congress support this notion, and we think that 
there ought to be also legislation which would require a three-fifths 
vote to borrow money.

  I would like at this time to call on Members of the Blue Dogs, Mr. 
Speaker, that are in the Chamber. I would like to yield first to the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Phelps).
  Mr. PHELPS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend and colleague, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd) for yielding. Let me first express my 
sincere appreciation for his leadership. He has been a consistent 
Member of Congress, not only of our Blue Dog Coalition, that has been 
steady at the helm in trying to bring attention to a problem with 
deficit spending and the need for balancing the budget and staying 
within our means. I appreciate coming on after his leadership being 
here before I entered Congress and helping us steer this direction. So 
I thank all my fellow Blue Dogs for giving me the opportunity to speak 
about a very important issue.
  This is not our first and only time of trying to make this issue more 
paramount and put emphasis on what really needs to be done as we get 
through this session in terms of the money that is available and what 
we have hanging over our heads as debt in this country and the priority 
of our spending needs and how we should look at balancing the budget.
  So tonight I just want to focus my time on discussing the Blue Dog 
plan for putting the budget back in order, starting with fiscal 
discipline. The Blue Dogs have consistently focused on fiscal 
discipline, having advocated honesty and responsibility in the 
budgeting process.
  When Congress considered the budget last year, the Blue Dogs warned 
then about the danger of making long-term commitments for tax cuts or 
new spending programs based on projected surpluses. The projected 
surpluses were based on the very best of the situation that we were 
realizing through the high peaks of the economy in the last several 
years. That is not good, sound fiscal policy, to base anything on the 
very best. I believe we should look at the more reasonable moderate 
projections.
  We did not. So, in less than a year's time, we have seen a dramatic 
reversal of the once promising budgetary outlook. We now face 
projections of deficits and increasing debt for the rest of the decade 
that go far beyond the temporary impact of the economic downturn or 
cost of the war on terrorism.
  Congress and the President need to sit down, roll up our sleeves and 
have an honest discussion about what we need to put the budget back in 
order, starting with the ABCs of the fiscal situation we bring to your 
attention tonight.

[[Page H1758]]

  The Blue Dogs have outlined four solutions, as the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Boyd) opened up our session tonight to say, to avoid 
leaving our children and our grandchildren with the consequences of 
today's irresponsible budgeting solutions.
  The reason we keep drilling that point home about our children and 
our grandchildren is because we try to focus on what all of us hold 
sacred and dear, and that very much is an emotional tie back home to 
the real world. Sometimes the disconnect out here makes I think a lot 
of times people feel like we are not real people with real families, 
with real needs, and that we are somehow someone different.
  We are just like any of you out there, and that is why we are trying 
to say we should treat this budget, which you have sent us here to lead 
the country with, as we would treat our own, that affects our own 
household, our children and our grandchildren.
  So, we have outlined four solutions to avoid this particular problem. 
We want to assure honesty and accountability, and budget enforcement. 
Unless we renew our budget discipline, Congress will continue to find 
ways to break its own rules and pass more legislation that puts still 
more red ink on the national ledger. Enforceable budget restraints will 
shine a light on deceptive practices and construct a fiscal guardrail, 
keeping our spending within the Nation's fiscal means.
  We are a unique body here. We can break the rules. We do, too often. 
And, guess what? We do not get caught at it often enough. That is what 
is happening here right now as this session unfolds. We are not dealing 
with the real numbers. The American people are not being told the true 
story, and yet they are being led to believe we can do all the good 
things that we asked and requested and promised we would do in our 
campaigns to get here to do what once we get here? To continue the 
deception? Or to lay it out in real terms, as we should, in honest 
measures. So budget enforcement is a real item.

                              {time}  2100

  Balancing the budget without raiding Social Security. There is not 
one politician, not one campaigner, who said anything about getting 
into the Social Security trust funds or the surpluses. In fact, we said 
we have them locked away, right? Well, someone found the key. And when 
we open that door, there is an IOU there adding on to the other IOUs 
that we put on the American people for the past several decades. So 
this is adding on to the deficit that we already have in the Social 
Security and Medicare trust funds.
  So we want to balance the budget without raiding Social Security. 
Well, how do we do that? Well, we need a constitutional amendment. We 
must vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that 
requires the President to submit, and Congress to enact, a budget that 
is in balance without using the Social Security surplus. Now, that 
takes courageous leaders. Every one of us claimed that we would be and 
that we were in order to be elected. Now we are here. Let us produce 
it. Let us not lend rhetoric; let us prove that we are those leaders 
that can make the tough decisions.
  The amendment, to my way of thinking, could be waived in times of war 
or disaster, military conflict, or other threats to our national 
security. That does not mean that the present war on terrorism that we 
are in dictates the need for us to get into the Social Security and 
Medicare trust funds; it does not. Without the tax cuts that were 
imposed and the surpluses that were eroded and squandered because of 
that and other reasons, because of things that we did not look at last 
year or anticipate or ignored, whichever word we want to use to serve 
our purposes better, that is why we are where we are now. But we are 
talking about a military conflict or national security being 
compromised that is beyond our control, not because of what we added to 
the mistakes to get us to where we are now.
  So I believe that a constitutional amendment is very much needed, and 
I am prepared to support it.
  This would also include excluding the Social Security trust funds. 
Balancing the budget is meaningless if we borrow from our children and 
our grandchildren, as we said, to do it. This bill improves on other 
balanced budget amendments by excluding the Social Security trust funds 
from receipts. It is more of a crutch to lean on if we still depend on 
the Social Security trust funds to say we are going to have a 
constitutional amendment, not to get into the Social Security trust 
funds. So excluding those trust funds from the receipts would, I think, 
serve the purpose to keep us fiscally restrained and on the right path.
  It also provides that when the trust funds begin to run a deficit, 
then Social Security would be placed back on budget, requiring that the 
government account for deficits elsewhere in the budget. See, that is 
what we do not embrace too often. We divert the attention away from 
those other things that sort of creep up in the budget, but we do not 
want seemingly the American people to discover what those are, so we 
divert it to the other priorities and things that we know that are 
popular. At least some want to do that.
  Climbing out of the deficit ditch. Debt limit with a plan. Now, I 
have heard people on this floor of the opposite party say, show us your 
plan. Well, the plans that we have had cannot even get out of the 
Committee on Rules for a debate on the floor or to be voted on. Do we 
know why? Because they are afraid it would pass. It makes too much 
sense. It would put too much marginal people running in an election 
year on a compromising path. That is too uncomfortable. Let us deal 
with that later. That is the common cry we hear. Later, later, and the 
next thing we know, we are in our grandchildren's generation.
  Blue Dogs believe that Congress has a responsibility to cover 
obligations through the end of the fiscal year, September 30, 2002, but 
that raising the debt limit by $750 billion as requested by the 
President is risky business, folks. First, the President and Congress 
must create a plan to put our fiscal house back in order, just as a 
family facing financial problems must work with a bank to establish a 
financial plan in order to get approval to refinance their debt, all 
their debts. That is all we are asking. It makes sense.
  Defending our children from paying our bills. A supermajority, a 
three-fifths vote, would be required to borrow money. That is what I 
feel would be one of the four points of our plan that should be 
followed. All too often, we as Congress people and the President have 
been unwilling to make the tough choices to balance our priorities and 
have chosen to leave future generations, as I said and emphasized, to 
pay the bill for policies which benefit the current generation by 
increasing the borrowing. Making it harder for Congress to borrow 
money, just as we should make it harder to increase taxes, by requiring 
a supermajority, will protect the rights of future generations who are 
not represented in our political system, but will bear the burden of 
our decisions today.

  Finally, just let me leave my colleagues with a personal situation. 
Being from Illinois, having served 14 years in the Illinois House, I 
have a little bit of knowledge of what goes on there with the budgetary 
policies in Illinois. Illinois, like probably all of the State 
legislatures across our land, shared the same maybe artificial 
enthusiasm, maybe overexaggerated the good times of our economic peaks 
as we have had in the last few years and said everything is hunky-dory, 
no problems. What that meant is, Members, bring your projects, bring 
everything to the forefront here and smooth sailing, because we are 
rolling high.
  Well, in Illinois, just as here in Congress, a year ago, or even 
before that, Illinois was in good shape, fiscally in good shape. But 
because of misguided management from the top in Illinois, and too many 
that took advantage of an artificial, overpromoted situation, guess 
what now? We have prisons in my district, and we have unemployment 
rates exceeding 12 to 15 percent down State, southern-most Illinois. We 
are good neighbors in saying, we will take in the prisons in our 
communities where other parts of the State said, no, we do not want 
those kind of jobs here in our community. But we were hurting enough 
with the coal mine shutting down and a lot of other depressed, deprived 
situations in our economy, we said, we will be a good neighbor.
  So I have one of every kind of penal institution the State has to 
offer in my district, even in my old State district,

[[Page H1759]]

and we are proud to promote those economic jobs, economic builders. But 
now, now the Governor of Illinois and leaders of the State are saying, 
we have to close some of these prisons because we are broke. Somebody 
was asleep at the switch, and our own comptroller of the State over a 
year ago said, you better have a rainy-day fund, just like you do in 
your household when that roof might leak. Instead of just continuing to 
mop it up and treating the effect; you have to get the source of the 
problem where the hole in the roof is. That is what we have ignored in 
Illinois, even though there are a lot of good leaders who sounded the 
alarm, both in the legislature and constitutional officers, but not 
enough of the authority at the top.
  So now we even have threatened Medicaid patients that will not get 
their due service, many that are the most vulnerable of our society, 
senior citizens. This is terrible. It could have been avoided. That is 
why we are stressing this four-point plan. Let us do what is 
responsible. Let us get to the source; and the source is recognizing 
that there should be honesty in budgeting, recognizing the true source 
of funds that we have that the Congressional Budget Office is 
reporting, instead of turning our heads the other way, hoping that the 
economy is going to get better and maybe make us right at some point 
down the road. That may be too late. Let us embrace what reality 
obviously is serving us now.
  Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois. 
It is obvious to me, as he described his experience in the State 
legislature, that his State, like mine, is prohibited from borrowing 
money and must balance its budget. I believe that is the way that the 
Federal Government should do; and certainly one of the shortcomings in 
the way our Constitution is drafted is that we are allowed to borrow 
money in ordinary circumstances and, actually, we did run deficits from 
the late 1960s until about the year 2000, primarily in peace times. So 
we had a wonderful opportunity here in the 1990s, or here in the year 
2000, 2001, now that we have worked so hard to get back into balance to 
do some really good things and pay down the Federal debt. We seem to 
have passed, or missed, that opportunity.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield now to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Matheson), a 
member of our Blue Dog team who is actually a rising star in this 
Congress, I believe; and he is an excellent blue puppy.
  Mr. MATHESON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership. 
As one of the cochairs of the Blue Dog group, I just appreciate all he 
does. I am real proud to be a part of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group 
of 33 fiscally-conservative Democrats who like to talk about being 
fiscally responsible. We have been coming out here many times, Tuesday 
night. Every week we have been coming out here for the last few weeks, 
and we have been talking about issues of fiscal responsibility; and in 
particular, we have focused on what we see as a growing concern about 
increasing the debt that we incur in this country.
  Now, we have just been talking about this four-point plan; and I want 
to talk about one of those points, which is the notion that we need to 
climb out of this deficit ditch that we have gotten ourselves into in 
this country.
  The Secretary of the Treasury has come to Congress three different 
times now and said, we are really up against our debt limit; we need 
Congress to raise our debt limit, and we need Congress to raise it by 
$750 billion. Now, that is a lot of money. We talk about numbers and 
throw out figures in Congress a lot, but $750 billion is a lot of 
money. What is unfortunate is that that request comes in with no plan, 
no suggestion of how we are going to get out of this pattern of deficit 
spending. I just do not think it is appropriate, and the Blue Dogs do 
not think it is appropriate for us to just give a blank check to both 
Congress and the administration to run up another three-quarters of a 
trillion dollars in debt.
  We have been talking about this issue for the last few weeks. Some 
people say, why do you keep talking about it? Because this issue has 
not gone away and, no matter what we do in the short term, this issue 
is still not going away. It is not going to go away until we figure out 
a way to behave in a responsible way.
  What the Blue Dogs are suggesting is this, for the short term. We 
recognize that this country faces some short-term deficit pressures. We 
understand we have a war on terrorism and homeland security concerns 
that are taking more resources than we thought would be needed when we 
passed a budget a year ago. We recognize the economy is in a recession. 
We do not want to force the government to have to take extraordinary 
actions because it is bumping up against the debt limit. So as a short-
term proposal, our suggestion is that we do increase the debt limit by 
$150 billion, not $750 billion, but by $150 billion, which is still a 
lot of money; but that is the circumstance we are in right now. We 
think that will take us through the obligations of our current fiscal 
year, September 30 of this year.
  Now, as part of this plan, what we are suggesting is that we offer 
this increase in the debt limit of $150 billion, but that it comes with 
a couple of other provisions. First is that we are going to prohibit 
any increase in debt limit beyond September 30 without a defined plan 
to balance the budget. It requires the President to submit to Congress, 
and for us to enact, a plan to balance the budget without using the 
Social Security surplus.
  Now, we do not have to pass exactly what the President submits; but 
he has to submit something, and we have to pass something that is going 
to show that we get our budget in balance by the year 2007. So we are 
not talking about something radical that has to be done instantaneously 
as of October 1 of this year; we are allowing some time to get on the 
path to a balanced budget. But we are not going to offer too much time, 
because if we do not show some discipline around here, we are just 
going to keep running up more debt.
  We also in this legislation, in offering to raise the debt limit by 
$150 billion, we require that the President conduct an annual threat 
vulnerability assessment, so that we can develop a coherent homeland 
security strategy. How life has changed since September 11. These were 
not issues that we were facing as a country, and these are critical 
issues; and Blue Dogs support the efforts of this country to address 
terrorist threats and provide homeland security.

                              {time}  2115

  We are adamant that it is important. We support those efforts, and it 
is going to take resources to conduct those efforts. We understand 
that.
  But we need to address that new challenge in a rational way, and that 
means it is important that we have a defined homeland security strategy 
so that we as Congress can behave responsibly and fund in an 
appropriate way what it is going to take to provide reasonable homeland 
defense.
  I think that this is a reasonable proposal. I think the Blue Dogs as 
a group feel real strongly about doing this. We may not be right on 
everything. We are open to suggestion. I call on other Members of 
Congress from both sides of the aisle, please discuss this plan we are 
promoting tonight. We are very open to suggestion. That is one of the 
hallmarks of the Blue Dogs is that we are happy to talk with anybody 
and put the numbers out on the table and have a frank discussion. It is 
too important for this country not to do this.
  So we are going to keep coming back here and we are going to keep 
talking about this issue until Congress behaves in a responsible way. 
We are not going to just go off and agree to raise the debt limit by 
$750 billion with no plan, no sense of how we are going to get out of 
this, and dump it on the next generation. That is just not what we 
should be doing here. Our constituents did not elect us to avoid the 
tough decisions; they elected us to take on the tough issues. That is 
what the Blue Dogs are trying to do tonight. We are trying to start 
this dialogue with this four-point plan.
  I encourage all of our colleagues to take a look at it, and let us 
let the dialogue begin.
  Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Utah. He 
makes a good point. I think any prudent family or business or local 
government in Utah or in Florida that suddenly found themselves in a 
situation where their spending obligations were greater than the 
revenue they were taking in would sit down with their

[[Page H1760]]

family or business partners and maybe their banker and develop a plan 
in a hurry to figure out how to get out of that situation, to get back 
into black and out of red ink.
  So I want to commend the gentleman from Utah for his very thoughtful 
presentation and his involvement in this process of helping us develop 
this four-point plan.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry).
  Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida 
for yielding to me and for his outstanding leadership, not only for the 
Blue Dog Coalition, but for this Congress and what I think are the next 
generations.
  Mr. Speaker, this is not rocket science. Anybody that can add and 
subtract can figure this out. We know what we need to do. A year ago at 
this time, the Blue Dog Coalition met with the director of the Office 
of Management and Budget, Mr. Daniels. He made a presentation to us at 
that time.
  He said this, and I will never forget it. He said, our greatest fear 
is that we are going to have so much money we are going to pay off all 
of the debt, and no one will have a safe place to invest their money 
because there will not be a U.S. Treasury bond.
  When we hear that said now, it seems absolutely and utterly 
ridiculous. To the Blue Dogs at that time, it seemed a bit risky and 
foolish to even think that way, but the fact is, we have squandered the 
surplus. We have squandered a great opportunity in this country. One 
thing that we know we must get under control is the spending. We know 
that we cannot continue to borrow and spend and pass the debt on to our 
children and grandchildren.
  The Blue Dogs have a four-point plan. We have worked diligently to 
come up with an honest assessment and an honest plan for what we need 
to do in this country to protect our children and grandchildren.
  We come to this floor almost on a weekly basis, and have a great 
debate about protecting the unborn. I personally believe that we 
should, and I always vote to protect the unborn. And yet, we will come 
here and vote for a policy that will allow us to pass massive debt on 
to the unborn. We vote for a policy that allows our fighting men and 
women to go overseas and serve this country with great distinction, and 
then we ask them, now, after the war is over, after their fighting is 
done, come back to this country and go to work, because we borrowed the 
money from them to pay for it.
  That is not right. It is immoral for us to continue to do that. Our 
plan would provide for the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 to be 
enhanced and reauthorized. It would provide that if we are going to 
spend additional money or we are going to reduce the amount of money 
coming in to the government, that we would reduce spending in a way to 
go along with that so we maintain a balanced budget.
  We provide a constitutional amendment that would allow this country 
to have a balanced budget without using the Social Security trust fund 
money to do it. It is not a balanced budget if we have to borrow the 
money from the Social Security trust fund to pay the bills. It is not a 
balanced budget if we just imagine that it is going to be balanced some 
day, like we have done in the past year. We cannot continue to do that.
  The Social Security taxes that are paid in by the senior citizens, 
that have been paid in by the senior citizens, and that are paid in 
today by the working men and women of this country are supposed to be 
used and set aside in a trust fund to pay the Social Security benefits 
when those people come of age.
  But right now, it amounts to only another income tax that is paid by 
the working men and women of this country, because we are spending 
every dime of it. We are not making any provisions to preserve the 
trust fund. We are not making any provisions to see that these 
obligations that we have when these people come of age to draw that 
money, that they are going to be able to receive it. It is 
irresponsible, and we should not continue to let this happen.
  It is amazing to me that we can have a budget this year that does not 
provide for medicine for our senior citizens in this country. We are 
going to spend money on a lot of things in this budget. We are going to 
appropriate money for a lot of things. Some of them are absolutely 
critical, but very few are more important than the good health of our 
senior citizens.
  It is amazing to me that we should allow one more year to pass in 
this Congress and not have a prescription drug benefit for our seniors 
because we have squandered the opportunity. The Blue Dogs have a plan 
to get out of the deficit ditch. We have a plan to prevent our children 
from having to pay the debts that we run up.
  I think it is time for the Congress and the administration to sit 
down, be honest, look at the real numbers, look at what we know we have 
to do, and not continue to pass the burden on to our children and 
grandchildren.
  One of the things I am proudest of in the time that I have served and 
represented the First Congressional District in the United States 
Congress is being a member of the Blue Dog Coalition. I think it is one 
of the most honest, determined groups that exist in this Congress. I 
think that their integrity is held together because they believe this 
is the right thing to do.
  I want to say once again how proud I am of their plan, and that I 
think that the Congress should take a serious look at this plan and 
pass these bills that we are proposing, and do something real for the 
future of our children.
  Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Arkansas 
for his leadership. He has been a leader, especially on the health care 
issues, as a member of the Blue Dogs, and has worked diligently on the 
Patients' Bill of Rights, a prescription drug plan, and others, in 
addition to the fiscal and budget issues. So I thank the gentleman from 
Arkansas (Mr. Berry) for being here tonight.
  Next, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross), 
his delegation mate, the blue puppy.
  Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentleman from 
Florida, for yielding to me, one of the co-chairs of the Democratic 
Blue Dog Coalition.
  We have heard a lot of talk tonight about the Democratic Blue Dog 
Coalition. We are a group of 33 fiscally conservative Democrats that 
believe we ought to get our government, its budget, and our debt under 
control.
  We are a group that is sick and tired of all the partisan bickering 
that goes on at our Nation's Capitol. It should not be about what makes 
the Democrats look good or bad or the Republicans look good or bad; it 
ought to be about doing right by the people who sent us to the Nation's 
Capitol to be their voice in government.
  About this time last year, there was a lot of debate going on in this 
very Chamber about a surplus, a surplus that was projected to exceed $5 
trillion over the next 10 years. Back last year when we stood here on 
the floor of the United States House of Representatives and talked 
about this projected $5 trillion surplus, the Blue Dogs tried to bring 
some fiscal responsibility to this Chamber and to the floor of the 
United States House of Representatives.
  As that debate was going on, I voted against the Democratic budget 
last year. I voted against the Republican budget. I am trying to be 
bipartisan here. The Blue Dogs developed their own budget, and back in 
the days when we thought we had a surplus, when we were told that we 
had a surplus of $5 trillion over the next 10 years, here is what the 
Blue Dogs had to say about it 1 year ago.
  We said that we ought to take that surplus and take 50 percent of it 
and pay down our Nation's debt, that we should take 25 percent of it 
and provide a tax cut for working families and those who need it the 
most, and take the remaining 25 percent and do things like truly 
modernize Medicare to include medicine for our seniors, strengthen our 
national defense, something we were talking about way before September 
11 ever happened.
  Of course, the Blue Dog budget failed. It did not pass. We passed a 
budget, or this Chamber passed a budget, without my vote, and now we 
have another budget before us this year which I voted against, a budget 
where in less than a year we went from talking about a $5 trillion 
surplus over the next 10 years to a budget for fiscal year 2003 that 
some say will cause us to deficit spend $80 billion, on the 
conservative side, and some say we will deficit spend to the tune of 
$120 billion.

[[Page H1761]]

  Throughout the debate last year, we were told we had a surplus but it 
will not materialize. Rather, for the first time since 1997, this 
year's budget, fiscal year 2003, will put us back in the days of 
deficit spending for the first time since 1997. But when they were 
talking about that supposed surplus last year, we did not hear a lot of 
talk about the debt, a 5.9 trillion national debt.
  Some people think we spend too much money in this country on food 
stamps. That is a couple of billion dollars a month. Some people in 
this country think we spend too much on foreign aid. That is $1 billion 
a month.
  Mr. Speaker, we spend $1 billion every single day in America simply 
paying interest, not principal but interest, on the national debt. How 
much is $1 billion? I put that number in my calculator and I get that 
little ``e'' at the end.
  What does it mean to us in our everyday lives? I will tell the 
Members what it means. One billion dollars can build 200 brand new 
elementary schools every single day in America. The $1 billion we are 
paying every day in interest on the national debt can complete 
important infrastructure projects.
  In my congressional district, in the southern half of Arkansas, I 
have three interstates pending right now. There is Interstate 49. Give 
me a day and a half of the interest that we are now paying on the 
national debt and I can complete Interstate 49. Give me about a week of 
it and I can complete Interstate 69. Give me a few hours of it and I 
can complete Interstate 530. These are projects that are vital to 
provide economic opportunities for people from all walks of life.

                              {time}  2130

  That is what this debt means to us in our every-day lives, and the 
drain it is having on being able to do things like truly modernize 
Medicare to include medicine for our seniors. Medicare is the only 
health insurance plan I know of that does not include medicine, yet it 
is the plan that nearly every single senior citizen relies on day in 
and day out to stay healthy and to get well.
  My grandparents left this country just a little bit better off than 
they found it for my parents. And my parents have left this country 
just a little bit better off than they found it for my generation. But 
I wonder, is this Congress, is this Government, is our generation going 
to leave this country just a little bit better off than we found it for 
the next generation, our children and our grandchildren?
  Social Security is another issue that involves the debt. We have 
borrowed, our Government has borrowed $1 trillion from the Social 
Security trust fund with no provision on how it ever gets paid back. 
When you and I go to the bank to borrow money for a car or a home, what 
do the bankers ask you? They want to know how are you going to pay that 
money back. How much can you pay a month? How many years will you take 
to pay it back? And yet our Government has raided Social Security trust 
funds to the tune of over $1 trillion with no provision on how that 
gets paid back. And guess what? If we figure out how it does get paid 
back, Social Security as we know it today is still broke in 2041.
  So our response to all this is simple. On Thursday, April 25, the 
Democratic Blue Dog coalition, 33 fiscally conservative Democrats, 
outlined four principles to prevent our children and grandchildren from 
being stuck with the burdens that our country is accumulating today 
because of our generation's budget decisions. We call these four 
principals the ABCs of fiscal discipline. A, assure honesty and 
accountability; B, balancing the budget without raiding Social 
Security; C, climbing out of the deficit ditch; and D, defending 
children from paying our bills.
  The ABCs of fiscal discipline say we need enforceable budget 
constraints that will expose deceptive budget practices and provide our 
guardrail to keep our spending within the government's means. It says 
we need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that requires 
us to balance that budget every single year, an amendment that could 
only be waived in extraordinary times such as a war or military 
conflict, and that takes Social Security completely off the table. It 
will stop the politicians in Washington from raiding the Social 
Security and Medicare trust fund.
  I served for 10 years in the Arkansas State Senate. Our Constitution 
required us to have a balanced budget, and for my 10 years there I took 
my experience as a small business owner to our State capital, and for 
10 years I helped balance that State budget. If we can do it at the 
State level, if we can do it at the small town family pharmacy that my 
wife and I own in Prescott, Arkansas, then, yes, the United States 
government can do it as well.
  It says that if we have to raise the limits on our national debt that 
we do so with a plan that will put our fiscal house back in order, just 
like a family facing financial hardships works to get approval to 
refinance their debts. And, finally, it says that Congress must have a 
super majority, a three-fifths majority vote to approve additional 
government borrowing.
  We believe following the ABCs of fiscal discipline is the right thing 
to do for this Congress, for our Nation, and for the future of our 
children and grandchildren.
  Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Arkansas 
(Mr. Ross) for his thoughtful remarks. He has, I think, outlined it 
very well.
  I, too, as I said earlier, come from a State legislature in which it 
was against the rules of Constitution to spend money you did not have, 
that is, to borrow money. And it meant, Mr. Speaker, that we had to 
make some tough decisions at times. We had to go in and redo budgets at 
times. We had to go back and cut education and cut Medicaid, but at 
least we were not mortgaging the future of our children, and then we 
had to come back and figure out how we pay for those particular 
programs.
  Mr. Speaker, it is just not right for us to, as American citizens 
today, to demand that we have these programs that are very costly and 
not be willing to step forward and pay for those and say to our 
children and grandchildren, we are going to have this program today for 
us, but we want you to pay the bill later down the road.
  Now I think our business community is beginning to take a good, long, 
hard look also at what this extended deficit spending that we are 
looking at over the next decade is going to mean. Obviously, we know 
that we came through the decade of the 1970s and the 1980s with 
some huge deficits over the years. And who can ever forget in the 1970s 
where we had interest rates that went into the high teens and in some 
cases the low 20 percent interest rate? It made it very difficult. I 
was in business then, and I remember how difficult it was to continue 
to run my small business as I was leveraged pretty heavily. And so you 
had to take 20 cents out of the first dollar that you made and pay on 
the interest on your debt. I said that the business community is 
beginning to take a look at it.

  I want to, Mr. Speaker, read from today's Wall Street Journal on the 
front page and the article is entitled ``U.S. Debt Is Set to Rise Not 
Fall for Second Quarter.'' It is a very short article. I want to read 
it. It says the Treasury Department said it expected to borrow a net $1 
billion during the April-to-June quarter. That is three months. The 
Treasury Department said it expected to borrow $1 billion, not repay a 
net $89 billion as it said it would do earlier this year in January.
  So in January the Treasury Department was predicting that it would 
repay $89 billion of the Federal debt that we owed as a Government, but 
today they are saying no, we are not going to repay $89 billion. We 
will not repay anything. We will have to borrow an additional $1 
billion during that quarter period.
  The announcement, the department's first official acknowledgment of 
its dismal tax collections during the important April filing season, 
increases the likelihood that the Federal budget will linger in deficit 
for longer than the two years cited in congressional estimates. The 
government's troubled finances could even damp prospects for recovery 
by flooding debt markets and driving up interest rates.
  I am sure that does concern the business community. ``It is really a 
remarkably negative commentary on the government's financial 
fortunes,'' said John Youngdahl, an economist for Goldman Sachs. At a 
time when the

[[Page H1762]]

economy might be picking up momentum, increasing private sector 
borrowing, the government's increased demand for debt runs the risk of 
creating more friction and consequently spurring somewhat higher rates 
than otherwise would be the case, Mr. Youngdahl said. That is one thing 
to be concerned about.
  I think it is something that we are all concerned about, not only the 
business community. But what you have is for the home owner who has got 
a home mortgage, if he has got a $100,000 mortgage on his home and his 
interest rate goes up 200 points, that is $2,000 a year. Car loans, 
business loans, personal loans, I think this thing could be very, very 
serious, and we only hope that it will turn around quickly.
  We know how to turn it around. We have got to plan and we are willing 
and ready to sit down with the administration leaders, the leaders of 
President Bush's administration and the leader of the Congress, lay out 
a plan, get us back into balance. It can be done. We did it in 1997 and 
certainly we can do it again.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross) 
and the others who came to speak here tonight.

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