[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 56 (Tuesday, May 7, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H2145-H2151]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              BLUE DOG DEMOCRATS AND FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. John) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. JOHN. Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to be here tonight for the 
next hour to talk about something that is very important to a group of 
individuals that I like to coalesce around here, and that is the Blue 
Dog Democrats.
  Before I get into talking about some of the substantive things that I 
would like to speak about tonight, mostly fiscal responsibility, I 
would like to give an overview who are the Blue Dog Democrats. Members 
might have heard several times about our group and how active we are, 
but we are a group of 33 individual Members of Congress from all over 
the country. We come from California. We have a Member from New York, a 
couple of Members from Georgia and Tennessee and Texas; but we come 
from all over the United States geographically. But what brings us 
together, what has brought us together and what has really gained us a 
lot of credibility in this body is our focus on fiscal responsibility.
  We meet every week and we talk about different issues, but we do not

[[Page H2146]]

get involved in issues that split us apart, that we might not be able 
to get a consensus on. The Blue Dogs, when we are talking about an 
issue, when we take an issue, we go for it in a fiscal angle and a 
fiscal angle only, and that is the common thread amongst all of the 
Blue Dogs; and I am happy to be here tonight, along with several of my 
colleagues, to talk about a situation that we find ourselves in that, 
frankly, a year ago none of us thought that we would be in.
  Last year when we debated the budget, the Blue Dogs warned, and we 
were precluded by the majority from offering our own budget. I thought 
Americans in their businesses and in their families would go through 
the same process that the Blue Dogs went through. It was a good budget 
with a plan to bring some fiscal sanity and some fiscal stability in 
the outyears.
  But yet projections were that we were going to have a $5 trillion-
plus surplus over the next 10 years. Frankly, the Blue Dogs did not buy 
that. We bought it as deeply as we could define projections, and we 
looked in the dictionary and we looked at projections, and Members know 
what it says. It is just that. It is numbers put together, and with 
reasonably good accuracy or with educated people putting them together, 
but they were just that. They were projections.
  Of course, we find ourselves now facing a situation of 180 degrees 
opposite. Not only are we not talking about a surplus, and that is 
really the funny thing as some of our Blue Dogs would like to talk 
about, the fight was over on where we were going to spend this $5 
trillion. We stayed focused in that fight, not about where we were 
going to spend that $5 trillion projected surplus, but how we were 
going to handle it. Our cry back then was paying down the national 
debt.
  Mr. Speaker, the national debt accrues every minute that I speak, 
every day that goes by at astronomical numbers, numbers that we cannot 
envision back in south Louisiana. We have over a $5 trillion debt that 
we owe this country. We pay over $2 billion a year in interest on that 
debt, not principal, interest on that debt. Prior to the plus-ups of 
the military budget of the past few months, it was almost as much money 
as we were spending on defending the country is what we were paying on 
our debt. So the Blue Dogs wanted to spend that money, and one-third, 
one-third, one-third was our program. One-third for paying down the 
debt, one-third for tax cuts because we were for tax cuts. We thought 
that was healthy for the economy, and one-third for spending 
priorities, priorities that were important to us: prescription drugs, 
our military, education and other important domestic programs that are 
so important to the infrastructure of this great country.

                              {time}  1930

  That was our plan. That plan was spending a third, a third, and a 
third. We were not successful in convincing the other side that this 
was the way to go. And so we have sat back and tried to revamp our plan 
under the new scenario that we live in today. Needs have arisen. Needs 
have arisen from a fiscal standpoint that we would not have even 
dreamed of just a few 8 months ago. We need to take care of those 
needs. We are spending billions of dollars.
  I make no apology about voting for not only the money that we have 
spent in bailing out the airlines but the money we have spent in 
homeland security, the money we have spent on border patrol and to our 
law enforcement agencies all across the country. That is something we 
have to do. But now that we have committed ourselves to doing that, I 
think it is more important than ever that we put together a plan, some 
blueprint, some master business plan that we can follow. We are a ship 
afloat today without a fiscal plan.
  Frankly, it makes me very nervous, it makes the Blue Dogs extremely 
concerned, and frankly it should make the American people a little 
concerned about what we are doing today in spending the money that we 
frankly do not have, that our surplus has gone away. We live in a 
credit card society. The scenario we find ourselves in today, imagine 
that I as a parent with my twin boys would run up thousands and 
thousands of dollars of credit card bills and pawn them off to my 3\1/
2\-year-olds. That is what we are doing. That is how we are treating 
Social Security today. That is why it is important that we have a plan.
  The Blue Dogs came together and put together what we think is a very 
elementary plan, a plan that I think works for the future of this 
country and a plan that really brings back what we had going in the 
first, the middle and the latter part of this century. We were actually 
running surpluses in this country, running government and actually 
having surpluses and we could afford to give a tax cut. We could afford 
to make sure that we were taking Social Security off-budget.
  I do not know how many times I voted, but I know that it was more 
than a half a dozen of times that we voted in our Social Security 
lockbox. Frankly, the key has been found and we have been raiding 
Social Security to pay for some good expenditures but also for some 
other expenditures and spending that we need to get a handle on.
  Let me list some of the things that we have been spending money on, 
and they are some good programs. Our agricultural bill, our bill passed 
this body last week to the tune of, oh, $73 billion, which passed out 
of this bill. The energy bill that is in the process has tax 
implications and cost. The Department of Defense authorization bill 
that we are going to do tomorrow comes at a high price tag, and the 
supplemental appropriations bill that we are going to deal with next 
week of $29 billion. Are all these dollars that we are spending going 
to good causes? Yes, they are. But we cannot continue to spend and 
spend and tax cut and spend with no plan.
  That is what I am here tonight for and that is what you will hear 
from the Blue Dogs that are going to talk a lot about our plan, our 
vision, are some kind of blueprint that we can bring ourselves back on 
a course, a glide path to balancing our budget, not with Social 
Security, to making a commitment to paying down our debt because that 
is so important. That is what this plan is all about. The Blue Dogs, we 
like to call it our ABCD plan. It is not a plan that just has a facade. 
It is a real plan with real legislation. I am going to highlight them 
very quickly, then I am going to turn over some time to my friend from 
northeast Texas to talk about some of these issues.
  First, A, assure honesty and accountability. Enforcing the budget 
rules that we have today would be a very nice way to start. We have a 
budget. It is a nonbinding budget, but we have a budget. But we do not 
enforce that. We do not even look at it, to be honest with you. We have 
a huge fight, this side against that side, this body against that body 
about where we should put our money. And then once we all fight about 
it and it passes, the majority normally wins in this body. Then we just 
kind of throw it in a corner and we go on about all the other things 
that we intend to do and do not really blow the dust off our budget and 
really abide by that. So I think that that is the first thing we ought 
to do. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) introduced a piece of 
legislation to be able to do that.
  How about pay-go rules? That is the jargon up here in the Congress 
that may go right over the head of some people, but it is really 
simple. Pay-go rules basically say that you cannot spend a dollar 
unless you have a way to pay for it. That does not seem to be very 
difficult to do when we in our households, in our budget and our 
businesses that we put together, we figure out a way to pay for it 
before we spend it. I think that that is important. That is A.
  B is balancing the budget without raiding Social Security, something 
that this body has voted on many times, something that I really truly 
believe in my heart that this body wants to do. We want to make sure 
that we can balance our budget without Social Security. We did that for 
the last few years. But we are headed on a path to be able to raid the 
Social Security Trust Fund again and again.
  The gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) has introduced a bill, a 
constitutional amendment, which we hope that we can get a vote on this 
floor, that will basically amend the Constitution to require a balanced 
budget. It will also make sure that Congress needs a three-fifths vote 
to approve a

[[Page H2147]]

deficit or raise the debt limit. That is a whole other special order 
hour I think we can talk about, and doing all of that without including 
the Social Security Trust Fund, a constitutional amendment. Every 
American in this country would be for that. That is B.
  C is climbing out of the deficit ditch. The debt limit was put there 
for a purpose, to put handcuffs on Congresses, past and future, that 
they cannot borrow just up to whatever the debt limit is. You get to a 
debt limit and it is sort of like the credit card limit on your car. If 
it is a thousand dollars, when you get to a thousand dollars, you 
cannot use that card anymore. That is what the debt limit does. The 
gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore) basically has a piece of legislation 
that is going to deal with the debt limit, making sure that we abide by 
the debt limit.

  Finally, I will end on D, something that is so simple I cannot 
believe that we cannot come to an agreement on trying to make this 
happen. If it takes a supermajority to raise taxes, why should it not 
take a three-fifths majority to borrow money? So if we are going to 
borrow money over the debt limit or borrow more money, this body should 
have a three-fifths vote to be able to do that. That is D.
  That is the Blue Dogs' ABCD plan that we have put together. Of 
course, the D plan with the supermajority to borrow money is a piece of 
legislation that was introduced by the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. 
Tanner). These three very simple but very important budget guidelines 
are something that we should enact, they are something that the Blue 
Dogs are going to continue to push because now is the time that we need 
to put a plan together. We are a Nation at war and we understand that 
and we are funding that, to the brave men and women around the country 
that are fighting the war for the freedoms to let me speak up here in 
the well, to let you watch this on C-SPAN, to let you do whatever you 
want to do and enjoy the freedoms. We are funding that. But we need a 
plan. We cannot continue, not today, not this hour, not next week 
without some kind of plan from a fiscal standpoint of how we climb out. 
Every economist in the world is telling us that we are going to be 
spending money and we are going to be running deficits.
  In fact, let me draw attention to an article that was in the USA 
Today yesterday that talked about the debts and the looming fiscal 
crises that this Congress is going to have to face. It is a very good 
article. It is called ``Fiscal Discipline Falters As Budget Deficit 
Grows.'' The gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff), a Blue Dog member, 
the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel) a Blue Dog member, sent out a 
Dear Colleague asking everyone to read this. This is what it is all 
about. I think they did a wonderful job at laying out exactly what has 
happened and not playing the blame game, not blaming any one particular 
spending item or tax cut or the economy. It is a whole market basket of 
things that we have to deal with to climb our way out of it. But we 
cannot turn our back on it. We must have a plan. We must have a vision. 
That is what this plan seems to do.
  With that, I will turn over as much time as he may consume to my 
friend the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sandlin).
  Mr. SANDLIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana and 
all the members of the Blue Dogs for working so diligently on the issue 
of fiscal responsibility. That is what our group is about. We can have 
many differences of opinion in the United States Congress. We can have 
differences of opinion regionally within the parties, but the Blue Dogs 
focus completely on fiscal responsibility for our Nation. We believe 
that it is important that if we want to address issues in the country 
such as Social Security, Medicare, education, making sure that our 
veterans are taken care of properly, making sure that we finance the 
war against terrorism properly, that we have a firm financial footing, 
a firm financial base, and that we have a plan in effect for taking 
care of those obligations of the United States Government. The Blue 
Dogs are committed to doing that in a fiscally responsible way, which 
means things such as investing in areas that are important and taking 
care of the country's debt.
  As the gentleman from Louisiana mentioned, our debt is continuing to 
run at an alarming rate. It is imperative upon us in the United States 
Congress to address the issue of debt while we continue to operate the 
government in a prudent manner.
  As was mentioned, the Blue Dogs have a plan called the ABCs. The ABCs 
are something we talk about in elementary school. It really is 
elementary. Much of this is elementary. All we are asking is that we 
operate the United States Government in much the same way that 
Americans operate their homes and Americans operate their businesses. 
It is important to know what revenues are available, it is important to 
know what obligations are out there, and it is important to plan for 
unanticipated obligations. And so we have developed a plan called the 
ABCs. Some call it the ABCDs. We are promoting that in the United 
States Congress as a way to promote a plan to get us on a firm 
financial footing.
  One of the things that we think is imperative is that we keep our 
commitment to senior citizens and that we maintain Social Security 
inviolate, that we do not use the Social Security trust funds for any 
purpose other than for Social Security.
  Originally the Blue Dogs came up with a plan that we felt should be 
supported by the entire United States Congress, because it made a lot 
of sense. Of course, as we know, that is not always the test in 
Washington. Something that makes a lot of sense is always suspect. But 
our first and our initial approach at a concerned and conservative and 
fiscally responsible budget was to take the Social Security trust funds 
completely off-budget, completely off-budget, not to be used for any 
other purpose.
  Next we wanted to look at what I call for discussion purposes the 
operating budget of the United States Congress. We wanted to take the 
operating budget, look at it and determine if we had an operating 
surplus. With that operating surplus, we wanted one-half of that 
surplus to go immediately to the country's debt, to pay down the 
obligations that this government and this country have already 
incurred. We wanted one-fourth, then, to go to tax relief for American 
families. American families work hard. American families pay taxes. 
American families try and invest in their families, in education, in 
their senior citizens. We felt one-fourth available for tax cuts would 
help American families. Then the remaining one-fourth would be used for 
investment in critical areas such as agriculture, education, veterans, 
unanticipated expense such as we are facing right now with the war on 
terrorism.
  Later as our policy developed, as the gentleman from Louisiana 
mentioned, we talked about a division of one-third, one-third, one-
third. But most of our pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Most of the time 
people in this body are not willing to make a plan. We vote 
independently. Each vote is independent. There is no long-term plan. 
There is no matching of revenue and obligation, and fiscal 
responsibility seems to take a back seat.
  Last year we were facing surpluses as far as the eye could see and we 
were worried last year, believe it or not, about paying off our debt 
too quickly.

                              {time}  1945

  Now, in less than a year's time, we have seen a dramatic reversal of 
this once promising budgetary outlook, and we now face a projection of 
deficits and increasing debt for the rest of the decade. These are 
debts that we will be placing on the backs of the children of this 
country.
  Now, obviously some of this is due to the economic slowdown; some is 
due directly to the September 11 disaster; some is due to the 
continuing expense of the war on terrorism. But regardless of the 
source of these deficits, Congress and the President need to sit down, 
roll up our sleeves and have an honest discussion about what we need to 
do to get our budget back in order, to bring fiscal responsibility to 
the United States. If we do not, we risk burdening our children and our 
grandchildren with the consequences of today's irresponsible budgetary 
decisions.
  Further, we risk jeopardizing Social Security and Medicare, a 
critical and important source of security for our senior citizens.
  Now, the Blue Dog Coalition has outlined four solutions to the budget 
problem, as mentioned by the gentleman

[[Page H2148]]

from Louisiana, and I am not going to go into those in any detail since 
he has mentioned them, but it is an elementary approach to fiscal 
responsibility. I think it is important, as the gentleman said, to look 
at pay-go, the pay-as-you-go or the pay-go rules which expire this 
year, and we would renew and extend the pay-go rules by establishing 
new 5-year discretionary caps, with separate caps for defense and 
nondefense spending. It would also require that any increases in 
mandatory spending be offset. We believe it should be more difficult to 
delay costs outside of the 5-year budget windows, thus making sure that 
we truly understand in the Congress and account for the costs of the 
legislation that we as a Congress are passing. That is responsibility. 
We need to know what the legislation that we pass costs and how it will 
be paid for. What could be any more elementary than that?
  Now, as part of the ongoing honesty, and assuring honesty and 
accountability, we would require that the President conduct a thorough 
review of the war on terrorism and the costs associated with homeland 
security, and we would be willing to work with the President on plans 
in that way.
  A is for accountability, as was mentioned, and we believe that we 
have to provide a framework, we have to be accountable, we have to show 
that the Federal Government can ensure and promise that the government 
is not jeopardizing the future of the children of this great Nation.
  B is for the balanced budget. If we really want to get our fiscal 
house in order, if we are serious about this in the United States 
Congress, we need to start by requiring the President to submit to the 
United States Congress a balanced budget, and that balanced budget 
importantly has to include this feature for America. We need to balance 
the budget with a budget that does not tap into the Social Security 
Trust Fund, period. We have to get that done.
  Now, our balanced budget proposal recognizes that in times of war or 
other threats to national security, sometimes it is necessary for the 
government to temporarily run budget deficits to ensure the safety of 
our Nation, the safety of our citizens, to make sure that our 
servicemen and service women across the world and across this country 
are provided for properly; that they have the best technology, the best 
equipment, the best training, the best leadership, the best that we can 
provide for our freedom fighters all across the world. Now, no cost is 
too great, but we cannot abandon the promise we made to senior 
citizens.
  Mr. Speaker, senior citizens built this country. They have survived 
World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the 
Persian Gulf. They have built this country, and they have seen good 
times and bad. They have lived the American dream. They get up in the 
morning, they make a sandwich and they put it in a pail and they go to 
work and they make a product that is put out in the market that 
supports this great economy, sends our kids to school and supports our 
senior citizens. We need to reward people in this country that work 
hard and play by the rules. We tell people, ``work hard, play by the 
rules, be responsible,'' and now it is our turn to be responsible and 
make sure that when those folks do that, that we do not abandon our 
senior citizens, the very people that made this country great and 
turned over to us the freest and best society that the world has ever 
seen.
  Now, this year the President has pushed a budget that claims to be in 
balance, only because it taps into the Social Security and Medicare 
Trust Funds. That is the only reason it is in balance. I believe that 
to be irresponsible. We cannot balance the budget on the backs of 
senior citizens.
  We believe that it is our fiscal responsibility to raise the debt 
limit only if we have a plan, only if we have a plan. Mr. Speaker, it 
is not irresponsible to say, before raising the debt, before making 
that decision, let us identify where we are, let us identify where we 
are going, the goal that we need to reach, why we need to get there, 
how we need to get there, and how we are going to get out of it. That 
is a plan. While certainly it might be necessary to do that, we want a 
plan and we would support raising the limit only if we had a plan.
  Now, Congress will review budget estimates from CBO, the 
Congressional Budget Office, in August, and using those budget 
projections, we would require the President to submit a new budget to 
the Congress that balances the budget within 5 years without using the 
Social Security surplus. That is a part of the plan. Do we need to 
raise the debt, the debt ceiling, the limit? Maybe, if we have a plan. 
Do we need to look at all of the numbers from the Congressional Budget 
Office? Certainly, we do. And we need a budget that does not invade 
Social Security.
  Last year, or I guess it was in 1997; it seems like last year, but in 
1997 we passed the Balanced Budget Act. It was a great bipartisan 
effort. We had people from both sides of the aisle, Democrats and 
Republicans, from all regions of the country supporting the Balanced 
Budget Act and the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. It was a great 
bipartisan victory for this House. At the time the whip on the other 
side of the aisle said that we need, from the beginning of this 
Congress, that we want to negotiate with the President, but we cannot 
negotiate with a President who does not want a balanced budget.
  I think that was wise and sage advice, and we hope that wise and sage 
advice will continue now as we negotiate with the administration and 
say, we want to negotiate, but we want to negotiate with someone that 
wants to balance the budget and we want to balance the budget without 
invading Social Security and Medicare. We agree with that approach.
  The House, as was mentioned, is going to look at the possibility of 
raising the debt limit and borrowing more money, as the gentleman from 
Louisiana mentioned, and we propose a supermajority, or a three-fifths 
vote, as the gentleman indicated, for such an action. We believe that 
to be reasonable, we believe that to be proper, and we believe that to 
be the way that this House can focus on the seriousness of that issue. 
We hope that the Congress will take that matter of increasing the debt 
very seriously.
  Finally, let me mention one other thing that D could stand for, other 
than what the gentleman from Louisiana mentioned. D is for debt 
prevention. Not only do we need to reduce debt in this country and pay 
off our debt and be responsible, we need to prevent debt in the future. 
We cannot overstate the importance of taking care of our 
responsibilities and getting our fiscal house back in order. The 
principles that were outlined by the gentleman from Louisiana and the 
other Blue Dogs that have worked so hard on this issue would help rein 
in fiscal responsibility and ensure that we secure our children's 
future.
  Mr. JOHN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for laying 
out very eloquently the position of the Blue Dogs and also for giving a 
little background of where we need to go. The underlying message is 
that we need a plan, and the Blue Dogs have this plan.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield now to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Phelps) 
to talk further about the Blue Dog plan and our position.
  Mr. PHELPS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana, and I 
thank the gentleman from Texas who just spoke. I wholeheartedly agree 
with my colleagues here this evening. While we may be repeating some of 
the same concepts and principles that we believe wholeheartedly in as 
an organization, the Blue Dogs, I hope folks take it within their 
consideration, because if we do not repeat what is important over and 
over, sometimes it is not taken in as it should be, so forgive us if we 
become too repetitive, but we are trying to do our best to emphasize 
what is important.
  We are here tonight when Congress is out of session; we have 
adjourned for the night. But we have continued to try to be here, 
missing our dinners and other social events that we, quite frankly, 
like to go to and get some business done too, but we believe enough in 
what we are emphasizing tonight to sacrifice that time to make sure, 
before this session is over and this Congress adjourns for the year, 
that we have done our best to try to indicate to the American people 
the true picture of the situation and how we think it should be 
resolved.

[[Page H2149]]

  So, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my fellow Blue Dogs for their 
comments and for giving me this opportunity to speak out on such an 
important issue. I want to focus my time in 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 
of the danger of making long-term commitments for tax cuts or new 
spending programs based on projected surpluses, really unrealistic 
projection of surpluses. In less than a year's times, here we have 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, have an honest, open discussion about what we need to do to put 
the budget back in order, starting with the ABCs of fiscal discipline, 
which is what we are trying to outline tonight.
  My wife and I have raised four lovely children. We still have our 
youngest at home, who is just finishing his junior year at the 
University of Southern Illinois, the university that both my wife and I 
have graduated from, and he is taking his exams this week, so I hope he 
is out there studying. Our three daughters are married and working. My 
wife and I worked very hard in trying to communicate to our children, 
and through an example ourselves, how we ran the household when they 
were able and old enough to observe and know what was going on, and we 
reiterated over and over to be very careful on how you develop your 
spending habits. You do not squander what you do not have. You do not 
promise your friends and other people you will participate in 
activities when you know you do not have the means to participate. 
These are tough lessons in life, probably the toughest, but I am happy 
to say that they are fiscally responsible young people.
  So I feel like my wife and I have been somewhat successful at this 
point. We know that some of the problems in marriages can stem from 
financial problems, and unless you work as a team as a married couple, 
committed to making and meeting your debts, and working and raising the 
money to meet your expenses, as part of growing stronger together and 
building an economy of your own, that also transfers into the economy 
of your community, of your State and of your Nation. How you are going 
to pay for the most important things, the priority things, the 
necessities, your utility bills. One cannot live without water and 
power and transportation to travel back and forth to work. Take care of 
those things first, the necessities. That is what we taught, and I am 
happy to say they were intelligent enough and cooperative enough to be 
young people that have come now to be young married couples, soon to 
teach their children, and I have one grandchild, who will be learning, 
as he is four years old now.
  As a legislator, I travel and talk to schools and am a former 
teacher, and my wife is a teacher. Our family has invested heavily in 
education. One of the things I try to emphasize when I am talking to 
young people, students, is I am trying to explain who I am as a 
Congressman. I am a legislator; I am a law maker. I legislate.

                              {time}  2000

  To legislate, what does that mean? The proper definition, if we will 
look it up, is to transfer the public's will into public policy.
  Now, what is the will of the American people? I honestly believe the 
people that I have met and known in this body that I serve with today 
and people who served in the past that I did not get to know, I 
honestly believe they know the will of their districts. They know what 
the people really count as priority, what is important, what is most 
important.
  There are a lot of things that we hold important that are never, 
maybe, within our means to be able to address fully and wholeheartedly 
as we would like.
  But to transfer the public's will into public policy is a great 
responsibility. Part of that responsibility, and now I have grown to 
know that the biggest responsibility, is what we do with the money that 
we have been entrusted to handle, that we collect from people that are 
working every day, like the coal miner in my district that takes his 
lunch bucket and goes down in the bowels of the earth. Many of my 
friends have never returned from there. It is a dangerous occupation.
  Or it is the farmers who are trying to feed us. Farming is a high-
risk line of duty, one of the most unhealthy occupations in the Nation, 
the family farmer.
  But the Blue Dogs have outlined four solutions to avoid leaving our 
children and grandchildren with the consequences of today's 
irresponsible budgeting solutions. Here are the ABCs.
  A is ensuring that there is honesty and accountability; budget 
enforcement, in other words. 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 constraints, restraints, will shine a light on 
deceptive practices and construct a fiscal guardrail, keeping our 
spending within the Nation's fiscal means.
  As my colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sandlin) said, those 
out there who work hard and play by the rules, they should expect us to 
follow them; even our own rules, which, from the parliamentary 
standpoint, with all the specifics of what goes on here in this 
process, are probably not clear to many. Many of these are not clear to 
me. Even when they are, I am wondering if we would recognize the same 
ones on the same page, the wording and how it is interpreted.
  But it is time that we lay everything out on the table, leave nothing 
off, just like we ask our families to do. I have told my children, do 
not count some expenses or some funds that are coming in twice. Some 
things are for certain things, certain important priorities: the 
utilities, for example, that I mentioned. Those are identified. We must 
lay those aside and at least put an approximate, sometimes a detailed 
and very predictable, expense that they can expect every month. I do 
not think we are surprised by what we know we have to pay for here.
  So we have to be able to reconcile within ourselves what the rules 
are, enforce them, and ensure honesty and accountability.
  B is balancing the budget without raiding Social Security. A balanced 
budget constitutional amendment, that makes sense to me. 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 or raiding the Social Security surplus.
  The amendment could be waived in times of war, of course, military 
conflict, or other threats to national security. Even that is pretty 
broad, because what some people might classify as national security, or 
the administration, that is what we deliberate on here, to see if we 
agree. But surely a majority out of 435 people, and 100 over in the 
other Chamber, with a President who makes pretty close to the same 
pledges and promises if they want to be elected or reelected, surely 
that cannot be too far off the bubble, I would not think, unless we are 
changing the rules after we get elected and do not want to face up to 
what we promised.
  This includes excluding the Social Security trust funds. Balancing 
the budget is meaningless if we borrow from our children, and just go 
to our parties and play golf and have our fun, and tell the American 
people that things could be looking better: ``Look up, let us be 
positive.''
  Members are not talking to anybody who is even halfway near 
pessimistic. I do not accept defeat or anything that is presented to me 
with doubt if I know I have done my best within my power. How in the 
world can the American people expect us to be looking them straight in 
the eye and saying that we are doing our best when we are willingly 
adding more debt to the debt that we are not even being honest about?
  Sure, there are unforeseen expenses that come our way, such as the 
national security, terrorism, and recession, but we have a tendency to 
underplay what we want to and exaggerate what we want to just to sell 
what we

[[Page H2150]]

know cannot be accomplished in a certain realm of time, within the 
election proximity of time. When does reality finally strike what body 
of elected people? Will honesty and reality finally come to the surface 
and say, I cannot account for all those generations back there, and 
those decades of politicians, but I can tell you what I know? That is 
who I want to serve with, someone who will step forward and be counted.
  A debt limit with a plan. Blue Dogs believe Congress has a 
responsibility to cover obligations through the end of the fiscal year 
September 30, 2002, and that is coming up pretty quick, but that 
raising the debt limit by $750 billion as requested by the President is 
pretty risky business, in my way of thinking.
  First, the President and Congress must create a plan to put our 
fiscal house back in order, just as the family facing financial 
problems must work with their bank to establish a framework, a 
financial plan, in order to get approval to refinance their debts.
  But do Members know what they have to do before they can refinance 
their debts or begin their plan? The biggest word I know of: 
acknowledge that there is a problem, acknowledge that one is wrong.
  I have heard our preacher say in our pulpit that one of the biggest 
words, misused words, is the fact that many of us want to say, oh, I 
made mistakes and I stubbed my toe, and I have done this or that. I 
wish I had it to do over. They leave out the word ``sin,'' from a 
religious context. They do not want to acknowledge within their own 
lives what they have control over themselves that is going on wrong in 
their lives.
  Do Members know what is going to happen to that person who has gone 
too far with alcohol or anything else? Unless they acknowledge it, they 
will never be able to control it or to come up with a solution, or have 
a plan; to be in that Alcoholics Anonymous, to change their lives in 
their own faith, because they have not acknowledged who they are down 
deep, what they have done. They have tried to sugarcoat it by saying, 
``I sure have made some mistakes.'' That is from a secular standpoint.
  I might have said something wrong to somebody, maybe not guarding my 
words or not being as courteous. That is a mistake. But it is going 
deeper than that. Climbing out of the deficit ditch is going to take 
strong, courageous people to step forward acknowledging the problem.
  Finally, defending our children from paying our bills, and having a 
supermajority to borrow money. All too often Congress and the President 
have been unwilling to make tough choices to balance our priorities, 
and have chosen to leave future generations to pay the bill for 
policies which benefit the current generation by increasing borrowing. 
Making it harder for Congress to borrow money 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.
  That is where we are at, that crossroads. Can we just do the simple 
ABCs? We cannot even put a word together or communicate or learn to 
read unless we know our ABCs.
  I want to tell the Members something: the Blue Dogs know our ABCs. I 
hope we can convince enough of our colleagues to step up and eat that 
alphabet, even if it is the cereal of the morning. If they are on the 
floor trying to defeat or at least debate with me as a member of the 
Blue Dogs, I am telling the Members, I am ready to face them.
  If they have different figures than the CBO or any other fiscal 
commission can tell us, if they do, let us sit down here together in 
the light of day and say who is wrong. And whoever it is, let us fire 
them, or we are paying them too much if they are not giving us the 
right kind of information that we all can drive this Nation to the 
right course.
  Mr. JOHNS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for 
laying out what I believe is the best plan. It is a plan to get us back 
to where we really need to go.
  Why do we need a plan? We talk about a lot of things in this 
Congress, but one of the most important things that we do is allocating 
dollars in the budget process and authorizing and appropriating, 
because that is where our priorities lie. They lie in where we put our 
money.
  That is why it is important to have a budget that makes sense, that 
is not a deceitful one in any way, or with smoke and mirrors, but a 
budget plan that makes sense. I think it is really important, because 
let me give the fiscal roller coaster ride in a real broad picture 
about where we have come from over the last very few short months, it 
seems like. I will try to be very nontechnical, because it is not very 
difficult to understand.
  Last year, the CBO projected that the government would run a unified 
surplus of $5.6 trillion over the next 10 years, trillion with a T, and 
$3.4 trillion of that surplus was going to be excluded from Social 
Security. So we were dealing with $3.4 trillion over 10 years of money 
that we could or we were going to deal with for surpluses.
  Actually, during the budget debate last year, as the Blue Dogs were 
moving forward in trying to make sure and drive home the message of 
paying down our debt, a lot of my colleagues on the other side of the 
fence were talking about, hold on, we do not want to pay off our debt 
too fast.
  Boy, did that not happen. Less than 12 months later, the debt held by 
the public is increasing. Last year, Congress and the President agreed 
time after time after time again to put a lockbox around Social 
Security so that these new projections that show promise now, so that 
we would never go back into the Social Security trust fund.
  But now today, May of 2002, less than 1 year or just a little over a 
year from all of these projections, the government is projected to run, 
listen to this, Mr. Speaker, a deficit that will require the government 
to use Social Security and Medicare money from the trust funds for the 
rest of the decade. Those are not my words, those are the CBO's, the 
experts and the guys that do this for a living. They said for the next 
decade, and it is only 2002, Mr. Speaker, so that is the fiscal picture 
that we have painted ourselves into. That does not even count the 
continued war on terrorism, the continued homeland security, and other 
very important programs that this Congress I know is going to want to 
put at the front lines.
  What does this mean? This means a higher debt. We spend nearly 14 
percent of our Federal dollars, 14 percent of our Federal budget goes 
to the interest on our debt. I mentioned a little while ago that it is 
over $230 billion a year in interest. But for those who are percentage 
buffs and pie chart people, 14 percent of our budget goes to paying off 
the debt that we have incurred, something that we could have started to 
pay down over the last few years.
  Even the experts agree that spending this money on interest, and we 
all know what that is; it is not unlike, or in fact, it is exactly the 
same as the little line item that we have on our credit cards when we 
do not pay the balance off that says finance cost, interest cost on the 
money that we spent that we did not pay back over a year cycle. So that 
puts it in the context of our everyday occurrences. It takes away from 
the money that we could be using to pay down the debt, that we could be 
using in one of the most important issues that we need to address in 
Congress: educating the children, the next generation, the next Members 
of Congress, the next people who will protect this country. Also, it is 
health care, prescription drugs.
  By continuing not to focus on paying down our debt, it takes money 
away from the things that are so very important.

                              {time}  2015

  But the most important, I believe, problem that this causes, when we 
talked about tax cut and many of us including myself voted for 
President Bush's tax cut, it was August of last year when we voted on 
the tax cut. The economy was starting to slow and sputter a little bit. 
September 11 had not happened just yet. And our life changed a month 
from that, but many of us voted for these tax cuts. Some of us voted 
for them and, of course, did not like some of the areas that we were 
cutting. I thought we could do better in spurring our economy and 
putting money back in other areas. But it was a package.

[[Page H2151]]

  This is Congress. There are 435 people, and I think it was an okay 
deal that we dealt with. But as we moved out of this tax cut and moving 
into the areas of having to pay debt, increase our debt and look at 
deficits, we have to reevaluate some of the things we need to do. And 
one of the things, the biggest drag on our economy is debt payment and 
deficits. I think that that is agreed to by many economists, and I 
think that is very important. And what does that do in the whole ball 
game? Because I believe the most important tax cut that we could 
possibly have that everyone enjoys is keeping interest rates low; 
interest rates on your house, interest rates on your credit cards, 
interest rates on your auto loans. And that is what I think we need to 
continue to be mindful of as we move through, I think, a very, very, 
very important and critical crossroads as we are starting to develop 
the 2003 appropriations bills and the other bills that we are going to 
be dealing with for spending.
  But I think it is important that we have a plan, a plan that puts 
fiscal handcuffs on us, to save us from ourselves sometimes when we are 
having to spend and wanting to make sure that we are providing the best 
kind of services for our constituents back home, whether it is roads or 
education or health care or veterans' benefits. But at the same time 
trying to do it in a very frugal way to make sure that we are spending 
the taxpayers dollars the best we possibly can. And that is what the 
Blue Dog plan does. It has been laid out very nicely tonight by my 
friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sandlin), and my friend, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Phelps).
  And maybe just to recap it very quickly because my time is running 
out, it is again the ABC's. It is honesty and accountability in 
budgeting. It is balancing the budget without raiding Social Security. 
It is climbing out of the deficit ditch by making sure that we have 
limits and abide by those limits; and, D, of course, is defending 
children from paying our bills and our debts that we are accumulating 
over these few years, and that would require a supermajority to borrow 
dollars. So those are the ABC's the Blue Dogs are going to continue to 
push until we get a plan together that makes sense, that brings us into 
the next century, that brings us through this war time and times of 
great difficulty as we are having to deal with issues we did not dream 
of dealing with just a few months ago.
  I thank the Speaker for this very lively hour of debate, and I just 
beg that the American people and the majority and this Congress look at 
the Blue Dog plan, take it for what it is worth. It is not just 
rhetoric. We have bills that are in the hopper that identify the ABC's 
of how we get out, bring fiscal sanity back into this Congress.

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