Congressional Record, Volume 148 Issue 81 (Tuesday, June 18, 2002)

[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 81 (Tuesday, June 18, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H3646-H3651]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

BLUE DOGS HAVE THE RIGHT PLAN FOR FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. TURNER. Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my colleagues, the
gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) and the gentleman from Georgia
(Mr. Kingston), for their presentation a few moments ago regarding the
high cost of prescription drugs and their support for legislation that
would allow the reimportation of drugs to allow our seniors to get the
prices that are now offered in Mexico, Canada, and the citizens of
every other country in the world, except the United States.
I want to make it very clear that all of us on the Democratic side of
the aisle have supported that legislation, and we really think we
should go further and that we should provide fairness in drug pricing
to all American seniors by requiring our drug manufacturers to end that
practice of price discrimination that results in the very problem that
they were talking about. That is to say drug manufacturers are selling
the same medicine in the same bottle with the same label, on average,
about half the price in every country in the world except the United
States where we pay the premium.
Our senior citizens are hurting today because they cannot afford the
$400 and the $500 and the $600 and the $700 prescription drug cost.
That is why Democrats have proposed not only fairness in drug pricing
by our drug manufacturers, but we have supported a universal
prescription drug benefit as a part of the Medicare program to be sure
that all seniors can have their prescription medications as a part of
the regular Medicare program that has worked so well in this country
for our seniors for so many years.
I come to the floor today during this Special Order hour on behalf of
the Blue Dog Democrat Coalition. That coalition consists of 33 fiscally
conservative Democrats in this House who believe very strongly that
this country is going in the wrong direction with regard to its fiscal
affairs. We believe in balanced budgets and paying down our almost $6
trillion national debt. We believe that it is time to face up to the
reality that we are now robbing the Social Security trust fund to run
the rest of the government, something that this Congress a year ago
pledged not to do on at least four or five occasions by record votes on
the floor of this House.
It seems that the Congress and the administration have not been
candid with the American people about our fiscal affairs. But what most
Americans remember is that a year ago we were talking about record
surpluses in our Federal budget. We were talking about surpluses, as I
remember President Clinton saying, as far as the eye can see. And when
President Bush came into office with those projections of surplus, he
called on this Congress to pass the largest tax cut in the history of
America. I voted for that tax cut because I believe people need tax
relief. But when I voted for it, we were projecting over $5 trillion in
excess funds that would flow into the Treasury of the United States
over the next 10 years. The tax cut took about half of that estimated
surplus.
The problem is that we stand here today 1 year after the enactment of
that tax cut and the entire remaining balance of that estimated surplus
is also gone. In fact, we are back at the point where we are not
projecting surpluses over the next decade; we are projecting deficits.
So once again, the Congress of the United States and the administration
is putting the operations of our Federal Government on a credit card, a
credit card that will be passed on to our children and our
grandchildren.
Mr. Speaker, I have a chart that will depict what has happened. What
this chart shows us is the history of the Federal budget since the last
years of the administration of President Lyndon Johnson.

{time} 1615

It traces the history through the Nixon years and the Ford years, the
Carter years, the Reagan and Bush I years, the Clinton years, to the
present administration. And what this chart shows is the history of the
Federal budget deficit, and we are talking about the deficit outside of
the Social

[[Page H3647]]

Security Trust Fund, the Medicare Trust Fund, and the other trust funds
of the government that the law says shall be protected for those uses.
The American people and this Congress agreed a long time ago that
when people pay their payroll taxes into the Social Security Trust
Fund, that money ought to be used for people's Social Security
benefits, not to run the rest of the government. Unfortunately it has
not worked that way. But the general budget of the Federal Government's
history is depicted here, and so what we have had over time is a
history of deficits. Congress went for 30 years before 1996 with
deficits every year, and those are shown on this chart. This chart
shows that those deficits got really big during the Reagan and Bush I
years, and in 1991 when President Clinton assumed office, we began to
pull our way out of deficit spending.
Until the last year of the Clinton administration, we actually had in
the Federal Government a true, genuine surplus outside of the Social
Security Trust Fund and other trust funds. We had a genuine surplus for
1 year in fiscal year 2000. President Bush came into office and said
that we had to give some money back to the American people as if to say
it was in the bank, when it really was no more than a projection of a
future surplus that has turned out to be an incorrect estimate. The
surplus went away.
As I said, about half of it was taken by the tax cut, but the other
half disappeared because the economy turned south on us. We actually
experienced, as my colleagues know, a recession. We also had September
11, which has required a significant amount of Federal dollars in order
to fight the war against terrorists and to protect the security of our
homeland. So the surplus is gone, and the estimates are that we are
back into deficits. And here are the projections for the next 5 years
showing how deeply into debt the Federal Government is estimated to go.
So what we are seeing is that the Congressional Budget Office has
told this Congress that the estimated deficits for the next 5 years
will be even greater than they have ever been in the history of our
Federal Government.
Blue Dog Democrats believe that this is wrong. We believe that when
we send young men and women into far-off places like Afghanistan to
protect our freedoms and our liberties, that the rest of us who are
back here at home should be at least willing to pay the bill. Otherwise
we are telling those young men and women that not only are they going
to fight the war to protect our freedom, but when they get back home,
during their good income-earning years when they reach midlife and full
adulthood, that those young men and women will have to pay the bills
for the war that they went as young people to fight, and we think that
is wrong.
And this administration and the leadership in this Congress has not
been honest with the American people about our fiscal affairs because
on the floor of this House once a week our Republican leadership
presents another tax cut for us to vote on. There are tax cuts that
will not take effect until 2011 because there are proposals to extend
the tax cut that we voted for last June. So we are down here debating
whether or not we should have a tax cut, to extend a tax cut that will
not expire until 2010. We are down here spending valuable time debating
matters that, if history holds, about half this Congress will not even
be here. Somebody else will be serving in 2011.
Democrats believe it is wrong to be telling the American people that
we can fight this war without making sacrifices, sacrifices that must
be shared by all of us, not just the young men and women in uniform. So
Blue Dog Democrats say that we ought to be paying our bills. There is
no question that the bill collector is at the door.
This next chart talks about an issue that will be debated over the
next few weeks by this Congress; that is, the issue of the debt
ceiling. We call it the statutory debt limit. There is a law on the
books that says how much debt our Congress and our President can incur
for future generations, and current law says the debt limit is $5.95
trillion, almost $6 trillion. The law says that we cannot incur any
more than that. The problem is we are bumping up against that debt
ceiling.
Now, a year ago when we were debating these tax cuts, the President
and the Secretary of the Treasury said, oh, we will not have to worry
about the debt ceiling until 2008. In fact, they were projecting that
we might even be in a situation where we will be paying off our
national debt too quickly, and have to pay a premium in order to pay it
off before it is really due.
All that sounds really amusing in retrospect, because today the
Secretary of the Treasury tells us that unless we raise the statutory
debt ceiling in a matter of just a few months, or, in fact, really just
a few weeks, we will default on obligations of the United States
Government. We will not be able to pay people's Social Security checks,
and we will not be able to pay the Federal Government's bills, because
we will not have the statutory authority to incur the debt; that is, to
borrow the money to pay those bills. So the administration says we need
to increase the debt limit, and they want us to increase it by $750
billion.
Now, the Blue Dog Democrats understand the reality of where we are
today, and we understand that the debt ceiling will have to be raised
in order to prevent default on the obligations of our government. But
Blue Dog Democrats believe that when we vote for that increase, number
one, it should be a modest increase, so we are not writing a blank
check to the Congress and the President to keep incurring more and more
debt.
It should be a modest increase, and it should be coupled with a
requirement that the President submit to the Congress a new budget to
put us back into a balanced budget situation by the year 2007. We would
like it to be quicker, but the reality is that we are in a position
where we are projecting deficit spending at such a level that unless
there are dramatic changes in our tax structure, we cannot possibly get
back into a balanced budget until 2007. So we are saying to the
President, yes, we will give an increase in the debt limit, but as a
condition to do it, we want the President and the Congress to adopt a
new budget to show the American people we can get our fiscal house in
order by 2007.
We also want that increase in the debt limit to be subject to passage
of legislation that would continue some budget enforcement mechanisms,
we call them pay-go rules, that require this Congress to operate on a
pay-as-you-go basis, and make sure that we do not increase spending
unless we understand that there is a way to pay for it.
Finally, we believe that as part of any agreement to raise the debt
ceiling, that we should have a responsible and reasonable limit on what
we call discretionary spending. That is the spending that we vote on
every year in a whole series of appropriations bills. We believe there
ought to be caps agreed upon that that spending will not go over, so
that we have a way of controlling the spending by this Congress.
Those three requirements we think are reasonable requests before we
cast a vote to increase the statutory debt limit.
To show another chart that will depict our fiscal condition, I would
like to direct Members' attention to this chart entitled ``From Debt-
Free to $2.8 Trillion in Debt in 2011.''
Before we passed the tax cut last June, the projections were that we
would actually have a surplus over the 10-year period. That is why we
were able to vote for the tax cut. What we projected was that the debt
that this country owes, much of which is owed to the public, these
people out there that are buying all these Treasury notes, Treasury
bills, and Treasury bonds every time the Treasury has an auction, we
projected a year ago that there would be no debt held by the public
after 10 years. That is how rosy the picture was projected to look. In
fact, we projected we would have a total elimination of the debt held
by the public.
Here we are a year later, and the current projections are that by
2011 there will be $2.799 trillion owed by our Federal Government to
those people who will buy those Treasury bills, Treasury notes, and
Treasury bonds. That is how dramatic the change in the Federal
financial picture is over just 1 year's time.
Now, some people would like to say that, well, this is all okay, and
do not get worried about this because we are in a war on terrorism, and
we have had

[[Page H3648]]

to spend a lot of money. That is true, but the reason we are going to
have $2.8 trillion in publicly held debt in 2011 is not totally due to
the war. Some estimate that maybe 20 percent of this number might be
due to what we expect to spend over the next decade on protecting the
homeland and fighting the war. Nobody really knows.
But the truth is that the tax cut that we passed last June took away
about half of our estimated surplus, and the recession and the change
in the economy took away about one-fourth of it, and maybe one-fourth
of it disappeared because of what we are having to spend to fight the
war.
The bottom line is this: This Congress and this administration have
not told the American people that the circumstances that existed when
we passed the major tax cut have dramatically changed, and this country
is now headed towards some of the deepest deficits and largest debt
that we have ever seen in our history.
Blue Dog Democrats believe that we have an obligation to run the
Federal Government just like the Members and I try to run our
households and our own personal businesses. We do not incur a debt at
my house unless we know how we can repay it within a reasonable time.
The Federal Government does not seem to understand that. The Federal
Government, as Members know, has no requirement in law for a balanced
budget, and Blue Dog Democrats wish we could change that with a
constitutional amendment, because most all of us served in our State
legislatures, where they have a provision in State Constitutions that
says that we have to balance the budget, and we cannot incur debt
unless we have a popular vote of the people to issue bonds for whatever
purpose.
But in Washington there has never been such a requirement. We can
spend the money all day long and do not have to pay the bill. All we do
is charge it to the credit card. The only constraint that exists today
is this Federal debt ceiling that we are now bumping up against that
the President is asking us to increase by $750 billion. That is the
only constraint on unrestrained spending, and the only restraint on
ever-increasing debt.

{time} 1630

Another chart which I would like to show my colleagues is what I like
to call the greatest waste in Federal spending that I believe this can
point to; and I will be the first to tell my colleagues, I believe the
Federal Government can save some money and cut some costs and eliminate
waste, but one of the biggest categories of waste in our Federal
Government is what we spend every year just on interest because the
Federal Government has run up this almost $6 trillion national debt.
This chart shows us what the estimated interest payments on our
national debt is going to be. It shows us what the estimated interest
payments were last year when we had that estimated surplus, and that
was a $709 billion interest cost over 10 years; but as I mentioned,
things have changed since last June. We have had September 11. We had
the war on terrorism. We have had the recession, and so the estimates
now of how much interest it will cost us to service the Federal debt of
$6 trillion has increased by $1 trillion. The estimates are that now we
will spend in interest alone 1.8, almost $1.8 trillion of our hard-
earned tax money just to service the interest on the $6 trillion
national debt that we owe.
Blue Dog Democrats believe that is a terrible waste of taxpayer
money, and the sooner we can get the national debt paid down and quit
paying this kind of interest, the better off our children and our
grandchildren are going to be. So the Blue Dog Democrats say, yes, we
understand that we are bumping up against the Federal debt ceiling. We
understand that we have got to do something in order not to default on
all the Social Security checks and other obligations that the Federal
Government owes; and we know that that debt limit is being reached
within the next few weeks, but Blue Dog Democrats say no blank check on
ever-increasing debt.
We say we will increase the debt in a modest amount, only if there is
a commitment on the part of the President and the Congress for the
President to submit a new budget that will be in balance by the year
2007, if we pass legislation ensuring that we continue our budget
enforcement mechanisms that keep us on a pay-as-you-go basis and if we
have reasonable caps on the various categories of spending for this
year's budget. It is no more than someone would do at their home or in
their business. We think we ought to do it in Washington. So that is
what the Blue Dog Democrats are proposing to this Congress.
There are 33 members of the Blue Dog Coalition. They work hard every
day, trying to be sure that the taxpayers are getting every bit of
value out of every tax dollar that we pay. We are trying to be sure
that the American people understand the finances of our Federal
Government so that the pressure of the American people will be brought
upon this President and this Congress to say enough is enough; and if
we are not paying our bills, if we are putting all of our obligations
and all of our expenditures on a credit card for our children and
grandchildren, we want it to stop. That is what the Blue Dog Democrats
believe, and that is what we are working hard for in this Congress.
Another way to describe our deteriorating fiscal picture is to share
the recent estimates of the Congressional Budget Office with my
colleagues. The Congressional Budget Office is that arm of the Congress
that gives us our official numbers when we come down here and we debate
tax cuts and we debate spending, we talk about debt. We are relying on
the numbers that the Congressional Budget Office gives us. That keeps
us all honest. It is a bipartisan body.
The Congressional Budget Office says that for the first 8 months, the
first 8 months of this fiscal year, our Federal Government has run a
deficit of $149 billion. Contrast that with what was going on during
the first 8 months of the last fiscal year, 2001, where we were running
a surplus of $137 billion. So in 1 year's time we move from running a
surplus in the first 8 months of the fiscal year of $137 billion, to
the current fiscal year during those first 8 months of running a
deficit of $149 billion. That is a dramatic swing in the fiscal
condition of our Federal Government.
Tax receipts are running much lower than anyone anticipated. The
recession has been longer and slower to turn around than we had
expected, and we know now from what the Congressional Budget Office
tells us that for the entire fiscal year we will likely end up with a
deficit of well over $100 billion.
So how do we go from 8 years of improving fiscal circumstances to now
finding ourselves unfortunately having to look forward to record
deficits once again? I am sure my colleagues can get a lot of people to
give us a lot of different answers to that question; but the bottom
line is, things have changed and yet this Congress seems to operate as
if nothing has changed when it comes to dealing fiscally responsibly
with our Federal tax dollars.
I am glad to have on the floor with me this afternoon one of the
leaders of the Blue Dog Democrats, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr.
Berry), who speaks with about as much clarity and common sense as
anybody I have ever met in the Congress; and I am pleased to yield to
the gentleman to talk on this very important issue.
Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished friend from Texas.
The gentleman has been a great leader on this issue and a great leader
for the Blue Dogs and a great leader for the State of Texas and this
country; and we appreciate the effort he is making here today, also.
Mr. Speaker, it is a sad day when we have to come back to this floor
when only a little over a year ago we still had surpluses. We had been
presented with an opportunity in this country to clear up the debt. We
knew that if we were prudent, if we operated in a fiscally responsible
manner, if we followed or had followed the Blue Dog plan, which said,
first, take care of Social Security and Medicare and pay off the debt
that we owe, and let us do that, and then let us take a little bit of
the money, all of this wonderful money that had been projected, let us
take a little bit of that money and do the things we know we should do
for our military, do the things that we know we should do for our
senior citizens, make the necessary investment to be sure that this
country continues to be successful economically, make the necessary
investments to be sure we are

[[Page H3649]]

secure, and then let us provide some tax cuts, let us take part of it
and provide some tax cuts, we had a list of priorities there.
We now have a disastrous situation facing us. In a little over a
year, we are told now that we have already borrowed an additional $300
billion in less than a year, and it is going to take, by the time we
get to the end of this year, another $450 billion to keep the country
floating, to keep us solvent. That is $750 billion we have borrowed
from our children and grandchildren.
We come to this floor day after day, week after week; and all of us
declare how much we love our children, how much we love our families.
We talk about family values endlessly; and at the same time, we conduct
our fiscal matters as a Congress as if there were no tomorrow, as if no
one has to answer for this.
What we are asking for, Mr. Speaker, is for all of us to sit down,
let us forget this partisan stuff. It does not get us anything. We have
got a serious problem. We have got a homeland security issue and a
national security issue that we must address and we will address it. We
have other top-priority issues that the Nation must deal with.
Prescription drugs for our senior citizens. We know how to do these
things. We can set the priorities and balance this budget and protect
Medicare and Social Security and not pass an enormous debt on to our
children and grandchildren.
I cannot imagine a situation where anyone would intentionally pass on
a debt to their next generation just because they were too
irresponsible to deal with it themselves. This is something that the
Blue Dogs have great concern about.
Over and over we have presented a responsible plan to this House. We
put it up for a vote and we lose, and we have been presented with the
plan that got the most votes, that puts us $750 billion deeper in debt
today by the end of this year than we were a year and a half ago. It
puts our children and grandchildren at a tremendous disadvantage. In
fact, when they are presented with the debt, the unfunded obligation of
Social Security and Medicare and the other necessities that they are
going to have to deal with when their time comes, I do not know how
they are going to deal with it. It becomes more of a burden than they
are going to be able to carry.
I think, Mr. Speaker, it is time, it is past time that both sides,
the Democrats and the Republican, let us sit down. We can figure this
out. We can do this right. We are willing.
I remember just a little over a year ago how excited the Blue Dogs
were. We had a new administration come into town. We were looking
forward to working with a new administration to craft a budget that
would be responsible, that would pay off the debt, not add to it, but
pay it off, take that burden off of our children, not make it greater.
I will never forget, and I have mentioned this several times, the
Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Daniels, came to
the Blue Dog meeting; and he very confidently told us the greatest fear
we have, the thing we are most concerned about, is that we are going to
pay off all of the debt, the economy is going to be doing so well that
we are going to pay off all of the debt and no one will be able to buy
a U.S. Treasury bond. That is almost laughable. In fact, we would laugh
about it today if it was not so serious.
It is not a laughing matter when we talk about passing this
horrendous debt on to our children and grandchildren. It is not a
laughing matter when we talk about we are squandering the opportunity
to make Social Security and Medicare permanent, make sure that Social
Security and Medicare are there for the senior citizens that are going
to come into the program in the next 15 to 20 years. This is not a
laughing matter. It is a very serious matter.
So, Mr. Speaker, what we are asking for is let us sit down at the
table together. Let us work this problem out. Let us do the right thing
for America. Let us do the right thing for our children and
grandchildren. Let us do the right thing for this country, and let us
honor the people that founded this country, the people that fought for
this country, the people that gave their lives so that this great
Nation of freedom and liberty could exist. Let us not squander this
opportunity that we still have to do the right thing.
Mr. TURNER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Arkansas
for his comments and for his strong leadership for fiscal
responsibility. He speaks with a great deal of common sense and enjoys
the respect of the entire Congress.
Next, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Matheson), another
member of the Blue Dog Coalition who has worked very, very hard trying
to get this Federal Government back on a course of fiscal
responsibility, who sponsored legislation to do that, who has been a
real leader in this House; and it is an honor to yield to him.

{time} 1645

Mr. MATHESON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Texas
yielding to me, and I want to thank him for continuing to be such an
articulate spokesman on this issue. Just another reason why I am real
proud to be a Blue Dog.
When I came to Congress, and I am a freshman, so I am here in my
first term in Congress, I had the opportunity to consider different
groups to affiliate with and issues to focus on. And before I even got
here as a candidate, I was talking about the notion of fiscal
responsibility, about what a great opportunity we have right now to
take our Federal budget and really work in a good way to reduce debt
and to reduce the burden of debt on future generations. The Blue Dog
message was one that was so consistent with mine, it was a great
experience for me to learn about this group and be affiliated with
them.
But that is only one reason why I am happy to be a Blue Dog. The
other reason I am happy to be a Blue Dog is that the Blue Dogs have a
reputation for being very straight up. We put the figures and facts out
on the table, and we are happy to work with people. And we say that in
an honest way. We are prepared to reach across the aisle and work with
anybody in this House, regardless of party, regardless of ideology. We
want to work with them to come up with good ideas for being fiscally
responsible.
We have gone through some tough times this past year in this country,
and our circumstances have changed. No question about that. We all are
supporters of the fact that we have to put in significant resources in
terms of this war on terrorism and efforts to increase homeland
security. These are tough issues, and we have not resolved them yet. In
fact, the needs for this war on terrorism and the needs associated with
homeland security are going to be developed for years to come probably,
in terms of us knowing where we are going to be.
So that is a significant factor, as I said, and we support committing
those resources. I know the Blue Dog coalition is very supportive of
defending our borders and defending our people. But with that change in
circumstance, clearly, it seems to me, that calls for reassessing where
we are in terms of our total Federal budget because we have just had
this significant change in our requirements, and coupling that with an
economic downturn and revenues being down and projected deficits coming
in, those are all reasons why we need to look at this.
My concern is that while we have been talking about this, that people
are not taking it seriously and looking at it. This is our opportunity
now, because we are running up against our credit limit. We have not
had to take a vote here in Congress on the debt limit for a number of
years because we were running surpluses. Now we will have to take a
vote on this. And the Blue Dogs are not trying to say we are not going
to raise the debt limit. The Blue Dogs are prepared to stand up for a
straight-up debt limit increase as long as it is associated with a
commitment to develop a plan for how we are going to get out of this
pattern of increasing debts year upon year upon year.
I do not like taxes. I do not think any of us like paying taxes. But
if we want to take action to make sure future generations pay a lot of
taxes, just keep running up the debt now, because those future
generations are going to have to be paying the interest on that debt.
We are talking about a heavy tax burden on future generations. That is
certainly not a legacy that I want to leave, and I would like to think
most

[[Page H3650]]

people in the Congress, on both sides of the aisle, do not want that to
be their legacy, but I am concerned that is the direction we are going.
Now, we sit here and talk about this, I recognize there is no easy
way out of that. I will admit that. This is going to take a lot of work
and a lot of smart people getting together to try to work through this,
to get our budget situation going from a path of increasing deficits to
where we are back on the path of fiscal responsibility. Nobody has a
monopoly on all the good ideas around here, not one individual, not one
party, but as Blue Dogs, we are sincere in our request that people sit
down with us.
We are ready to roll up our sleeves and work hard, and ready to face
the tough decisions. That is why our constituents elected us. We are
supposed to take on the tough issues, and this is a tough issue. My
concern is that right now Congress is not willing to address where we
are going. We are too concerned about short-term considerations in the
next election. We need to be looking at the next generation in the way
we make our decisions.
So as Blue Dogs, every week, we come out on the House floor to try to
highlight this issue, because it is such an important issue to us. It
is such an important issue to my constituents. I hear about it all the
time when I go back home. So, as I say, we are sincere in our request.
We have been out here many times. People have not taken us up on it
yet, but we are getting to the point where this debt limit is going to
be hit. The Senate has already passed a debt limit bill to raise the
debt limit, and now it is our time. It is our time here in the House.

Now, if we turn this into a partisan situation, I suppose the
majority party, if they can reach consensus, can pass a debt limit
increase without Democratic votes. We, as Blue Dog Democrats, are
prepared to offer a vote in favor of raising that limit, as I said
earlier, as long as it includes with it some sense of a plan or a
process by which we are going to come up with a plan to get us away
from this path of deficit spending. That is what we are asking.
That, to me, is such a common-sense request, because if you are in
the private sector, whether it be your household budget, or whether you
are in the business world, if you are spending out more than you are
taking in, you know you have to change something over the long run. You
just cannot keep doing that over time because it does not work. And
particularly if you want to borrow more money, it does not work,
because nobody will lend you that money because you do not have a good
story to tell how you are going to get out of that pattern. So when you
go for that car loan or you go for that home mortgage, the banker will
look you in the eye and say, tell me how you are going to pay me back.
A very reasonable request.
I think the citizens of this country ought to be asking Congress how
are you going to pay us back? How are you going to pay back this debt?
That is a fair question, and it is incumbent upon us to take that on.
So here we are again today. Week after week we raise this issue. I
make the request one more time. I ask Members of the House, let us get
away from the rhetoric, let us sit down and let us work together on
this very difficult issue. Let us do the right thing for future
generations, let us do the right thing to get our budget back on track.
That is what the Blue Dogs are all about, and I hope that people will
take us up on this offer.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I will yield back to the gentleman from
Texas.
Mr. TURNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah, and again I
thank him for his leadership on this issue. The gentleman represents a
new generation of leaders in the Congress, leaders that have a
conscience as well as an understanding that we have to pay the bills.
That reminds me of the diversity of the Blue Dog coalition. We have
Members from all over the country now, from Texas to Florida, New York
to California, to Utah. We have Anglos, Hispanics, African Americans.
We have Congressmen and Congresswomen all committed to the central
principle of the Blue Dogs, and that is we need to balance the Federal
budget, pay down this $6 trillion national debt, and ensure that we do
not pass that on to our children and to our grandchildren.
One other Member of the Blue Dog coalition that has joined us on the
floor here today is the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff). He is
an outstanding member; has been a leader on many issues of fiscal
responsibility. He came to the Congress after a distinguished career in
the California Assembly, and I am very pleased to yield to him.
Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me and for his
sustained leadership in dealing with the country's fiscal situation.
Mr. Speaker, it was not so long ago, in fact it was just last year,
that the administration was warning Congress of the dangers of paying
down the debt too fast. We were entertaining scenarios where the Nation
would have no debt, and what would the consequences of that be. These
were the discussions that were going on in this very Capitol just a
year ago. Well, would that these dire prophesies had come true and that
we were today faced with that dangerous prospect of a Nation without
debt.
In fact, we are very far from being a Nation without debt. Our debt
has only increased since last year. Our deficits have only spiraled
since then, because not long after those warnings of those dire
predictions of a debt-free America, war and recession intervened, and
now we are in a situation where this Nation faces deficits as far as
the eye can see.
Some are proposing, in fact, to aggravate the deficits we have now.
Some are proposing that we pass tax cuts not that are effective today
or tomorrow, but that will not take effect for 10 years. We had a vote
last week on one such proposal. We had a vote the week before on yet
another. And at the same time we are proposing further tax cuts that
will not take effect until more than a decade from now, the leadership
is proposing that we increase the national debt by three-quarters of a
trillion dollars.

Now, these votes do not take place on the same day. It would be very
difficult, I think, to schedule a vote to cut taxes 10 years from now
on the one hand and to raise the national debt on the other and have
the votes back to back. That would be very difficult to justify. But,
in fact, that is exactly what is taking place on the House floor.
We recently had a vote on the wartime supplemental appropriations
bill. That is a measure that every Member of Congress supports. It
provides necessary supplemental funding for the war effort. But buried
in that bill of a couple weeks ago was a provision to allow the
national debt to increase $750 billion. Now, why was that buried in
that bill? It was buried there because Members did not want to have to
justify or explain how it is we could be voting to extend tax cuts
beyond 10 years from now when at the same time we are raising our
national debt. We are, in fact, borrowing the money to provide some of
these cuts.
That is not any way to run a Nation. That is not how we run our
budgets at home; that is not how we ought to run our budgets here. What
we have to do is recognize that the prosperity that we enjoyed in the
last 10 years was contributed to by the fact that we had our budget in
balance; that, in fact, we were running a surplus for the first time in
many, many years, and keeping our budget in balance had the effect of
keeping interest rates low, making the dream of home ownership possible
for so many American families.
Have we forgotten already the benefits of having a budget that is in
balance, of paying down the national debt, the confidence that that
inspires in American markets, the impact it has on the lower interest
rates we pay on our mortgages or on our credit card debt? That is a
real tax on the American people. You are taxed every time you pay your
mortgage. You are paying for the cost of borrowing money. And we are
making that more expensive for you because, in effect, the Federal
Government is competing with you to borrow money whenever we run a
deficit, whenever we are in debt.
So the action we take in raising the national debt by $750 billion
means that your mortgages are going to be more expensive, that you are
going to be paying more in interest rates, that your children are going
to pay more, that a prescription drug benefit may be

[[Page H3651]]

placed out of reach because we simply do not have the resources to pay
a billion dollars a day in interest and try to provide prescription
drug benefits for seniors that cannot afford to pay for their medicine
and pay their rent and buy their groceries at the same time.
So what do we do? The administration says we need to raise the debt
limit; that we need to borrow, or we are going to default. Are we in
the Blue Dogs advocating that we go into default? Of course not. No one
in the House is advocating that we default on our fiscal obligations.
But what we are advocating, what we are asking of the leadership of
this House is to work with us on a more modest increase in the national
debt and, at the same time, work with us on a plan to get this country
back to a balanced budget. They have to go hand in hand.
American taxpayers would not want to increase the debt limit on a
credit card without any plan for how they were going to pay off their
credit card debt. That would not be a smart investment. The same is
true for the Nation. Before we extend the limit of what this country
can borrow, we ought to require of this Congress and this
administration that we come up with a plan to balance the budget over
the intermediate term and the long term, recognizing that in the face
of the war on terrorism, in the face of our efforts to pull ourselves
up from this economic downturn, that we may have to endure deficits in
the short term. Still, in the midterm and in the long term, we must get
back to putting our fiscal house in order.
And all of this begs a question, Mr. Speaker: Where have all the
budget hawks gone? Where have all the advocates of a balanced budget
gone? There used to be some great voices in this Chamber for balancing
the budget, for paying down the debt. Many of my colleagues on this
side of the aisle won their seats in the House 15 years ago and 20
years ago by campaigning against the spiraling national debt.

{time} 1700

Where have they gone? Why have we forgotten so readily the value of
the importance to our future of having a balanced budget?
So today we urge our colleagues to work with us. Let us have a modest
increase in the debt in light of the present difficulties, in light of
the demand for resources for the war on terrorism. Let us have a modest
increase in the debt. But let us accompany that increase with a plan
that gets us to a balanced budget once again. Let us not dramatically
expand our national debt with no plan whatsoever. That simply is not
being a good trustee for the American people. And that is the challenge
ahead of us today, to work together, with this House, Democrats and
Republicans, with our colleagues in the Senate, with the
administration. We can do this. We can do this. We have done this
before. It is not easy.
There are many things that we would like to do that are competing for
the same resources, but we have to recognize that if we do work
together and we do take down this national debt, pay it off, reduce our
deficits, that means that the billion dollars a day that we are
spending in interest we can spend one day's worth of that interest on
building new schools in your neighborhoods. We can spend another day of
that interest providing prescription drug benefits to seniors. We can
spend another day of that interest on fixing potholes in the roads. We
can spend another day of that interest in making sure that we expand
health care access to children. We can give another day of that
interest back to the taxpayer and help them pay their personal debts
and their personal obligations. And this is just with a week's worth of
interest, $7 billion that can be provided in the form of additional tax
cuts or that can be provided in the form of additional services for the
American people if we do not saddle ourselves with nonproductive debt,
and that is the challenge.
And I want to applaud my colleagues who have worked so hard and for
many years to bring about a sense of fiscal discipline in this body, to
restore the commitment that we have made, both parties, to provide
valuable services to the people we represent, to not encumber the
future of this country and our children's future in a debt they cannot
climb out from under. This is our time, this is our challenge, and I
think we are up to it.
Mr. TURNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr.
Schiff) for his comments. And I think the reality of our current fiscal
condition is certainly as he stated, and I think every Blue Dog
Democrat believes we need to give the American people as much tax
relief as we can afford to give them. But he is exactly right that when
there are tax cuts proposed on the floor of this House week after week,
the reality is whatever tax cuts are approved today over and above what
we have already done for the American people in the largest tax cut in
our history that was passed last June, those additional tax cuts will
just be paid for with borrowed money. So we are going to take money out
of the Social Security trust fund or borrow money from the public so we
can run the government and give these additional tax cuts.
That is not fiscally responsible, and I certainly appreciate the fact
that all of us want to be able some day to vote for additional tax
cuts. I certainly do. But I think that what the Blue Dog Democrats
stand for is first making sure that we are paying the obligations of
the United States Government, whatever they may be; and it is a tragedy
to think that the course that we are now following will result over the
next decade of an additional trillion dollars in interest costs to the
American taxpayer, wasted money just paid out on interest just because
of the course of fiscal irresponsibility that we are now embarked upon.
I pointed out this chart early in our hour, and I want to point it
out as we close. Just 1 year ago when the President submitted his
budget, it was estimated that we would not reach the statutory debt
limit set by this Congress until the year 2008.
Mr. Speaker, we now know that we are bumping up against that debt
limit, too. If we continue along the path of the President's budget
submitted to us in January/February of this year, we will see record
increases in the debt owed by the taxpayers of this country to the
extent of an increase of over $2 billion over the next decade. That is
a course that we should not follow.
That means that the young men and women fighting for our freedom
today in Afghanistan and other far-off places will not only sacrifice
in the battles that they fight for our freedom today, but when they
come home someday, when they are in their middle years, their highest
income earning years, they will have to pay the bill for the very war
that they went today to fight.
The sacrifices that will be required of the people of this country to
win this war on terrorism are indeed great, and they are sacrifices
that all of us must be ready to share in. The Blue Dog Democrats are
here to remind Congress and the President that somebody has got to be
willing to pay the bills. Today the debt collector is at the door, and
he is knocking. He is telling us that we are running this government
off the Social Security trust fund at a time when Social Security will
be under the greatest stress in its entire history. As the baby boom
generation retires and becomes eligible for Social Security is just the
time that we see the projections of an ever-increasing Federal debt and
growing deficits in our annual Federal budgets.

We need to be honest with the American people. We need to be willing
to tell them the truth, and we need to be able to act in a bipartisan
way recognizing the reality of our current fiscal situation and
recognizing that every one of us is going to have to do everything
necessary to win the war on terrorism to protect the security of this
country, and together we must be willing to pay the bill.
So we have come here today and shared together in this hour of time
on this floor to simply say to this Congress and this President, let us
work together to balance our budget, to pay our bills, and to be sure
that we do not pass the costs of today's government and today's war on
to our children and our grandchildren.

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