[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 31 (Wednesday, February 26, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H1362-H1363]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 BLUE DOG COALITION ON THE FEDERAL DEBT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Porter). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, this week the Blue Dog Coalition expressed 
our deep concern over the announcement that the Federal Government had 
reached the debt limit just 9 months after increasing it by $450 
billion.
  The Federal Government hitting the debt limit so soon after raising 
it by so much merely validates our concern of the fiscal policies we 
are now following. Due to the debt limit being reached, the Department 
of the Treasury announced it will dip into Federal retirement programs 
to circumvent the debt limit, an action for which House Republicans 
severely criticized Secretary of Treasury Bob Rubin for taking in 1996. 
Less than 6 years ago, 225 of my Republican friends voted to soundly 
reprimand and prohibit then-Secretary Rubin from taking precisely the 
actions announced this week by Secretary Snow. The silence of the 
Republicans in Congress about the announcement made by the Bush 
administration stands in stark contrast to the reaction from many of my 
same Republican colleagues to Secretary Rubin's action.
  A 1995 resolution, authored by a then anti-deficit Republican 
majority, insisted that a balanced budget would ensure lower interest 
rates, a faster rate of economic growth, increased national wealth, 
increased rates of savings and investment, faster growth in the capital 
stock, higher productivity, and improved trade balances. I agreed with 
my Republican colleagues 6 years. I wish they agreed with me today.
  Now, we can disagree about what has put us in the deficit hole today, 
but we should be able to agree that digging the hole deeper is ill-
advised. Yet the President's budget proposes policies that would 
increase the deficit by more than $2 trillion over the next 8 years. 
According to the White House Office of Management and Budget, the tax 
cut signed by the President and new proposals in his budget are 
responsible for 45 percent of the $7.9 trillion deterioration in our 
budget outlook. Now, that is 45 percent. Fifty-five percent is the 
recession and the war and other things that are occurring today. Not 
the upcoming war.
  The suggestion that we will be able to grow our way out of the 
deficit was contradicted in testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan 
Greenspan earlier this month. Even under the most optimistic, dynamic 
estimates of the President's tax cut, large deficits will continue as 
far the eye can see. And the projections of the economic benefits of 
tax cuts ignore the economic harm caused by government borrowing to 
finance deficits, higher interest rates, and lower investments in 
American businesses.
  Now, contrary to some suggestions, my concern about the budget 
deficit has always applied to spending, increased spending, as well as 
unfinanced tax cuts. Even before many of my House Republican 
colleagues, I volunteered to help hold the line on spending at the 
level last year requested by the President. I hope the President, Mr. 
President, that you will send to Congress a list of pork-barrel items 
that you believe should be eliminated from the funding bill endorsed by 
the House leadership and recently signed into law. If you do, I will 
support those spending cuts. But the reality is that under the 
President's budget the deficit hole will be dug deeper.
  Now, the rhetoric from my Republican friends about controlling 
spending just does not hold up to factual examination. In the 8 years 
since Republicans took control of the Congress, discretionary spending 
has increased by an average of 6.5 percent per year, compared to the 
previous 8 years of 1.6 percent. Those are the facts, not the rhetoric 
we hear on this floor every time someone stands up and questions the 
economic direction that we are going.
  Now, some days, some of us ignore the most wasteful spending in the 
Federal budget, the $332 billion collected from taxpayers simply to 
cover our national interest payments. This debt tax consumed a whopping 
18 percent of all Federal tax dollars last year. Under the budget, the 
economic game plan that I hear we are going to have on the floor in 2 
or 3 weeks, the debt tax will increase 50 percent in the next 5 years. 
A 50 percent increase in taxes, the debt tax, is what is being 
advocated.
  Now, I do not understand the logic of that. I agreed with the 
President, and I do agree with the President, and I believe him to be 
sincere when he says this Congress should not pass on to our children 
and future generations our debt. That is what we are doing under the 
proposal that is before us today.
  To my friends on this side of the aisle, there are many on this side 
of the aisle that are ready to reach out and accept the hand and are 
beginning to work and to recognize that we need a change in direction. 
Yes, we need to restrain spending. And, yes, we need to

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restrain our desire to give tax cuts to the current generation, just as 
we anticipate sending our youngest and finest over to fight a war. It 
is not fair to them. It is not fair to our children and grandchildren.

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