[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 75 (Tuesday, May 20, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H4337-H4342]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE DEBT CEILING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, the Blue Dogs are going to be taking this hour 
to talk about the debt ceiling. And for those who are listening, the 
Blue Dogs are about 35 Democrats in the House of Representatives who 
believe that we ought to be fiscally responsible. The debt ceiling, for 
those who are listening, too, is a process by which we pass a budget 
and we say that we are going to pay for items in the budget. And if we 
do not have the money to pay for the items in the budget, then we have 
to borrow the money.

                              {time}  1745

  That takes an act of law. About 7 or 8 months ago, we did not have 
enough money, so we raised the debt ceiling by approximately $450 
billion. Now 7 or 8 months later, to fast forward to today, we are 
going to have to do it again. We are going to have to raise it $984 
billion. This is at the same time that a conference committee in these 
halls of Congress are debating a multi-billion dollar tax cut. Many of 
us are not in agreement with that, but there are many in this body and 
the other body that believe that we should borrow the money in order to 
do a tax cut.
  In President Bush's State of the Union address, the President said, 
``This country has many problems. We will not deny, we will not ignore, 
we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other 
Presidents and other generations.'' I am quoting from the President of 
the United States. But that is precisely what we are doing in our 
current budget and economic policies.
  The House majority is trying to hide a $984 billion increase in the 
debt limit, the largest increase in the debt limit in history. This 
comes less than 8 months after we raised the Federal debt ceiling by a 
whopping $450 billion. When the President proposed his initial budget 
in the year 2001, the administration actually claimed there was a 
danger that the government would pay off its debt by the public too 
quickly. The administration's request for the second increase in the 
statutory debt limit is less than a year and shows just how farfetched 
those warnings were. The majority no doubt hopes that this increase in 
the debt limit is large enough to avoid dealing with the issue of our 
increasing national debt until after the election next year.
  If the majority honestly believes that tax cuts with borrowed money 
is good economic policy, they should be willing to vote to increase the 
national debt to pay for their tax cuts, instead of relying on 
undercover, parliamentary tricks.
  We Blue Dogs are firmly opposed to increasing the borrowing authority 
by $984 billion without efforts to restore fiscal discipline into the 
future and protect taxpayers from higher and higher debt. We understand 
that we have to borrow monies sometimes to pay our debts, and we feel 
like we should do the responsible thing and do that, but there ought to 
be some kind of road map put in place for the American people so we can 
see somewhere down the line how we are going to get out of this mess, 
and we are not doing that.
  The one tax that cannot be repealed is the debt tax, the cost of 
paying interest on our national debt. The debt tax consumed 18 percent 
of all government revenues to pay interest on the $6.4 trillion 
national debt last year, including interest on debt held by government 
trust funds.
  We are willing, as I said before, to support a short-term increase in 
the debt ceiling to avoid the impending risk of default, but we will 
not support an increase in the debt limit of nearly a trillion dollars 
to allow the government to continue on the course of deficits as far as 
the eye can see. It is irresponsible to provide a blank check for 
increased borrowing authority without examination of the conditions 
that make such an increase necessary. Just like a credit card spending 
limit serves as a tool to force families to examine their household 
budget, the debt limit reminds our Nation to evaluate taxing and 
spending policies.
  A farmer or small businessman who needs an extension of their credit 
must work with the bank to establish a financial plan in order to get 
approval from the bank. We should be following that principle by 
working on putting our budget back in order before we raise our credit 
limit.
  A thorough debate on lifting the debt ceiling is particularly timely 
as Congress considers tax cuts that could add more than a trillion 
dollars to the national debt over the next decade. Every dime of tax 
cuts being pushed by the majority will come from borrowed

[[Page H4338]]

money. Under the majority's budget, the national debt would exceed $10 
trillion by the year 2009 and $12 trillion by the year 2013. The borrow 
and spend policies of this current majority will leave a crushing debt 
for future generations who do not have a say in what we are doing and 
do not benefit from the tax cuts and spending programs.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd) who has 
been an expert on this issue and a great spokesman.
  Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) 
for his leadership in the Blue Dogs and his leadership on this 
important issue for the American people.
  Mr. Speaker, I would ask the question, have we lost our way? If the 
American people understood how this Congress and this administration 
were managing the United States Government's money, the American 
people's money, they would fire us all. It is absolutely 
unconscionable. We must have lost our way.

  Let us go back in history a little bit.
  Mr. Speaker, 2 years ago when the President proposed the tax cut that 
was put into place in 2001 of $1.34 trillion, we were looking at over 
the next 10 years from an economic forecast of about $5.6 trillion 
surplus over a 10-year period. The President claimed then that, even 
with these tax cuts, we could balance the budget and, even with the 
$1.34 trillion worth of tax cuts, we could pay off all of the publicly 
held debt by the year 2008.
  Many of us opposed the bill, but there could be made a legitimate 
argument that if the economy, if it performed in a very positive way 
over the next 10-year period that things would have been all right. But 
things were not all right. The following year, as the gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Hill) said, Congress had to vote to increase the debt by 
$450 billion, that is billion with a ``B'', because of several factors, 
several things that came along.
  Some of them were out of our control, such as the economic downturn 
and the attacks of September 11. But one thing that was under our 
control was the economic policy of this administration. All of those 
things contributed to the fact that now we had to go back a year after 
that $1.34 trillion tax cut and borrow $450 billion in additional money 
to run our government.
  That $450 billion was supposed to get us through the next 2 years 
before we would have to go back to the well. That is what we were told 
then. Now, as we speak, let us fast forward to the present time, the 
House and the Senate are attempting to resolve their differences on 
another tax cut bill proposed by this administration which I think 
under his initial proposal was $726 billion. We have a House number of 
$550 billion, a Senate number of $350 billion, and so we are trying to 
resolve what that number should be.
  I think we have lost our way, Mr. Speaker. Have we lost our sanity, 
all power of reason? As we debate how big the tax cut is going to be, 
the Senate is struggling with a debt limit increase, how they would do 
it, of $984 billion, almost $1 trillion, the largest debt ceiling 
increase in the history of this Nation.
  These two events do not reconcile. They do not make any sense. No 
reasonable or prudent person would say you ought to do both. While you 
have to borrow $984 billion, you would go out and push through a tax 
cut of $500 billion or whatever.
  Since 2001, Congress has been asked to increase the Federal debt 
limit by $1.43 trillion. The last 2 years, Congress has been asked to 
increase the debt limit ceiling of this Federal Government, asked the 
American taxpayer to borrow an additional $1.43 trillion to support 
this economic plan and run this government.
  That plan so far, that economic plan, has consisted of two tax cuts 
that total $1.69 trillion, and we are asking the taxpayers to borrow 
and for their children to pay back in the future $1.43 trillion. I 
think we have lost our way.
  We should be reasonable, and we should all come back to the table. It 
is time to take a deep breath and for the reasonable people of this 
body and this administration to sit down and start to work together. I 
think we ought to do three things:
  Work together to make responsible fiscal policy, just like we did in 
1997 when we did the Balanced Budget Act which got us into balance 
ultimately.
  Secondly, we have to put our country back onto the path to a balanced 
budget. That is the only way in the long run that we can have strong 
economic growth, is when the consumer and the investor begin to have 
confidence that the United States Government is running their business 
in a fiscally responsible way.
  That is the fiscally responsible path we should be on, instead of 
borrowing money to pay for our tax cuts.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I 
want to reiterate that if the American people truly understood what we 
are doing in managing our fiscal policy, they would fire all of us.
  Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd) 
for those thoughtful remarks and would like to now yield to the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner).
  Mr. TANNER. Mr. Speaker, I used to talk about the debt of the Nation 
and the deficit in terms of what we were doing to our children and 
grandchildren. I called it a generational mugging on this floor last 
year. That is still the case. We are still mugging our children and 
grandchildren with debt that we are unwilling to pay and we are 
unwilling to stop spending for our own convenience and our own 
purposes, so that is still true.
  But I used to say also that I wanted everybody under the age of 30 to 
listen to me because they were going to be directly affected by this 
reckless economic plan that we are engaged in here. Then I moved that 
up to age 40. Then I had to move it to age 50.
  Now with the knowledge that this government borrowed $111 billion in 
the first quarter of this year alone, I want to speak to every American 
who is alive and well and paying taxes because what is happening is we 
are engaged in a long-term structural tax increase on me and you and 
everybody that lives in this country because we are unwilling to rein 
in our appetite for tax cuts and more spending.

                              {time}  1800

  Just to pay the interest on the first quarter borrowings this year 
alone will require an additional $4 billion next year. When you go to 
write a check to the Internal Revenue Service next April 15, you will 
be paying your part of an additional $4 billion just to finance the 
interest cost on the borrowings of one quarter this year.
  I spoke to the American Hospital Association's convention here in 
town about 3 weeks ago. Everybody in this country knows the 
demographics of our population. We are growing older. There are more 
and more senior citizens as a percentage of our population. And 
everybody knows what that means to our medical system, Medicare, 
Medicaid and the rest. I told them, as long as we continue to engage in 
this economic pattern of borrow and spend, we are just rearranging deck 
chairs on the Titanic. The iceberg in this economy is the national 
debt, because it is going to soak up in the form of interest payments 
to service that debt all of the new money that comes to town.
  Last year we had a Federal income, if you want to call it that, of 
$1.8 trillion. Of that, we paid or accrued interest of $332 billion. We 
actually wrote checks for about $185 billion. A third of that went to 
foreigners, because they are the ones that are buying the Treasury 
auctions of bills, notes and bonds that take place in this town every 2 
weeks. This is an unsustainable economic path that this country is 
following. There is no way, and let me repeat, no way that we can 
borrow the kinds of moneys that we are borrowing and grow our way out 
of it.
  The reason I say that is because if you do the math, last year, 18 
percent of the money that came here went to either pay interest or was 
accrued to other government trust funds, primarily Social Security. An 
18 percent mortgage, as any businessperson knows, is something that 
cannot be sustained over the long term. There simply is not enough new 
income, regardless of growth, to take up the slack and to service the 
debt that we are building. And so I am more concerned about this than I 
guess I am almost anything save the security of our Nation and the 
people that live here from the various terrorist groups that we know of 
around the world, al Qaeda and the rest. But we are building a

[[Page H4339]]

long-term structural tax increase under the guise of a short-term tax 
cut.
  Everybody in this country knows there is no free lunch. Every time 
you hear people say, we are going to cut taxes and that will create 
jobs, to some degree that is true; but it depends on the kind of tax 
cut. I do not know if any of my colleagues have heard Warren Buffett; 
but he wrote an article that was, in my judgment, excellent about the 
kind of tax cut that the Senate put together this week and the kind 
that will be discussed in the conference committee. He said basically 
this: to cut taxes in the way that is fashioned around here and 
sunsetted in 3 years is ludicrous if one wants to argue that that is 
stimulative and will create jobs. If we really wanted to do that and we 
are going to spend money we do not have, rather than a tax cut that 
benefits primarily people who hold paper that will pay a dividend on, 
if we really wanted to do that, we would invest in some public work 
jobs that would do two things: one, additional spending for homeland 
security on our harbors, on our railroads and on those targets that we 
think the terrorists are after. That would do two things, create jobs, 
number one; and, number two, and more importantly perhaps, make our 
country safer. That would be the way to stimulate the economy if we 
wanted to go down that road.
  But the second thing we ought to do, in my judgment, is realize that 
when one cuts taxes and has to borrow the money to make up the income 
lost to the government, we are experiencing short-term gain, but we are 
putting in place long-term pain. There is no other way to look at it. 
The interest charges alone next year will approach $350 billion. That 
is with interest rates low. If interest rates suddenly spiked up and as 
the government rolled over its debt, we could be paying 4, 5, perhaps 
even $600 billion a year in interest on past consumption before we ever 
get a dime available for a world-class military, for health care for 
the people of this country, for education and investment in human 
capital.
  All of these things directly affect us. When people say deficits do 
not matter, then you better question what they are saying because they 
have not factored in the carrying charges on this massive amount of 
debt that has been created here in the last 24 months. As the gentleman 
from Florida (Mr. Boyd) said, we have been asked to raise the debt 
ceiling, the amount of money the government can borrow, by $1.43 
trillion in less than 12 months. I do not care what kind of economic 
theory you subscribe to, supply side or anything else, that is 
unsustainable. There is no way that this economy can generate that kind 
of growth in order to service that kind of debt.
  I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana for having this Special 
Order tonight. I do not know what else to say about it, other than I 
wish the business community would at least pay some attention to what 
we are saying. There is no businessperson that I know of in this 
country, certainly they will not be in business long if they do, that 
would follow this kind of economic plan. Why, then, would you expect 
those of us who you entrust with the public's business, which is your 
business, why would you want us to do something that you would not do 
in your own business? That is exactly what people are asking us to do. 
It makes absolutely no sense to cut your income with borrowed money, 
then piling that much debt on and interest will start on it tomorrow. 
That is why I said, I used to say we are passing it on to our children 
and our grandchildren. That is still true. But now we are passing it on 
to ourselves. It is irresponsible. It is reckless.
  Just one more thing. The morality issue here of borrowing money for 
people in my generation to take a tax cut, give the bill to the young 
men and women in uniform and their families who just fought over in 
Iraq, when they get home, they get a bill with interest so we could 
take a tax cut. There is no honor in that kind of behavior. I said that 
on the floor some weeks ago and I say it again. There is no honor in 
this House what we are doing. There is no honor in this building in 
what we are doing to the men and women in uniform. Not since the War of 
1812 have noncombatants in this country not been asked by the 
administration, by the President and the Congress to help pay for a war 
that others fought for them and in their stead and on their behalf, and 
that is exactly what is happening here. You can color it any way you 
want to, but it is what is happening; and there is no honor here in 
what is going on.
  Mr. HILL. I want to thank the gentleman from Tennessee for being a 
continued champion on this particular issue. I am into my third term 
here, Mr. Speaker. I came to know the gentleman from Tennessee right 
away. He has consistently been a voice of reason on this particular 
issue. He has not changed a bit, unlike others who have changed in this 
body, about the importance of managing our Federal deficit.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce the senior Blue Dog, of the 35 
that are here, and has been the leading voice for the Blue Dogs on this 
particular issue. I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).
  Mr. STENHOLM. I thank my friend for yielding. I will just make a few 
additional points.
  How many times have we heard, it's your money, we're going to give it 
back to you? How many times have we heard this from this side of the 
aisle?
  Let us clarify the record. Borrowing money on our grandchildren's 
future in order to give it to us today in a tax cut, is that really 
your money? Or is it their money? I happen to believe it is their 
money. That is why the Blue Dogs have been begging and pleading, 
arguing, taking Special Orders, presenting an alternative budget. 
Sometimes we get to vote on it. Other times we do not. But we have been 
trying to point out the seriousness of the direction of the economy of 
this country. The Secretary of the Treasury has announced this week 
that they have used all of their legal tools to avoid default and will 
run out of borrowing authority by June 2.
  I remember a few years ago when the previous administration did this, 
used all of the legal tools available to avoid default, we had cries of 
impeachment, impeach Secretary Rubin for doing what Secretary Snow is 
doing, perfectly legal; but this week now the Senate is going to have 
to vote. We were so brave when we passed the budget in the House that 
we hid it in the budget. No one in this body wants to vote on 
increasing the debt ceiling by $984 billion. The Senate is going to 
have to vote on it. There will be 12 amendments on the floor of the 
Senate which our fellow Senators on the Democratic side have got an 
opportunity to amend this debt ceiling. I hope they amend it. I hope 
they send it back.
  I would like to see them do what we are prepared to do on this side 
and, that is, offer unanimous consent to increase the debt ceiling by 
$375 billion effective immediately, provided the President will 
resubmit a budget that will balance by 2008, unified balance. Resubmit 
the economic game plan for this country instead of blindly following 
the borrow-and-spend policies that we are now under. How I remember the 
tax-and-spend Democratic cries that came over and over and over again. 
What is the difference between borrow and spend?
  To those that suggest that this economic game plan that we are under 
is working, why will we as a Nation owe $13 trillion by 2013, 2012, if 
everything works exactly like the economic game plan supporters say it 
will work? Not worse, not better. Why will we owe that much? Do we 
realize that in 2012, this country owing $13 trillion, it will require 
taxes of $520 billion just to pay the interest on this debt? $520 
billion. That is assuming 4 percent interest. But anyone that believes 
that interest rates are going to stay low with the United States 
conducting our fiscal policy like we are conducting it has got to be 
dreaming.
  One of the happier times of my life is when I stood on this floor and 
we passed the balanced budget constitutional amendment in 1995. One of 
the saddest times was standing in the back of the Senate when it went 
down by one vote. If we had passed the balanced budget constitutional 
amendment in 1995, we could not have the tax cut on the floor in 
Congress, in conference going on right now. That is another thing. We 
are going to have another vote on the balanced budget amendment. I am 
for it. But I do not see how we stand the laugh test from this side of 
the aisle unless we submit a budget that balances. The Blue Dogs did. 
We

[[Page H4340]]

submitted a budget that balanced by 2008. We did.
  Those who are listening and looking right now, saying, well, there 
they go, there's those big-spending Democrats. Let me make it very 
clear, the Blue Dogs that you are hearing from today, we say the 
President's spending numbers are adequate. We will not propose spending 
one dime more than the President asked us to spend. Spending is not the 
issue. It is the economic game plan that we are under. The tax cuts 
with borrowed money on our grandchildren's future is what the problem 
is all about.
  Just as the gentleman from Tennessee and the gentleman from Florida 
said a moment ago, borrowing money by itself is not a sin. Everyone 
does that. We borrow to build a home, we borrow to farm, we borrow to 
conduct our small businesses. We go to our banker. We explain the 
rationale for why we are borrowing the money. If we have a good story, 
they loan us the money. That makes sense. I agree with the gentleman 
from Tennessee. Take a look at Mr. Buffett's comments today. One of the 
best rhetorical answers to what the Blue Dogs are talking about that 
you could possibly have, the best that you could have, questioning the 
makeup of the tax cuts. And then you have got the Concord Coalition, 
bipartisan, that has been saying over and over and over again to this 
Congress, get your fiscal house in order, quit borrowing money on your 
children's and grandchildren's future. I do not know what it is going 
to take, because in this body everybody on the majority is just hoping 
and hoping that the Senate will not amend the debt ceiling so we do not 
have to vote on it.
  But let me issue a little warning tonight to those that believe we 
are going to escape. Based on current figures, the deteriorating 
situation of the budget of this country, the deteriorating condition of 
the economy of this country that has caused this problem indicates that 
$984 billion is not going to be enough to get us to November 4, 2004.

                              {time}  1815

  I take no satisfaction in that. Because if in fact that is true, that 
is a serious matter. We believe it to be true. We are not here to be 
critical without offering a constructive alternative, which we have 
over and over and over again. Back off from this rhetoric, back off 
from this rhetoric that says it is their money. It is not their money. 
They are borrowing on their grandchildren's future. It is not their 
money.
  And just as the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner) made the 
statement a moment ago, and it bears repeating, these are the first 
wars, and I say wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, the war on terrorism, these 
are the first wars since 1812 that Congress did not raise taxes in 
order to pay for the war. No one is suggesting raising taxes. No one. 
But many of us are saying why and under what circumstance can we afford 
to have additional tax cuts under this situation?
  I do not know what it is going to take. I do not know what it is 
going to take to get people to start focusing. I do not know how long 
we are going to be able to buy $500 billion of materials and products 
from the rest of the world more than they buy from us without the law 
of economics or the law of politics taking over. I do not know.
  And of course we know the reason we have been able to do that is 
others are reinvesting in the United States. How long are foreign 
investors, now approaching 35 percent of owning all of our debt, 
scheduled to go to 40, how long are they going to continue to invest in 
our country if we run our country as we are now running it? Borrowing, 
borrowing, borrowing, spending, spending and spending. Increasing, 
increasing, increasing our Nation's debt.
  Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. STENHOLM. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.
  Mr. HILL. The gentleman, of course, is a champion in this area as are 
the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner), the gentleman from Kansas 
(Mr. Moore), and all the Blue Dogs. We talk in terms of billions, 
sometimes trillions of dollars. For people who may be listening in 
their living room, maybe eating dinner to the debate that is going on 
here this evening, why is this an important issue to them? Why should 
they care about this?
  Mr. STENHOLM. I start again referring to our grandchildren. 2011 is 
when the baby boomers begin to retire. Everyone knows there is no 
disputing that the economic pressures on this country in 2011 and 2012, 
when the baby boomers begin to retire and begin to draw their Social 
Security and begin to qualify for Medicare, the pressures on this 
country are going to be tremendous. That is why we think balancing the 
budget before we get there so that there will be the money in order to 
pay off the obligations to those which have been promised under current 
Social Security law.
  So first off to those intending to retire in 2011, it is in their 
best self-interest that we honor the pledges that were made to them. 
Then we back off to the grandchildren, and of course they are not old 
enough to answer this question. They are not old enough to wonder. My 
two grandsons right now, seven and five, they would not have a clue 
what I am talking about right now. But the young working men and women 
just graduating from high school, going on to college, just graduating 
from college, about to get a job, they understand. They already know 
that they wish that Congress would make the changes today in the Social 
Security system so they might have something that is not just promised 
but that can be reality. If we do not deal with the fiscal problems of 
this country today, they will not be able to get that which they are 
promised to receive.
  What does it mean to the average family having dinner tonight? Some 
of them remember 15 percent interest, 20 percent interest, trying to 
buy a car, 15 percent interest. Some of them remember what it was like 
when we had let our economic game plan get out of control. Many of them 
I would hope would see today that, with the decline in interest rates, 
they have had a tax cut. An increase in interest rates is going to be a 
tax increase, just as sure as we are standing here tonight. There is a 
balance involved in this.
  Home building, homeownership, that is something that we pride 
ourselves in, rightfully so. We support the policies, and we hope we 
allow more and more families to gain homeownership. We let interest 
rates get out of control, we will see that dream vanish in a puff of 
smoke. So this is something I know what the gentleman is getting at and 
something that I struggle with at home. How do we relate this?
  I do not take pleasure in opposing the President of the United States 
in anything. I have served now with five Presidents. I do not take joy, 
as some of my colleagues have said, in opposing the President. 
Basically, the only major area of difference that I have is on this 
economic game plan because of what I honestly and sincerely believe it 
is going to mean to the average working men and women. But my 
dedication to this and the simple answer I give to the gentleman's 
question is do not forget about our grandchildren.
  About 10 years ago, of the 10 largest banks in the world, nine of 
them were in Japan. All nine of them today are in deep trouble. Deep 
trouble.
  We have an obligation, and somehow, some way the American public is 
going to have to realize that our country is no different than that 
family that we are talking about having dinner tonight, that when they 
sit around and decide how are we going to spend Dad's raise that he did 
not get? How are we going to spend Mom's raise that she did not get? 
When one gets to that point in which they do not get the raise, they 
make readjustments.
  And this surplus that is our money, we are going to give it back to 
them, is kind of like their not getting the raise. The money is not 
there, and therefore if the money is not there, they readjust, and they 
certainly do not spend money they do not have unless they are willing 
to take the chance.
  Or put it another way. Would their banker really lend them the money 
for the tax cut that we are talking about today? Is it really going to 
benefit the average working family, as our colleagues on the other side 
say every day? Mr. Buffet says no. Mr. Buffet is right.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I appreciate his taking this 
Special Order today. I hope that somehow, some way as we repeat this, 
the Senators will find a way to amend this

[[Page H4341]]

debt ceiling and send it back over so that we might pass a debt ceiling 
without bringing our country to the point of default. We are willing to 
do that by unanimous consent tomorrow; and we should do it tomorrow, 
quite frankly. We ought to do it right here so we do not go to 
brinksmanship with the Senate. We ought to do it. We are willing to do 
it.
  Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his eloquence and 
leadership on this issue and for his explanation, and we look forward 
for the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) to continue to assert his 
leadership in this area.
  One of the things that the gentleman from Tennessee was talking about 
was the debt tax that we cannot repeal. He talked about billions of 
dollars that we are spending in interest. Sometimes people's eyes glaze 
over when we talk in terms of billions of dollars. What that means to 
an average family is, if they pay $1,000 in taxes, approximately $175 
of that goes to pay the interest that we accumulate. So if we would put 
our house in fiscal order, perhaps we would not have to pay such high 
interest payments; and that would be a tax reduction in a roundabout 
way.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore) who 
came into the Congress at the same time that I did. We became fast 
friends right away. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. He 
represents the State of Kansas very well, and I am honored to call him 
my good friend.
  Mr. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. 
Hill). He has been an absolute leader on this whole question about 
fiscal responsibility with the Blue Dog coalition.
  I come at this from maybe a somewhat different perspective than some 
of my other colleagues, even the Blue Dogs.
  Two years ago, President Bush was fresh into office and the economy 
had started to slow down, even before he came into office, really in 
President Clinton's term. President Bush, in my mind, is not 
responsible for the slowing economy. Again, it started happening before 
he came into office. And he proposed to Congress an idea that he 
thought might keep the faltering economy from slowing even more, and 
that was a $1.6 trillion tax cut over 10 years.

  I was a little more conservative than the President; and I thought 
that, not knowing what was going to happen in the future as far as 
revenue collections, maybe a $1 trillion tax cut over 10 years might be 
more prudent.
  Anyway, the House of Representatives passed the $1.6 trillion 
requested by the President, and it went to the Senate, and the Senate 
worked their magic, and it came back at $1.35 trillion over 10 years. 
The President had requested $1.6 trillion. The bill before him was 
$1.35 trillion, and he said he will accept that in the spirit of 
compromise.
  I thought to myself, I would prefer a $1 trillion tax cut, but if the 
President is willing to compromise, so am I. So I voted for the 
President's $1.35 trillion tax cut, and I still think it was the right 
thing to do, contrary to what some of my Democratic colleagues say. I 
still think it was the right thing to do, and I think maybe it slowed 
the slowdown that had started already to happen and helped us from 
going even deeper, deeper into a morass.
  But at that time according to the Congressional Budget Office, which 
is a nonpartisan institution that advises both sides of the aisle, we 
had a $5.6 trillion projected surplus over the next 10 years, $5.6 
trillion projected surplus. So when I voted for that tax cut, we were 
in surplus mode.
  Mr. Speaker, now we are in deficit mode, and again I do not hold the 
President responsible for that or the other side of the aisle 
responsible for that. A slowing economy when the President came in was 
put in an absolute tailspin by September 11, and nobody except the 
horrible people who perpetrated that injustice against our country are 
responsible for that. And some corporate fraud and activities on the 
corporate level, national level, really shook investor confidence in 
our markets, I think, and also hurt our economy.
  But, again, I voted for that tax cut 2 years ago, but now we are in a 
different situation. Instead of surplus mode now, we are in deficit 
mode. When I look at the situation now, I think we need to start 
thinking about how American families live, and they live by three 
simple rules that are not written down. They are just common sense.
  Number one, do not spend more money than they make; number two pay 
off their debts; and, number three, invest in basics in the future.
  Congress for a number of years exceeded their revenue income by more 
spending, and we accumulated a multitrillion dollar debt, presently 
$6.4 trillion. We have heard the gentlemen from Texas and Tennessee and 
Indiana and some of the other Blue Dogs who talked here tonight talk 
about what that means to us, and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) 
had talked about what we coined the debt tax, d-e-b-t. Not death tax. 
Debt tax, which is the interest paid to finance our national debt.
  It is the only tax, the debt tax, that can never be repealed. All we 
can do is pay it off if we can get in a financial position to do that, 
and I am very concerned about that because the debt tax presently is 
almost $1 billion a day. In terms of relative expenditures by category 
in our Federal Government, the only expenditure category bigger than 
the interest on our national debt is Social Security. This debt tax is 
even more. It costs our Government more than national defense. And when 
we get to that point, something is desperately wrong. We need to 
rethink our priorities here.
  Again, when I voted for the President's tax cut 2 years ago, we were 
in surplus mode. Now we are in deficit mode. The President's budget 
that was proposed for fiscal year 2004 had a built-in $300 billion 
debt. Again, I am not holding him responsible for that, but when we 
request now a $726 billion tax cut that we cannot pay for, that we are 
going to have to borrow if we pass this tax cut and has already been 
said by the other speakers, do my colleagues know who is going to pay 
for that? Our children and our grandchildren. That is absolutely wrong.
  I speak to a lot of college and high school government classes, and 
when I talk about the virtues of fiscal responsibility in terms of 
keeping interest rates low, sometimes people's eyes start to glaze over 
until I tell them about this and who is going to have to pay for this 
debt, and they look nervously at each other and say ``we will,'' and I 
say to them they should be angry at their parents and grandparents for 
leaving them that kind of responsibility. They do not deserve that. It 
is our debt, and we should pay it.

                              {time}  1830

  To borrow money, to borrow money to pay for tax cuts now, is 
irresponsible, it is reckless, and it is wrong. It is irresponsible and 
wrong, and we should not be doing that.
  I was in Miami in the airport about 5 weeks ago standing behind a man 
in line, a long line; and we started talking. I asked him what he did. 
He said he was a retired CPA. His wife is working; she is still 
working. He found out I was in Congress.
  He said, Congressman, I hope what you will do is vote for the 
elimination of corporate dividends. I went through a short 2 minutes of 
what I said here tonight about fiscal responsibility and not saddling 
our kids and grandkids with additional debt. He said, Congressman, I 
will tell you what. Why do we not just take care of today, and let them 
worry about tomorrow?
  Unfortunately, I think that is what a lot of people in this country, 
and I hope not that many, think. Some polls I have seen said people do 
not want more tax cuts now. They want fiscal responsibility. They would 
rather see money used, any surpluses that may be generated in the 
future, used to pay down our debt and to reduce and eliminate our 
deficits.
  We have got to get our financial house back in order, because we 
cannot survive. As the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner) said, the 
sustainability is not there if we do not get back into a fiscally 
responsible position.
  Other speakers have already mentioned, and I am going to end with 
this, the baby boomers will soon start to retire in about 2011 through 
2012; and if right now we have a $6.4 trillion national debt, which is 
the figure, in fact slightly in excess of that, and we add almost 
another $1 trillion to it in the next week, at least increasing the 
debt limit that much, and if it goes up proportionately in the next 
several years,

[[Page H4342]]

we are going to be well over $10 trillion in debt by the time the baby 
boomers retire.
  That is not sustainable. That is a recipe for disaster for this great 
country that we love and that we live in, and we should not let that 
happen to America, we should not let that happen to our kids and 
grandkids. Fiscal responsibility and a return to fiscal responsibility 
is absolutely necessary.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. HILL. I thank my friend from Kansas for taking the time to talk 
about this very important issue and for his remarks.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield such time as he may consume to the 
chairman of the Blue Dogs, the gentleman from the State of Texas (Mr. 
Turner).
  Mr. TURNER of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, 
and I am proud to join my Blue Dog colleagues tonight to address an 
issue that we feel very strongly about and that is the ever-increasing 
Federal debt that we are accumulating by continuing down this path of 
continual deficit spending.
  A lot of folks today have heard the President call for tax cuts. The 
President says tax cuts mean jobs. The Blue Dogs have proposed a tax 
cut plan that will generate more jobs than the President's plan in the 
short term, but it is a bill that postpones some of the future tax cuts 
that are already in the law in order to be sure that our tax cut does 
not generate a larger Federal debt.
  Now, why do we believe that is important? Common sense tells us and 
every household in America knows that when you go along spending more 
than you take in, sooner or later it is going to catch up with you.
  Frankly, the Federal Government today is going down a path recklessly 
abandoning the fiscal discipline that was established just a few short 
years ago when we had the first balanced budget in 29 years. That was 2 
years ago. How far we have drifted from that path today, when we 
project somewhere between a $400 billion to $500 billion deficit in the 
current fiscal year.
  We have an ever-increasing burden of debt. You do not hear too many 
folks in the White House or on the talk shows talking about our debt, 
but it is a debt that is a very significant burden and will be an 
increasing burden on the taxpayers of this country.
  This year alone, our debt runs in the neighborhood of $6.4 trillion. 
Now, that is a lot of money, and it is hard to understand how much $6 
trillion is. I will tell you that it means that we pay $1 billion every 
day just to cover the interest on that national debt. We spent close to 
$332 billion last year on interest on the national debt.
  The Blue Dog Democrats believe that is too much interest to be paying 
on our debt and that the only way to get it down is to reduce our debt. 
That is why the Blue Dogs proposed a balanced budget plan for this 
decade to ensure that we got back to reducing our debt, rather than 
seeing it go up and up and up.
  Under the President's proposal and under the budget that the 
Republican Congress passed just a few weeks ago, our national debt is 
projected to increase from $6.4 trillion today to $12 trillion. That 
means 10 years from now we will be paying somewhere between 600 and 
$700 billion in interest every year.

  Contrast that, if you will, with the projections shared with us for 
spending on national defense in the recently adopted budget of this 
Congress. That budget projects that the Department of Defense will 
spend $500 billion a year 10 years from now. That is a significant 
increase from the present. But it also is noteworthy that we will be 
spending more on interest, $600 billion to $700 billion 10 years from 
now, more money, than we will be spending on national defense.
  Today when we pay our taxes and file our individual tax returns, 25 
cents out of every dollar we pay goes to pay interest on our national 
debt. What a waste. That interest is going to double in the next 10 
years. In other words, we could be paying 50 cents of every dollar we 
pay in personal income taxes just to cover the interest on the national 
debt.
  Mr. Speaker, we are going into debt at exactly the wrong time. We are 
going into debt as we approach the retirement of the baby boom 
generation. That generation, when they retire, will place great stress, 
fiscal stress, upon the Medicare system, the Social Security System, 
when all of those retirees will be eligible for those government 
benefits. The unfunded liability of the Social Security trust fund is 
estimated to be $25 trillion. It is wrong to be cutting taxes today and 
borrowing the money to pay for the tax cut. It simply means that this 
generation is going to pass the debt of a tax cut on to our children 
and our grandchildren. That is morally wrong, it is fiscally 
irresponsible, and it is heading this Nation down a path that will 
create grave crises for us in the future.
  For us it is about our future prosperity; it is about our future 
national and homeland security. How can this Nation maintain its status 
as the strongest military power in the world when its debt is 
continuing to accumulate and we will have a more and more difficult 
time every year paying the bills that we need to pay to ensure a strong 
defense, a strong homeland security, and a strong economy?
  The American people can remember the days when Ross Perot was running 
for President, when he had his charts and he said we had to look under 
the hood of that automobile and get under there and get our hands dirty 
and get it fixed. That same message needs to be heard today, because we 
are heading for a fiscal crisis unlike any ever seen in the history of 
this country.
  The projections of $12 trillion in debt 10 years from now are not 
based upon estimates of the economy maintaining its current status of 
sluggishness. The presumption is the economy will recover, and we still 
project a $12 trillion debt and $600 billion to $700 billion every year 
in wasted interest payments on that debt.
  The Blue Dog Democrats say wake up America. Remember that we must pay 
our bills. Remember that to maintain a strong economy and low interest 
rates, the government does not need to become the biggest borrower on 
the planet, because as government consumes a larger and larger share of 
the available credit, the laws of supply and demand indicate very 
clearly that interest rates for all of us will go up. So the tax cut we 
grant today may mean the higher interest payments on home loans, car 
loans, student loans tomorrow.
  There is no free lunch, and those who promise today the free lunch of 
tax cuts are also handing you a debt that must be paid by our children, 
a burden of debt that will result in higher interest rates tomorrow and 
a less prosperous America.
  The Blue Dog Democrats believe that fiscal responsibility in 
Washington, just as fiscal responsibility around the kitchen table, is 
a message that should be heard by every American; and we call on this 
Congress tonight, on the verge of raising the debt ceiling, without a 
vote in this House, by almost $1 trillion, to retake the high ground, 
to recognize that we have been through a war, when every American wants 
to do their part and pay the bills for that war, instead of charging 
the costs of that war to the very men and women who fought that war; 
Americans who believe that our bills should be paid, our books should 
be balanced, and we should have a strong economy today and tomorrow.
  Mr. Speaker, we hope this message will be heeded by our colleagues in 
this Congress tonight.
  I thank the gentleman from Indiana for yielding me time this evening.
  Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for his 
eloquence and his leadership on this particular issue.
  Mr. Speaker, that is the number of Blue Dogs who will be speaking 
tonight. We feel very strongly about this issue, as you have heard and 
the American people have heard. It is very hard to get the message out 
across because interest rates are very low right now, but there will 
come a day that, if we do not put our fiscal House in order, we could 
return to the days where interest rates were very, very high; and I do 
not think we want to do that, for the sake of not only this generation, 
but the next.

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