[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 7 (Wednesday, January 28, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H230-H236]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    THE FISCAL STATUS OF OUR NATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Neugebauer). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Cummings) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening with my fellow members 
of the Congressional Black Caucus to address the dire fiscal status of 
our Nation.
  Just this past Monday, the Congressional Budget Office released its 
annual report on the Federal budget and the economic outlook for the 
next 10 years. The staggering numbers included in this report should be 
startling to both Democrats and Republicans alike. More importantly, I 
want the American people to know that we must address this critical 
issue.
  Mr. Speaker, since the mission and the purpose of the CBO is to be 
objective in its analysis and in its reporting to Congress, they have 
no interest in fudging the numbers to look better than they actually 
are. With that being said, the CBO projected that the government would 
accumulate $2.4 trillion in additional debt over the next decade. And 
as of this moment, the outstanding public debt is well over $7 trillion 
and is growing by the moment.
  And with that, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia 
(Mr. Scott), one who has spent a phenomenal amount of time on this 
issue and has been at the forefront in trying to make sure that our tax 
dollars are spent effectively and efficiently.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Maryland for taking the leadership on this budget.
  We have a difficult situation; and rather than use adjectives and 
slogans, I like to use charts so we can see what is going on year by 
year. If we look at the budget deficit, and this is the budget without 
the Social Security and Medicare, which is supposed to be saved for 
Social Security and Medicare when we need it, this is the deficit year 
by year. And we see that we have got the Johnson, Nixon, Ford 
administrations. It dropped a little bit under Nixon-Ford. Under Carter 
it stayed about the same. People remember that under Reagan and Bush, 
the first Bush administration, deficits came about. But not enough 
credit is being given to what happened under the Clinton administration 
because without a single Republican vote in the House and without a 
single Republican vote in the Senate, we passed a deficit reduction 
plan that resulted in not only an elimination of all of that deficit 
but an actual surplus, a surplus without counting the Social Security 
and the Medicare surplus. If we count those, it is even higher than 
that.
  Some of the Republicans want to take credit for some of this. And 
they say in 1994 the Republicans took over Congress; so in 1995 when 
they were sworn in with the Republican Congress, they ought to get some 
credit for this. But let us remember history. When they came in, they 
passed massive tax cuts, primarily for the wealthy, and President 
Clinton vetoed those budgets. They passed them again and threatened to 
close down the government if he did not sign them, and he vetoed them 
anyway. And they closed down the government, and he vetoed them anyway. 
Trying to take credit for a budget plan when their plans were vetoed, 
even with the closure of government, their plans were vetoed; and we 
were able to maintain this line by vetoing their bills. They cannot get 
any credit for the green.

                              {time}  1615

  However, we do see when President Bush was sworn in, they passed the 
same kinds of tax cuts, primarily for the wealthy, and what happened? 
We see what would have happened down here if President Clinton had 
signed it. We see exactly what would have happened. We have 
skyrocketing deficits.
  Now, this is actually not quite as low as it ought to be. This is a 
couple of months ago, so it is actually a little worse than this.
  The on-budget deficit for this year, the total deficit, the $477 
billion the gentleman mentioned, does not count about $175 billion in 
Social Security and Medicare funds that were spent first before you 
went in debt another $477 billion. Almost $650 billion in total on-
budget deficit, because we are supposed to be leaving Social Security 
and Medicare money for Social Security and Medicare.
  Let me put these numbers in perspective. If you add up all of the 
money that we receive from the individual income tax, everybody's 
individual income tax, the total is less than $800 billion this year. 
We are pushing $700 billion in on-budget deficit. It is just totally 
out of control. This, I think, shows it.
  I do not see how anybody who voted for the red can explain what is 
going on with the budget without starting off with an apology. And as 
far as we are concerned, we, the Congressional Black Caucus, voted for 
the green and against the red. So you cannot blame us for this.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman just said something that is 
just so incredible. Let me make sure I heard the gentleman right.
  Is the gentleman saying that in the United States, when people go on 
April 15 and they go through their tax returns and they look at all 
this money that has been sent to the Federal Government over the last 
year, taken from their checks every 2 weeks or every month, whatever, 
the gentleman is saying out of all the people that pay taxes in the 
United States, it amounts to about $800 billion?
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Less than $800 billion.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. The gentleman is saying when you include the Social 
Security money----
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. They had to spend the Social Security and 
Medicare

[[Page H231]]

surplus before they got to the $477 billion that the gentleman 
mentioned as a unified deficit. Less than $800 billion in individual 
income tax. That includes everybody.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. That is incredible.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. To show how this deficit also looks, let us 
look at another way of looking at it, and that is, of the budget, how 
much of today's budget is paid for with borrowed money?
  When President Clinton ran up a surplus, obviously we were not 
borrowing any money to pay for the operation of government. But when 
this administration came in, we started borrowing money, and in fact 
this year almost one-third, and with the new numbers, more than one-
third of the on-budget spending is paid for with borrowed money. You 
borrow it from Medicare and Social Security, and then you borrow the 
rest, and over one-third is paid for with borrowed money.
  You can see, we have not done that since World War II. We are in a 
peacetime economy, and we are borrowing a higher percentage of the 
Federal budget. The spending we have in the Federal budget, a higher 
percentage is paid for with borrowed money than at any time since World 
War II. This is irresponsible.
  Now, how did we get in that mess? Well, we had tax cuts. Who got the 
tax cuts? I remember one candidate during the campaign, President Bush, 
said the vast majority of his tax cuts will go to those at the 
bottom. Let us see what that looks like on a chart.

  The bottom 20 percent, the next 20 percent, the middle 20 percent, 
this is about what they got, the percentage of the tax cut they got. 
Then the fourth 20 percent. The upper 20 percent got 70 to 80 percent 
of the tax cut. In fact, the top 1 percent got more than half of the 
2001 and 2003 tax cuts. The top 1 percent got more than half.
  Now, just in case people want to know what they got out of it, 
because people say, you got a lot, you got a little, in terms of those 
who made over $1 million, that is what you got. If you made only 
$500,000 to $1 million, that is what you got. If you made $200,000 to 
$500,000, or $100,000 to 200,000, or $75,000 to $100,000.
  As you get to what most people actually make on average, all of them, 
some pay a little more tax, depending on the number of children and 
deductions and whatnot, but $40,000 to $50,000, you hardly need any ink 
to draw the bar. Millionaires, off the chart. That is who got the tax 
cut.
  When you run up all this deficit, you have debt; and debt is somewhat 
esoteric, but interest on the national debt is cash money. You have got 
to pay it.
  Now, this black line is the interest on the national debt which we 
would have paid if we had not messed up the budget in 2001 with all 
these tax cuts. Under the Clinton Administration, when they left 
office, the projections at that time, before we messed up the budget in 
2001, we would have paid off the entire national debt held by the 
public around 2008 to 2009. We were scheduled to pay zero interest on 
the national debt.
  Instead, we offered those people the big tax cuts, ran up the debt, 
increased the debt and increased the interest on the national debt, so 
by 2008, 2009, 2010 we are going to be spending $300 billion on 
interest on the national debt rather than zero, because we ran up the 
debt, we were fiscally irresponsible.
  Now, again remember, less than $800 billion, everybody's individual 
income tax; the first $300 billion, gone, interest on the national debt 
that we would not have had to pay.
  We were told that we needed to get into that mess, run up the debt, 
run up the interest on the national debt, to create jobs. Let us see 
how we did.
  This is the number of jobs created every 4 years since Harry Truman 
was in office. Harry Truman created jobs. Eisenhower created more jobs 
than we had when he came in; this is about 4 million. Kennedy, Johnson, 
Johnson, second administration, about 6 million. Nixon and Ford, 
everybody creating jobs. Clinton, almost 10 million first term, another 
10 million the second term.
  From 40 yards away, with bad vision, you can tell who is the worst 
since the Truman administration.
  Now, every time something goes wrong, it is always 9/11. Three 
million jobs lost since the President came in office. 9/11 could not 
possibly be the cause of this any more than the Korean War stopped 
Truman from creating jobs. The Vietnam War did not stop Kennedy, 
Johnson and Nixon from creating jobs. The hostage situation in Iran did 
not stop Carter from creating jobs. The Cold War was going on all this 
time, Reagan, Bush. Clinton had Somalia, Grenada. Everybody is still 
creating jobs until you get here.
  One of the problems, however, as you get into this situation, is 
Social Security. This is the cash flow for the Social Security trust 
fund. These purple lines represent the surplus we talked about that is 
bringing more money into Social Security than we are spending today. 
That will go on until about 2017. Then we start going into deficit.
  This line at about 2022, 2025, that is $300 billion. That is about 
$1,000 for every man, woman and child in America. For a family of four, 
$4,000. Every man, woman and child, $1,000. When you get around 2032, 
you are up to $600 billion, or $2,000 for every man, woman and child. 
By 2037, a $1 trillion a year shortfall.
  I admit if you look at this, you may conclude that there is nothing 
we could have done about that. $800 billion for individual income tax, 
you would have to spend all of that just to maintain Social Security by 
2037. So maybe it was a lost cause. Maybe Social Security was a good 
idea, but it could never work.
  Until you look back. You remember this chart where the top 1 percent 
got half the tax cut? The 2001, not 2003, just the 2001 tax cut, if you 
took the money that the top 1 percent got in the 2001 tax cut, and 
instead of giving a tax cut to the upper 1 percent, put that same 
amount of money into the Social Security trust fund, you would have run 
up the surplus to a point where you could have paid Social Security 
benefits without reducing benefits for 75 years. Or you can give the 
top 1 percent a tax cut and worry about this $1 trillion deficit when 
you get to it.
  We made the choice. Excuse me, they made the choice, because the 
gentleman and I opposed the tax cuts and would have preferred making 
Social Security secure for the future, would have preferred paying off 
the national debt so we would not have had $300 billion a year to deal 
with in just a couple of years. We had other priorities: health care, 
Social Security, veterans benefits that this House voted to cut by $19 
billion last year. We had other priorities. But we could have solved 
this with just what the top 1 percent got in the 2001 tax cut. They 
could have gotten all they got in the 2003 tax cut, just the 2001.

  So when we look at this chart, you cannot create a chart like this by 
accident. You cannot have every single year under the Clinton 
administration, without exception, being better than the last, and 
every year in the Bush administration being worse than the last.
  Let me tell you a little bit about this up-tick. Things will continue 
to get worse. But by 2014, technically, we might be back in balance if 
we do not do anything. If we do not do anything; that is, if we do not 
change present law.
  The President has suggested that we make the tax cuts permanent, do 
not let them expire. If we are to go back into balance, we have to 
reject that initiative. The President has said, let us go to Mars for 
$1 trillion. If we want to get back into balance, we have to reject 
that initiative.
  Let us privatize Social Security, take some money out, not put more 
money in the trust fund, for $1 trillion, to privatize Social Security. 
If we expect to go back into balance, we have to reject that 
initiative.
  In other words, we have to reject all of the President's initiatives 
just to get back to balance. And if we do, we would have run up the 
debt so much in the meanwhile that we will be paying over $300 billion 
in interest on the national debt, rather than zero that we would have 
paid had we not messed up the budget.
  Again, anyone who voted for the red and against the green ought to 
start off with an explanation of their vote and an apology.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for his 
presentation. I think the gentleman said it best when he first started, 
that when you put it on charts, it really does make it very, very clear 
what is happening here.

[[Page H232]]

  I think one thing that is very sad though, as the gentleman went down 
one of those charts that shows who was getting the tax cuts, it says 
there the tax cuts go to the wealthiest Americans. One of the 
interesting things about that is that when you look at the folks who 
are not making a lot of money, some of them may have gotten $300, some 
may have gotten $400. But when you look at the reduction of services, 
say, for example, in my State of Maryland, tuition has gone up 10 or 20 
percent for college kids and Pell grants have leveled off, I think in 
part because of our money problems.
  Well, if a family got $300, say they got $400, the rise in tuition 
which they must pay if they are going to keep their kids in college, 
that wiped that out right there. That does not even go on to include 
all the other things that they will now have to pay for.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. And Maryland is suffering from the same budget 
crunch that Virginia is suffering from, all the States, virtually all 
the States are suffering from, where we are cutting back on services, 
cutting back on transportation, cutting back on health care, knocking 
people off of Medicaid. We are trying to provide more health care, and 
we are knocking people off. We are not creating jobs. We did not extend 
the unemployment benefits for those who are in areas of extremely high 
unemployment.

                              {time}  1830

  Tuition has gone up. Your property taxes have gone up. Education 
funding, we are underfunding No Child Left Behind by $9 billion. And so 
the money that the States expected to get from No Child Left Behind 
they are not getting.
  The State House of Delegates in Virginia voted 98 to one to reject 
the No Child Left Behind because they found that the unfunded mandates 
were not offset by the money that was supposed to come. Now, we knew 
when we passed that there were complicated mandates, expensive mandates 
in that bill, but the authorized spending would more than compensate 
for those mandates. Unfortunately, we did not send the money that we 
promised. We sent the mandates, did not send the money.
  And so when you add up all those, would people rather have had decent 
public school education, would they rather have had decent health care, 
better roads, lower tuition? You add all those up, the little tax cut, 
and when you add it up, and unless we have a profound new direction, we 
will not be able to pay Social Security. You ask people whether they 
would rather have Social Security after 2017 or the $300 tax cut today, 
I think most people would say let us take care of Social Security 
first. And if I can get a tax cut, I would like one; but let us take 
care of Social Security first. We did not do that. We took care of tax 
cuts first.
  And we are going to look at that Social Security chart, and who knows 
what we will be able to do in 2020 and 2025. Now, a lot of people 
pushed the ideas of personal responsibility. And the suggestion is that 
if there is no Social Security, your retirement will be your personal 
responsibility and we will not have Social Security. Like, what is the 
problem if you lose Social Security? You know, I got mine, I got 
investments. Is that the attitude?
  Or should we adopt the philosophy that we have had since Franklin 
Roosevelt was President that senior citizens ought to be able to retire 
with some dignity. And whatever happens to their investments, whatever 
happens to the stock market, you ought to be able to have at least a 
minimum amount of money coming in for necessities, rent and food. And 
if all else goes badly, you ought to be able to have that.
  And we are in a situation now where unless there is a profound change 
in direction, we will not be able to pay Social Security after it stops 
running a surplus. As a matter of fact, in this budget we have now, it 
is a 10-year budget, goes to 2014, we have, they say, it goes in the 
balance, but that includes a $275 billion Social Security surplus. Just 
in 3 years in 2017, it goes from $275 billion surplus to no surplus. We 
just had in 3 years a $275 billion hole in the budget. What provisions 
have been made for that? None. None. We will worry about it. And the 
challenge, quite frankly, I would say to my good friend, the gentleman 
from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), the challenge is getting someone to 
acknowledge that there is a problem.
  We had a Committee on the Budget meeting yesterday. We heard that 
when you look at this chart the economy was good. Good? We heard that 
the budget deficit was manageable. You cannot get anyone to acknowledge 
that there is a problem. If we do not have a profound change in 
direction, we cannot pay Social Security. We cannot get anyone on the 
other side of the aisle to acknowledge that that constitutes a problem. 
If one does not acknowledge that there is a problem, one is certainly 
not going to come up with a painful solution. That is the problem that 
we have, this problem we have in this Congress today that making the 
tough choices is painful.
  We made the tough choices in 1993 and suffered in the next campaign. 
Republicans picked up 50 seats with the budget vote, that responsible 
budget vote, as a primary issue in the campaign. And so we suffered 
because of that. But it was the right thing to do. I do not think 
anybody that voted for that budget, even those that lost their seats as 
a direct result of that vote, I do not think they think it was the 
wrong thing to do. When the 218th vote was cast, the Republicans 
started chanting bye-bye Marjorie. She had cast the 218th vote that 
passed the bill. And they waved bye-bye Marjorie and defeated her in 
the next election using that vote.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I think, certainly, when we come to this 
House, we come here for the purpose of lifting up the people that we 
represent in making their lives better. And when you look at the 
jobless rate, which is 5.7 at the latest count, I think, it is 10.2 for 
African Americans, and then not counted in those figures are so many 
people that I am sure call your office quite often who have been out of 
work for so long, they basically are looking but they have pretty much 
given up hope, so their figures are not even in there.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. It is hard to put the magnitude of this mess 
into perspective; $300 billion more interest on the national debt in 
2008, 2009 than we should have paid. Should have been zero. $300 
billion. Do you know how many people you can hire at $30,000 apiece 
with $300 billion? 10 million. 10 million. Just deal out $30,000 jobs. 
10 million. Do you know how many people are listed as unemployed in 
America today? Nine million. You can hire every unemployed person in 
America, offer each and every one a $30,000 job, and have money left 
over with the additional interest on the national debt that we are 
going to have to pay because the budget has been messed up, and we are 
going to be paying $300 billion in interest on the national debt rather 
than zero if we had stuck to the fiscal responsibility that was 
exercised when President Clinton vetoed irresponsible bills.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Scott) very much. We really appreciate it. He did an 
outstanding job.
  Mr. Speaker, I would yield to my colleague, the gentlewoman from 
Georgia (Ms. Majette), one who has also put our budget concerns at the 
forefront of our Nation's mind and this Congress's mind and one who 
also believes in making sure that we spend the taxpayers' dollars 
effectively and efficiently and that we do those things that are 
reasonable to uplift all of the citizens of our great country.
  Ms. MAJETTE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Scott) from the Committee on the Budget, for his 
excellent presentation.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening because the President's lack of 
solutions and lack of vision brings me to the floor.
  This President's economic policies have had a devastating effect and 
devastating impact on this country and on hardworking Americans. His 
tax cuts have tied our hands and prevent us from solving the major 
challenges that we face in education, in health care, and in job 
creation.
  The people in the 4th Congressional District of Georgia and across 
this country are looking for the American Dream. They work hard. They 
follow the rules. They are trying to get a small piece of the American 
Dream, but it is getting further and further out of their reach.
  Let us start with jobs. Now, I am not talking about the economy and 
stock

[[Page H233]]

dividends and the stock market. I am talking about jobs, plain and 
simple. I am talking about replacing the 3 million jobs that have 
evaporated since this President took office. The American people want 
us to focus on creating more good-paying jobs, on providing a quality 
education for our children, on providing affordable and accessible 
health care for every American. These are the priorities of the 
hardworking people of Georgia's 4th Congressional District and the 
people of this Nation. But instead, this President talks about a 
mythical country where everyone is happy, healthy, well educated, and 
employed. But, obviously, he did not check in with the men and women 
who have been laid off from BellSouth in Atlanta and Brown & Williamson 
in Macon and General Electric in Stone Mountain or Delta or Coca Cola 
or Lord & Taylor, and the list goes on and on. Nor did he check in with 
the 1.4 million Americans who have lost their unemployment benefits and 
still cannot find a job and have been denied unemployment benefits 
because the Republicans insist they do not exist. But they do exist.
  And we owe it to them, our husbands, our wives, our partners, our 
children, our friends, our neighbors. We owe it to them to make a real 
effort to create jobs.
  We cannot afford to make tax cuts permanent for the very wealthy, and 
we absolutely cannot use Social Security money to pay for it. The 
American people deserve a leader who understands the meaning of a level 
playing field and has the vision and the will to make it happen.
  Americans are hungry. They are hungry for a national strategy that 
focuses on providing good jobs, providing a strong public education 
system, and providing quality health care. And so we must keep the 
promises that we have made to the millions of Americans who have played 
by the rules, who have worked hard to find that piece of the American 
Dream. And it is just as important to keep the vision and the path 
clear for those who are still seeking that dream.
  Abstinence education? A trip to Mars? Steroid use in professional 
sports? Those might be the priorities of this President; but, Mr. 
Speaker, I promise you those are not the priorities of most Americans.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. I thank the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. Majette) for 
her statement. I really appreciate the excellent statement addressing 
this issue to the Congressional Black Caucus.
  I stood up again, and continue to stand up, with regard to the issues 
that affect all Americans. I have often said that a lot of times when 
people hear the words ``Congressional Black Caucus'' they just assume 
that the Congressional Black Caucus is only speaking for African 
American people. The fact is that the caucus, which represents 
collectively over 26 million people, more than one-third of whom are 
white, the fact is that we speak for America.
  And with that I just want to summarize some of the things that have 
been already said. But before I do that, I am very pleased to yield to 
my colleague, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. 
Norton), who is, as I said in a speech just yesterday, one of the 
strongest fighters that I have ever met, constantly on the battlefield 
addressing the issues that can bring harm to our citizens, but at the 
same time in doing those things that uplift them.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Cummings) for yielding to me. I particularly thank him for this Special 
Order and for the emphasis this Special Order has taken as I was 
watching it. I want to thank my good friend, the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Scott), for focusing on his charts and his very lucid 
explication on what is happening, particularly to baby boomers who are 
the retirees, many of whom have begun, those who are 62, already begun 
to take their benefits.
  The reason I value what is happening on the floor is that discussions 
of deficits quickly go off into the arcane about economics and the 
rest. And I, of course, applaud those who call attention to what 
deficits do to slowing economic growth, through raising interest rates, 
to crowding private investment. But I must say to the average American, 
until the interest rate goes up on his or her car, there may be little 
understanding of what that means. I am very concerned with what it 
means in particular for the baby boomers who seem to me are in dire 
risk because of the President's budget which is not even out yet. It is 
already controversial.
  CBO's projections, as I understand them, do not even take into 
account at least two huge items that are almost inevitably going to be 
before us. One is the alternative minimum tax and another is, of 
course, the President's very explicit statement when he was right 
before us last week that he wants to make the tax cuts permanent. We do 
not even include that in your projections. They were not even looking 
at the real possibilities here assuming that what the President wishes 
for tax cuts, in fact, does happen.
  We, of course, are looking at the worst deficit in our history. My 
good friends on the other side tell us, well, it is really because of 
spending. If they would only stop spending, things would be okay.

                              {time}  1845

  I have looked at the figures since 2001 and 9/11. Each year, 90 
percent or more of the spending has been for defense and homeland 
security. In 2001, 95 percent of the funding increases were for defense 
and homeland security; 93 percent in 2002; 90 percent in 2003; 90 
percent in 2004. It is not the spending, as they say, stupid. It is the 
tax cuts. And we have got to come to grips with that and face that 
reality if we want to do something about it.
  Mr. Speaker, the baby boomers are those people who were born in 1946 
or begin with those people born in 1946. They will begin to collect 
reduced Social Security payments in 2008 at 62 because you can do that. 
These same baby boomers are going to qualify for Medicare benefits when 
they get to be 65 in 2011. We already know what is happening to 
Medicare costs. They are rising so fast they have become an 
unbelievable figure.
  What concerns me most is, what we are going to do now that we have 
already eaten up the surplus that we were putting into Social Security 
and Medicare trust funds. What are we going to do? We know that the 
Medicare bill says what we will do is, the Congress at a certain point 
in time will have to look at whether or not to cut benefits or to raise 
taxes.
  Assuming we are in the same Congress we are in now, and I pray we are 
not, then, of course, what this Congress would look to do is to cut 
benefits. That would be a historic first. Therefore, when one begins to 
talk about the deficit, I have come to the floor to say that I think 
the Congressional Black Caucus tonight has put the emphasis where it 
belongs. Let us put it on some real bodies, the people who will suffer, 
the baby boomers who are already almost upon us.
  For the moment, let us think of what the President already has 
proposed, the first step towards privatizing Social Security, which 
really sinks the whole thing and makes it impossible to even talk about 
where younger workers would be allowed to redirect part of their 
payroll taxes out of the Social Security trust funds and they 
themselves deal with private accounts. We have got to put all of this 
on the table and have an honest discussion about it.
  I thank my good friends who have come to the floor tonight for 
beginning that very honest discussion.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her statement. 
We really appreciate it. The Congressional Black Caucus has looked at 
this budget situation, and I tell you there are some things that, the 
legal term is shocking to the conscience. When the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Scott) presented those charts, I just hope America was 
listening and watching.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I just want to comment on one of 
things our colleague from Washington, D.C., said about cutting spending 
as the answer.
  We had a hearing over on the Senate side a couple of days ago, and 
one of the witnesses suggested spending as the answer, but had to 
acknowledge that to get close to balancing, you would have to eliminate 
Federal funding for health care, Federal funding for transportation, 
totally eliminate Federal funding for education, and that

[[Page H234]]

would only get you back to balancing, not enough to pay off any of the 
national debt.
  So if you are not going to do that, you ought to be honest. Also, 
when you talk about job loss, everybody says, well, you know, it was 
not our fault, it was not our fault. The fact is, when we were fiscally 
responsible in the 1990s when President Clinton was vetoing the massive 
tax cuts, we created jobs. As soon as this budget passed, we started 
losing jobs. That is what happened. Now you can explain it one way or 
another.
  Finally, let me say that we do not often discuss it, but there are 
national security implications running up a big deficit. When we had to 
come up with 87 billion more dollars to continue the war in Iraq, we 
had to borrow the money. How much more money can you borrow? Suppose 
something else came up? When President Clinton left office, we had a 
$250 billion surplus, counting the Social Security surplus; and if we 
needed $87 billion, we could come up with $87 billion. Now we have to 
find people to borrow $87 billion from.
  The fact is that many national governments are now holding hundreds 
of billions of dollars of our debt. Some are not our traditional 
allies. China, suppose we got into a negotiation with China over 
weapons of mass destruction, over trade policy, and in the middle of 
the negotiations they said, We are not going to buy a $100 billion of 
your paper next year unless you agree with us, unless you let us 
produce weapons of mass destruction, unless you agree with us on the 
trade deal, what would we do? Because if they stopped buying the paper 
or, even worse, if they sold it, interest rates would go up to double 
digits overnight. There would be nobody to buy it. So there are 
national security implications in running up this kind of debt.
  Finally, we just have to acknowledge that balancing the budget is 
tough. There are no easy solutions. You cannot produce popular tax cuts 
and popular spending and think you can end up with a balanced budget. 
You have to make the tough decisions. That is what we did in 1993. They 
were politically unpopular, but we did the right thing. And that is 
what we need to get back to today; otherwise, it will get worse before 
it gets better and we will be spending hundreds of billions of dollars 
more than we need to in interest on the national debt, and we will have 
no way to address the Social Security shortfall that is right around 
the corner.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Scott), the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia 
(Ms. Norton) and the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. Majette) for being a 
part of this hour.
  If I could summarize for a moment, Mr. Speaker, over the past several 
days some of my colleagues, and even the President himself, have come 
to the House floor and to this Chamber discussing the need to address 
the national debt. They have said that the accumulation of this 
monstrous debt is to be blamed on congressional spending, as the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) and the 
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) said.
  As a result, these same colleagues have promised to slash the 
spending dragons in Congress. The President in his State of the Union 
address promised the Nation fiscal restraint in his effort to slash the 
deficit in half over the next 5 years. I am not quite sure if we were 
all reading from the same CBO report. But surely if we were, the 
spending slashers must have missed a part of the report that pointed to 
the decrease in Federal revenue as a result of the Bush tax cuts as the 
major culprit in this steadily increasing Federal deficit.
  Mr. Speaker, the CBO noted that if we were to allow the tax cuts to 
expire, then the deficit would gradually decline until the books 
balance in 2004. But if we act to extend the tax cuts, as the President 
has urged the Congress to do in his State of the Union address, then we 
will run large deficits well into the next decade.
  Again, Mr. Speaker, without any actions to further help Federal 
programs and agencies that are already fiscally deprived, the deficit 
would be nonexistent in the next 10 years. But if Congress follows the 
lead of the President, then the deficit will continue to spiral out of 
control, and we will be sticking our children and grandchildren with 
this enormous bill.
  But let there be no mistake, this is not a spending-driven deficit. 
In less than a week, President Bush will send to Congress his budget 
for fiscal year 2005. According to a recent article in the Washington 
Post, that forecast will go out only 5 years, in effect, omitting the 
cost of extending the tax cuts. Yet, Mr. Speaker, I am sure the 
President will keep his promise to increase domestic spending to only 1 
percent. In order to ensure that our children and generations yet 
unborn are not forced to bear the brunt of this administration's fiscal 
mismanagement, sacrifices must be made; and that is what the gentleman 
from Virginia (Mr. Scott) said, hard decisions for hard times. But 
these sacrifices should not be endured by my children or yours, and 
they should not be shouldered by those who are already struggling to 
carry the load that is theirs to bear.
  In short, Mr. Speaker, I hope the President will exercise the 
compassionate side of his conservative agenda to hold the domestic 
programs sacred that educate our children, that would ensure that the 
43 million plus people who are uninsured get some health insurance, 
that we would provide our first responders the resources they need to 
protect our borders and ports, and that we would protect the basic 
freedoms of our society.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, domestic discretionary spending represented 
only 17 percent of all Federal spending in 2004. When we consider that 
the President's own No Child Left Behind legislation to ensure a 
quality education to all of our Nation's schoolchildren was underfunded 
by over $7 billion in 2004, it begs the question, what is left to be 
cut?
  When we further consider that in the land of wealth and opportunity, 
43 million Americans have no health coverage, we must begin beg the 
question, what is left to be cut?
  Mr. Speaker, these are critical issues that should be addressed in 
the President's budget. The Federal budget resolution is the blueprint 
for spending this Congress and our government will follow. What we do 
here will have a tremendous effect on the future of our country. We 
must get our fiscal house in order and bring our budget back into 
balance, and we must focus on investing in those things that will 
strengthen the basic needs of our fellow Americans.
  Mr. Speaker, we will evaluate the President's budget closely and seek 
to determine whether he will make the right choices for America.
  Mr. Speaker, it is simply irresponsible to mortgage our children's 
and our grandchildren's futures. When the President sends his budget to 
Congress next week, I hope it will reflect our national priorities and 
reflect an investment in our most important national interests, our 
children.
  Mr. Speaker, I would ask, how much time do we have remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Neugebauer). The gentleman from Maryland 
(Mr. Cummings) has 13 minutes.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens).
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, the 
chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. And I would like to inform 
him that I was tardy in arriving because I was informed that the 
Republicans would not be taking the next hour and that I would be 
taking the next hour instead.
  So I want to continue the gentleman's discussion in the next hour, 
and I invite any Members who would like to come and join me in that 
endeavor.
  I am going to talk about common-sense legislative priorities, and 
practically every priority I discuss will be related to budget and 
appropriations matters. And I want to thank those the three Members. I 
watched the presentations. And starting with the Technicolor 
presentation of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), I learned a 
great deal in terms of how you can graphically discuss what is 
happening in America. The chart with the Social Security was 
astounding.
  I have a good friend, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), who 
would like to make a speech that Social Security is not in jeopardy. It 
will go on for a long, long time, and in the

[[Page H235]]

foreseeable future it will almost never reach a point where it would be 
out of money. But the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) made those 
calculations a couple of years ago and he is still making them. He 
never anticipated the tax cut. He never anticipated the kind of 
recklessness that this administration has undertaken with respect to 
taking revenue out of the pot and driving us to a crises with respect 
to budget matters.

                              {time}  1900

  It is hard for people with common sense or ordinary Americans to 
understand the excesses and extremes that are embodied in the policies 
of this administration.
  I did not hear any mention, but I am sure someone mentioned the fact 
that the war in Iraq by the most conservative estimates is spending $1 
billion a week. That is a conservative estimate. A little arithmetic 
will let us know. A billion dollars a week, 52 weeks a year, that would 
be $52 billion a year in Iraq. We have already appropriated $87 billion 
and previously more than $70 billion. So about three times that amount, 
the $52 billion, has already been appropriated for the war. We are 
three times greater than $1 billion a week.
  That defies the imagination, when we look at the fact that in the 
President's State of the Union speech he talked about not allowing the 
domestic budget to go beyond a 4 percent increase, which means that 
many domestic programs would have to be cut, while on the other hand he 
did not attach a percentage or a figure to additional appropriations 
that he would be asking the Congress for with respect to the war in 
Iraq.
  We ought to focus in on budget and appropriations matters from one 
hour of the day to the next and from one day of the week and all the 
weeks and all the months. That is the issue, how are we going to expend 
the taxpayers' money to make a better life for the American people. We 
cannot talk about it too much.
  Let us focus on the fact that in the Constitution, the Preamble, they 
talk about promoting the general welfare. We provide for the common 
defense, but in that same Preamble, they discuss promoting the general 
welfare.
  How do we spend $1 billion a week in Iraq to promote the general 
welfare, or, really, three times that amount? It is $3 billion being 
spent somewhere over there. I do not know whether Halliburton is 
getting the other $2 billion or not. The estimates keep coming out. It 
is $1 billion a week; but when we add up the arithmetic, we see we get 
more. So what is Halliburton getting? How are they skewing that?
  Halliburton Company admitted that in one transaction two of their 
employees have gotten a $6 million bribe. In one transaction, two of 
their employees have gotten $6 million. So we can see how big the 
figures are and how big the deals are and how corrupt and crooked the 
deals can become.
  At the same time, over here, if we look at $1 billion, we can build 
100 state-of-the-art schools for $10 million a piece with $1 billion. 
Make the contrast.
  I heard my colleague from Virginia say that the interest on the 
national debt over a period of time is going to be $300 billion, and 
for $300 billion we can create 10 million jobs. Ten million jobs at 
$30,000 each, 10 million jobs for what we are going to pay in interest 
on the national debt because of the fact it is being recklessly racked 
up going forward.
  So what is $30,000 a year, you say? That is not enough to inject a 
mission crunch, but that is more than most Americans are making when we 
look at the income for families of four. Last week, I think, in Barbara 
Walters ``20/20'' show, they had a discussion of myths that need to be 
demythologized, and they talked about are people happy if they have 
more money. It is interesting that they said that people making less 
than $30,000 a year, family of four, they are miserable, and between 
$30,000 and $50,000 they begin to rise, and at $50,000 a year, a family 
of four can really be happy. The real happiness is not affected after 
$50,000 on up, but between $30,000 and $50,000 people are miserable, 
unhappy and to reach a point where a family can really be happy.
  I do not know how much science there is behind that. They do a lot of 
interviews, et cetera, but $30,000 per year can provide 10 million 
jobs. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) said that before, and I 
think it is something we ought to take into consideration.
  We are in a situation where common sense has been thrown out the 
window. Common sense is not driving policy in our Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to continue this discussion in a few minutes, 
and I appreciate the gentleman having started this, and he has cause to 
be congratulated for focusing on what matters most, this budget.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, let me just say this. I would hope that 
the American people will have listened to what has been said tonight. I 
have often said and stated the quote that our children are the living 
messages we send to a future we will never see, and the fact is that 
when I think about our children being saddled with this tremendous debt 
and at the same time many of their parents are not working now so they 
can support them and many of them have been unemployed for many, many 
weeks and not getting any help, and I see our college students at 
colleges like Morgan State University and Fam U, where I was just a few 
weeks ago asking for help so they can go to school and do well and do 
better than their parents did, it does concern me; and I would hope 
that all of America will pay attention to what is going on in this 
great House.
  To close out, I will yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones) 
to close out, a distinguished member of the Committee on Ways and 
Means.
  (Mrs. JONES of Ohio asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to be 
heard. I want to congratulate my colleague on his leadership as the 
head of the Congressional Black Caucus. He has been doing a fantastic 
job, and all the people across America and across the world need to 
know that the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) is leading the 
charge on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus.
  Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and a 
member of the Committee on Ways and Means, I rise to discuss our 
Nation's budget priorities. The Congressional Budget Office's most 
recent report identified an optimistic increase in economic growth, 
while the outlook deficit worsened by over $1 trillion in fiscal year 
2004. The administration's tax cutting agenda is largely responsible 
for that turnaround. Yet the administration will continue to push for 
making the tax cuts permanent. Under the administration's stewardship, 
the $5.6 trillion surplus estimated by CBO in 2001 has entirely 
disappeared, replaced by $2.4 trillion in deficits.
  Please understand that our Nation's economic growth results from an 
increase in capital income while income from wages and salaries have 
decreased. Since this administration's policy taxes wages and income 
and affords tax breaks and shelters on capital income, much of our 
Nation's income and economic growth is removed from the tax base.
  Under the administration's stewardship, that $5.6 trillion surplus 
estimated in 2001 has entirely disappeared.
  Budget deficits are harmful to longer-run economic growth for the 
simple reason they decrease national saving by directly reducing the 
public sector's contribution to saving. Given that the retirement of 
the baby boomers is now within the 10-year budget window, policy-makers 
should be focusing on ways to increase, not reduce, national saving. It 
is not at all clear that the stated deficit reduction goals of this 
administration are sufficient to prepare for this imminent increase in 
fiscal pressures.
  Despite the economy's current ``recovery,'' we have continued to lose 
jobs, over three-fourths of 1 million jobs, in fact, since the end of 
the recession in 2001. Of the 8.4 million unemployed workers, 1.9 
million of them have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks. Moreover, 
the 8.4 million does not include about 4.4 million additional Americans 
who want a job but are not counted among the unemployed, nor the 
additional 4.7 million people who are underemployed.
  The President unveiled a new job-training program in the State of the

[[Page H236]]

Union, including grants to community colleges, but this is really a 
mere pittance compared to the job losses.
  It is vital that we establish policy that will provide jobs to all of 
those citizens who have become unemployed in the previous 4 years. 
America's highways provide an opportunity to create jobs throughout 
communities nationwide. Every $1 billion that we invest in 
transportation generates more than $2 billion in economic activity. Our 
roads, ports, and rails are essential to America's economic success; 
but they are deteriorating.
  Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to take a look at this budget 
that this administration has put forth and make statements that it is 
not sufficient, that it is not doing the things that we need.
  I thank the gentleman for the opportunity.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues very much.

                          ____________________