[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 11 (Tuesday, February 3, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H251-H252]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THE GREAT PRETENDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 20, 2004, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, when President Bush took office, he inherited 
the longest peacetime expansion of the American economy in history. He 
inherited 4 consecutive years of budget surpluses, the first time that 
had happened in over 80 years. And he inherited a projected 10-year 
budget surplus of $5.6 trillion.
  In March of 2001, President Bush boldly promised the American people, 
and I quote, ``We can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget 
deficits, even if the economy softens. Projections for the surplus in 
my budget are cautious and conservative.'' That is what the President 
said.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, it should now be clear to the American people that 
the originator of the term ``fuzzy math'' has become its foremost 
practitioner. Any doubt about that was erased yesterday with the 
submission of the President's fiscal 2005 budget, a budget that 
threatens to plunge us into an economic abyss for years to come.
  The President's failed economic policies, adopted by this House and 
Senate, are the equivalent of fiscal child abuse because they would 
force our children to pay our bills for decades to come and force our 
grandchildren to pay our bills for decades to come. His budget projects 
a record deficit this year. Fiscal conservatives hear me: $521 billion 
in deficits this year, $.5 trillion, this on the heels of last year's 
deficits of $375 billion. And next year the administration projects a 
deficit of $364 billion.
  But even that figure is not accurate, and the President ought to know 
it and, in my opinion, does know it. It fails to include the cost of 
additional military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Director of 
the Office of Management and Budget revealed yesterday that the 
administration may ask for another $50 billion for our war efforts. It 
failed to provide a long-term solution for the working class time bomb, 
the alternative minimum tax, and it failed to include the cost of 
initiatives such as the administration's ill-conceived Social Security 
privatization plan.

[[Page H252]]

  The fact is the President has no plan to dig our Nation out of the 
fiscal mess that his policies and the policies of this Congress have 
created. He pretends that he will halve the deficit by 2009, but almost 
all the deficit reduction in his budget is attributable to growth in 
the Social Security Trust Fund. I ask my Republican colleagues: Where 
have you hidden the Social Security lockbox?
  Furthermore, the President pretends that reining in nondefense 
discretionary spending will return the budget to balance. The No Child 
Left Behind Act is still underfunded by $9 billion plus. The President 
would slash funding for the environment and from construction on our 
Nation's highways. His budget even cuts funding for veterans medical 
care and the Assistance to Firefighters Grant program.
  My good friend, the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), has recognized the fallacy of 
trying to balance the budget by cutting discretionary spending. 
Yesterday, Chairman Young said, and I quote, ``No one should expect 
significant deficit reduction as a result of austere nondefense 
discretionary spending limits. The numbers simply do not add up. 
Nondefense discretionary represents less than 20 percent, some 18 
percent of the Federal budget, and freezing this spending reduces the 
deficit by a marginal amount.''
  In fact, if we reduced and eliminated all of discretionary funding, 
all funding for this Congress, all funding for the executive 
department, all funding for NIH, all funding for CDC, all funding for 
CIA, all funding for FBI, and all funding for all other nondefense 
discretionary spending, we would not balance the budget.
  But never fear, while the President proposes draconian and 
unrealistic spending cuts, he continues to demand that the tax cuts of 
2001 and 2003 be made permanent at a cost of $1 trillion over 10 years. 
Who is going to pay that? Our children and our grandchildren. Because 
this generation refuses to pay for what it is buying.
  And here is the kicker: The President refuses to offer any 
explanation of how he plans to pay for them. None. Zero. Nada. Even 
some of our Republican friends are starting to flinch at this 
administration's fiscal recklessness. Hopefully, they will vote that 
way as well, it will not be just rhetorical. And some of them, by the 
way, do vote that way, and I respect them for that.
  On Friday, and the majority leader is sitting here on the floor 
pretending to ignore my compelling remarks, on Friday, former majority 
leader Dick Armey was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as stating, and 
this is Dick Armey, the majority leader immediately preceding our 
present majority leader, and he said, ``I'm sitting here and I'm upset 
about the deficit and I'm upset about spending. There's no way I can 
pin that on the Democrats. Republicans own the town now.'' That was 
Dick Armey, former Republican majority leader.
  I implore every one of my colleagues to reject the President's budget 
out of hand and to face the fiscal train wreck bearing down on the 
American people with honesty and candor. Some do. Most do not. When it 
comes to masquerading as a fiscal conservative, the President deserves 
an academy award.
  We do not have the luxury of pretending, my colleagues, any longer 
that his failed policies are working. Let us hope that all of us have 
the intellectual honesty and the courage to face this issue and come 
together. It will be tough. It will be wrenching in many respects. But 
it will be the right thing to do for our country. It will be the right 
thing to do for our children. It will be the right thing to do for 
America.

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