[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 23 (Friday, February 27, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1873-S1875]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
A BUDGET OF GIMMICKS, FALSE PROMISES, AND UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, with the release of the President's budget
for the fiscal year 2005, and the upcoming markup of the fiscal year
2005 budget resolution, it is now clear the promises made by this
administration during the 2000 election have not been kept. Contrary to
the promise made 4 years ago to ensure the Social Security benefits
promised to our Nation's workers, our retirement and disability system
has become more vulnerable.
Contrary to the promise made 4 years ago to make health care more
affordable, drug prices continue to rise and health insurance remains
unobtainable for too many Americans.
Contrary to the promise made 4 years ago to protect our Nation's
vital industry, this administration's tax and trade policies have been
an unmitigated disaster with an alarming number of jobs being lost
overseas.
Contrary to those assurances that it could be trusted to act as a
prudent and responsible manager of our Nation's fiscal policies, the
Bush administration has demonstrated neither prudence nor fiscal
responsibility.
In his February 2001 address to a joint session of Congress, the
President promised to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10
years. He said that is ``more debt repaid more quickly than has ever
been repaid by any nation at any time in history.''
The President has not kept that promise.
Since President Bush submitted his fiscal year 2002 budget, our gross
national debt has increased from $5.6 trillion to $7 trillion, and
deficits have risen to $521 billion in fiscal year 2004.
With the deficit projections mounting, the cries of alarm are growing
steadily louder. The IMF--an international organization normally
concerned with the debt problems of third world nations--has issued an
alarming critique of the United States, pleading with the Bush
administration to rein in its massive budget and trade deficits.
Similar warnings have emanated from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan
Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and the U.S.
Comptroller General, David Walker.
Even the administration's own political allies, ranging from the
conservative Heritage Foundation to private sector economists who
endorsed the President's tax cuts, have pleaded with this
administration to get its fiscal act together. Yet these warnings fall
on deaf ears in this administration.
After spending $1.7 billion to finance three enormous tax cuts in the
last 3 years, the President's budget proposes an additional $1.24
trillion--in other words, that is one and a quarter trillion dollars--
for more tax cuts.
President Bush's assertion that his budget will cut the deficit in
half by 2009 is one more in a litany of promises that will go
unfulfilled.
The Bush administration's own budget documents show that if none of
its proposals were enacted into law, the deficit would still be cut in
half.
The President's budget actually makes the deficit worse in 2009 than
if the Congress took no action at all.
For the fiscal years 2001 through 2010, this administration's
policies have transformed a 10-year, $5.6 trillion surplus into a $4
trillion deficit--and it just keeps getting worse.
The President's budget includes record deficit projections that will
push our national debt to extreme limits never before seen in our
Nation's history, or any other nation's history for that matter.
President Bush's budget is a wake-up call for working Americans.
Under the guise of inviting middle class workers to sit at the table
and share in the tax cut, this administration ran up a tab that won't
be paid for by those with golden parachutes. It will be the working
man--the man who works with his hands, in many instances, or most. It
will be the working man who gets stuck with the bill--the working man,
the forgotten man in this administration. In this administration's
tenure, the working man is the forgotten man.
Instead of ensuring the Social Security benefits promised to
workers--here me out there--the President's budget would spend the
entire Social Security surplus over the next 5 years--all $1.1 trillion
of it--to pay for the administration's tax cuts for the affluent and
for the corporate elite. Not one thin dime would be allocated to save
your Social Security.
I remember life in the coalfields life in southern West Virginia when
there was no Social Security. We had the old Raleigh County poor farm.
Raleigh County is in south-central West Virginia, a great coal-
producing county over the years. I remember the old
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county poor farm out at Shady Springs.
It used to be when folks became old--and there in those coalfields
they became old early--when they became old, they could no longer get a
job. A person who was 60 years old, I can remember when I was a boy,
was an old man. Sixty years old, that was old. Fifty-five years of age
or 60 years of age was considered old. There was no Social Security
when they became old. Those men and women who had given their best
years in the toil and labor had given their best years. And they could
no longer get work. The only thing they could do would be to go to the
gates of their children with their hats in their hand and hope their
children could take them in. Many of them went to that old county poor
farm. No Social Security.
Then like the rays of hope breaking away the shadows in those West
Virginia mountains, a new President, a crippled President, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, came to the helm of this shipless state. He and a Democratic
Congress enacted a law bringing to the country and to the old folks
Social Security. I remember when those first Social Security checks
came. A check came to my house where my old coal miner father--he was
not my father, he was my foster father--received a check. And my mom,
who was my aunt, had taken me to raise when my mother died in the great
influenza in 1918. So the Byrds took me in and raised me and they drew
a Social Security check.
So I know what it meant for those who had to depend upon Social
Security, and those out in the plains, mountains, the prairies, and the
valleys of America, who still depend upon Social Security.
But even the enormous surpluses in the Social Security accounts
cannot cover the colossal cost of the administration's tax cuts.
President Bush's budget would also cut the funding for those Federal
programs that most benefit working families: Federal student aid,
unemployment and job training programs, health care initiative for
veterans and the poor and the elderly by a whooping $50 billion to pay
for the administration's tax cuts. Hear me, out there. And still it is
not enough.
After Draconian spending cuts on the loss of the entire Social
Security surplus, the President's budget proposes to borrow an
additional $1.4 trillion. How long does it take to count $1 trillion?
At the rate of $1 per second, how long would it take to count $1
trillion? A thousand years? Two thousand years? Thirty-six thousand
years.
The President's budget proposes to borrow an additional $1.4
trillion, much of it from countries such as China and entities like
OPEC, to pay for what? To pay for its tax cuts, tax cuts for the well-
to-do, tax cuts for the wealthy. I say to the people from West Virginia
who may be watching, there are not many of you included in that group.
When you look at the promises of this administration on the one hand
versus the performance on the other hand and the massive increases in
the national debt necessary to finance their ill-conceived fiscal
policies, our Nation would be left with a Bush debt gap of $4.5
trillion.
The administration is forcing working class Americans not only to
shoulder a massive debt burden but also to give up those Federal
programs and services from which they most benefit. The President's tax
cuts are squeezing State revenue, forcing increases in tuition rates.
The cost of attendance at a 4-year public college or university has
gone up 26 percent since Mr. Bush became President, from an average of
$8,418 in the year 2000 to $10,636 in 2003. Let me say that again: The
cost of attending a 4-year public college or university has gone up 26
percent since Mr. Bush became President, from an average of $8,418 in
2000 to $10,636 in 2003. Interest rates on student loans will increase,
while Pell grant moneys and Federal student aid programs are rolled
back.
Drug prices will continue to increase and veterans and senior
citizens--the old folks; I can call them senior citizens; I can call
them old folks because I am one of them, thank God--veterans and
seniors will continue to see their savings depleted while cuts are made
in those programs that help to provide them with basic health care.
Workers' pensions will remain underfunded and vulnerable while this
administration stands passively mute. Social Security's financing
problems will continue to worsen as money that should be saved to
ensure the benefits promised to workers is wasted on an ideological
fiscal policy that advocates tax cuts above all else.
The financial perils underlying the Social Security Program were
brought to light this week when Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan
forced the President to confront the fact that his administration has
been for 3 years hiding from the facts. Namely, if we continue on the
fiscal course set by this administration, we will lose the only
opportunity that we will have left to save Social Security. Congress
has a responsibility to better educate the public about their Social
Security system.
The panic--have you ever heard panic in the voice of someone? The
panic in the voices of my constituents as they called my office
yesterday made it clear that more must be done to keep the public
informed.
What is regrettable is that the real problems confronting future
Social Security retirees have only recently surfaced in the
Presidential debates--how about that--only recently surfaced in the
Presidential debates.
What is unforgivable, however, is if it were not for Chairman
Greenspan's comments, this administration may not have even raised it
as an issue this year. The President's evasive remarks have been to
assure the American people that he will not cut the benefits of
retirees or those near retirement. But what does that mean for 59-year-
olds? What does that mean for 60-year-olds? Oh, I wish I could say I
was 60 again. Maybe not. Maybe not.
What does that mean for 59-year-olds or 60-year-olds? Will the
President try to cut their Social Security benefits or not? To cut
Social Security benefits, without first engaging the public about its
intentions, should tell us a great deal about the fiscal priorities and
methods of this administration.
In the face of this dismal reality, the administration does not offer
solutions, it offers excuses--just excuses. This administration can
only argue that their budgetary decisions are not their fault. The
recession and out-of-control spending is to blame for massive deficits.
Corporate accounting scandals are to blame for weak pension funds. The
September 11 terrorists are to blame for the shoddy economy.
All of these arguments are belied by the facts.
Our investments in education, health care, transportation, and other
domestic discretionary programs are not the source of this
administration's deficit problems. Domestic discretionary comprises
only 9 percent of the increase in spending over the last 3 years, and
it represents only 17 percent of all Federal spending. President Bush's
budget does not even look at mandatory expenditures for savings even
though they comprise two-thirds of the Federal budget. While the
President's proposed spending cuts would significantly undermine our
education and health care investments, it would barely make a dent in
the administration's deficit projections.
Meanwhile, the Defense Department is plagued with accounting problems
so severe that the Secretary of Defense cannot account for billions of
taxpayers' dollars. The General Accounting Office estimates that the
very earliest that the Defense Department could possibly pass an audit
would be the year 2007, and that is optimistic. The administration does
not even know how much time and how much money it will take to fix the
accounting problems.
It is absurd that the administration is proposing to cut vital
domestic investments while billions and billions and billions of
dollars are lost every year in the Pentagon's broken accounting system.
The administration's deficits have exploded, and they have exploded in
large measure because revenues as a percentage of our gross domestic
product have declined to their lowest levels since 1950--1950.
According to the House Budget Committee, the three Bush tax cuts have
increased the deficit by nearly $2.6 trillion from 2001 to 2013.
The notion that the administration's deficits were created by a poor
economy and increased spending is pure fantasy. It is made all the
worse by this administration's efforts to hide these facts from the
public--from you,
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you. They say it is your money. The administration is touting the tough
choices it is making to cut the deficit in half over 5 years. Yet its
budget is full of ``magic asterisks'' that assume an initiative will be
offset, such as the $65 billion health care tax credit but provides no
information on from where that savings will come.
Contrary to the Bush administration's past budgets, with surplus
projections extending out 10 years to justify their tax cuts, this year
President Bush proposed a 5-year budget--a 5-year budget. It hides from
the public the alarming long-term deficits projected by the
Congressional Budget Office. It hides the real cost of the
administration's proposals, such as the $1.1 trillion cost of extending
the Bush tax cuts. Further, President Bush's budget includes no
additional funds for Iraq, even though the administration reportedly
will submit another supplemental request for Iraq--when? After the
November elections.
Not many of you, perhaps, are old enough to remember the old
vaudeville shows, where they would tell you, ``Watch this hand,'' while
they were doing something they did not tell you about with the other
hand, or, ``Now you see it; now you don't.''
So they do not tell us how much money they need for Iraq, but they
reportedly will submit another supplemental for Iraq after the November
elections.
Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, is where the budget deficit is
the most deceptive.
To date, contrary to the modern tradition of an administration
funding large-scale, ongoing wars, at least in part, through the
regular appropriations process, the Bush administration has refused to
request funds for the war in Iraq in its annual budget.
Why? They do not want you to know. They want the American people to
be fooled. The administration waits until funds for the troops are
almost exhausted before requesting additional funds through a
supplemental--through a supplemental. The Bush administration's purpose
is clear. What is it? To limit debate, to limit discussion, to limit
having to explain to those people out there who are watching the Senate
through those electronic lenses--to limit having to explain to the
American people how much this war will cost. This unnecessary war, how
much will it cost, this war which the American people should never have
fought, never. They were fooled, then, into believing there were
weapons of mass destruction all over Iraq and that we were in danger of
seeing a mushroom cloud. But to date there have been none found. This
administration, which will argue until they are blue in the face that
black is white and white is black, will still say: Oh, there are still
weapons of mass destruction there; we just have not found them yet.
They are there. Well, who knows? Maybe they will be. But that is not
the way it was when the administration proposed our invasion of Iraq
early last year.
How much will it cost, to say nothing of how many lives will be lost
before it is over? How many lives? On how many doors will that knock
fall before the war ends?
See, we have two wars. We have the war in Afghanistan, which resulted
from the attacks upon us on the Twin Towers, on the Pentagon--the
attacks by al-Qaida, by the 19 hijackers, not one of whom was an Iraqi.
Not one was from Iraq. That is the war that is still going on in
Afghanistan. That is the war I support. That is the war I have
supported from the beginning. But I have never supported the other war,
the Bush war, the war still going on in Iraq, the war that comes under
the rubric of the doctrine of preemptive strikes. That is another war.
That is the Bush war in Iraq. That is the war in which the American
people should never have had to spill a drop of blood. The American
people should never have had to send one of their sons or daughters to
fight. That is the Bush war, and nobody knows how many more lives will
be lost before that war is over.
This year, the political posturing has gotten worse. Not only did the
President not include any funds in his budget for the ongoing
operations in Iraq, the administration has announced no supplemental
will be sent to the Congress until after the November election,
depriving the American voters of any opportunity to judge the President
based on his promises about the cost of a war in Iraq. This is a budget
of gimmicks, false promises, unrealistic expectations. It is a budget
of misdirection, canards, speciousness, spuriousness, sophistry,
equivocation, fallacies, prevarications, and flatout fantasy.
Worse, under the guise of reining in budget deficits, this
administration is continuing its assault on the values of the working
class. This is an administration of corporate CEOs and Texas oil men.
The corporate elite of this administration did not grow up wondering if
their parents could afford to send them to college. Their parents did
not have to choose between paying for groceries and paying for health
care. Their parents did not have to stay up late at night worried about
whether they would lose their pension benefits or whether Social
Security would be enough to provide for their retirement.
When the administration proposes to cut these programs or fails to
provide adequate resources for them, it is because it has no personal
understanding of the plight of American workers and how much the
President's budget cuts affect middle-class Americans.
Only a President who never had to apply for unemployment benefits
would oppose extending them when so many workers are without a job.
Only a President who never needed overtime pay would advocate taking it
away from those workers who rely on it to make ends meet. Only a
President who never needed Federal aid to attend college would advocate
cutting it back for those students who cannot attend college without
it.
When this administration leaves office--and I hope it won't be long--
its legacy will be an enormous debt, an enormous debt burden that will
weigh heavily on the middle class. In the process, it will have
severely weakened their safety net and will have left little means for
fixing it. But it won't matter to this President. At that point, he
will just move back to Texas, back to good old Crawford, TX, knowing
that his pension and his health care benefits are secure, and that
corporate CEOs and Texas oil men are wealthier and more comfortable
than ever before. He will never have to rely on the safety net his
administration has worked so hard to dismantle.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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